How Will At-Large NCAA Bids Be Distributed In 2015?

Every year, teams push themselves to the limit to hear their name announced on Selection Sunday.  After the show, pundits analyze which teams got snubbed and whether the NCAA Selection Committee favored smaller schools over the traditional power conferences.

However, there is usually less discussion of how many at-large bids each conference will receive until just before the NCAA bracket is announced.

Fortunately, we project NCAA tournament bids by conference and update those projections every day, based on the previous day’s game results. These odds incorporate not only each team’s resume to date (as many human bracketologists do) but also our algorithmic simulations of the remainder of the regular season and conference tournaments.

Projected At-Large Bids By Conference Type

Each year, fans and the media question if enough schools from the smaller conferences will have the opportunity to go dancing. Below we have charted the current projected number of at-large bids by conference type.

We’ve included the Big East (4 at-large bids projected) and American (3) conferences with the BCS schools in the Big 12, ACC, Big Ten, SEC, and Pac-12 conferences.

2015 NCAA Tournament At-Large Bids by Conference Type

As you can see, there is not much chance an at-large bid will go to one of the smaller conferences. The MAC conference has 1.3 expected bids and is the only conference in that group with more than 1.1 expected bids.

That non-zero probability is almost entirely attributed to Buffalo, which has a 22% chance to receive an at-large bid. Iona is the only other small school the currently has over 10% odds to receive an at-large bid.

It is highly unlikely for either Buffalo or Iona, though, as neither team has a Top 50 win.

Projected Bids For All Conferences

Diving in further, we can see the number of bids for each conference expected to receive more than one bid. As has been discussed for most of the season, the Big 12 currently leads the way as the conference with the most projected bids. Our current expectation is 6.4, with one bid being automatic.

According to our Big 12 bracketology projections, that conference is also projected to land the highest number of teams expected to be seeded 4 or better in the 2015 NCAA tournament, with four in total: Kansas, Baylor, Iowa State, and Oklahoma.

However, the ACC, Big Ten, and Big East can expect to have a similar number of overall bids announced on Selection Sunday. The ACC is also the only conference with two teams each projected to receive a top 2 seed, Duke and Virginia.

 

2015 NCAA Tournament Projected Bids By Conference