Bracketology: 2026 NCAA tournament committee faces challenges with Michigan, Houston, Florida in same region

The NCAA Tournament selection committee offered an early “preview” of the top 16 seeds for the Big Dance on Saturday. While the picture will immediately change as new results come in, the exercise provided interesting fodder for college basketball fans to digest.

One of the biggest insights from the preview was how stacked the Midwest was. Again, this will all shift before Selection Sunday on March 15, but it was shocking to see a single region featuring No. 1 overall seed Michigan, No. 6 overall seed Houston and No. 9 overall seed Florida.

The sight underscored the challenges the selection committee faces in adhering to NCAA bracketing principles in the era of conference consolidation.

All three are rated as top-6 teams by KenPom, and ours expert panel unanimously projected that the Cougars would be a No. 1 seed in the bracket preview. Three members of our six-person panel also had Florida as the No. 2 seed.

Not only was Houston not a No. 1 seed, it wasn’t the first No. 2 seed in the preview. That distinction belonged to UConn. Then, official bracketing principles led the committee on a path that resulted in a stacked Midwest Regional.

Official NCAA Tournament Early Seeds

See the full field of 68 on the CBS Sports Bracketology hub.

Let’s take a look at how the selection committee likely got there when they met to rehearse the process that will ultimately lead to the creation of the real group of 68 teams. Here are two important need-to-knows that will set the table:

—The committee attempts to divide the first four teams from the same conference into different regions, which is why No. 2 seeds Purdue and Illinois were not placed with Michigan in the Midwest.
—Since UConn had finished as the top-ranked No. 2 seed, the Huskies would not have been allowed to play in the same region as the top-ranked No. 1 seed.

As a result, the committee likely determined—using the software that identifies these problems—that sending Houston to the Midwest was unavoidable.

What about Florida?

Once the committee started ranking the No. 3 seeds, it naturally placed the top-ranked No. 3 seed (Florida) in the same region as the No. 1 overall seed (Michigan) to follow the established “s-curve” format.

No official “flags” would have appeared for that decision, as Florida (SEC), Houston (Big 12) and Michigan (Big Ten) each play in different conferences. Further down the line, the second No. 3 seed, Kansas (Big 12), would have had no issues with conference separation in the Eastern Region below Duke (ACC) and Illinois (Big Ten).

Fellow No. 3 seed Nebraska (Big Ten) would of course have gone West. But since Purdue (Big Ten) was already at the No. 2 seed, it appears the Cornhuskers were considered better suited for the South alongside Iowa State (Big 12) and UConn (Big East).

This is likely why Gonzaga ended up in the West, despite the fact that the s-curve would have sent the Bulldogs to the South as the worst-ranked No. 3 seed.

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When it came to the No. 4 seeds, there was already a Big Ten team and a Big 12 team in each region, meaning there was no choice but to put Michigan State and Texas Tech in regions with conference foes.

With the Big Ten and Big 12 well-positioned to claim a hefty share of the top seeds in the 2026 NCAA Tournament, these are the real issues the selection committee will likely deal with. The combinations of the competitions yielded 10 of the 16 selections in the preview.

The pursuit of balance

While the preview’s Midwest is clearly stacked, the potential competitive imbalance was technically small enough that it passed NCAA protocols. Here’s what the commission’s official principles state:

“After the top four seeds are assigned, the committee will assess the relative strengths of the regions by summing the “true seed” numbers in each region to determine if there is a serious numerical imbalance. Preferably, no more than six points should separate the lowest and highest totals.

If you add up the “real” seeds of the top four teams from the “toughest” region (Midwest), you get Michigan (1) + Houston (6) + Florida (9) + Virginia (16) = 32.

If you add up the “real” seeds of the top four teams from the “weakest” region (West), you get Arizona (3) + Purdue (8) + Gonzaga (12) + Michigan State (14) = 37.

That falls within a six-point range, meaning it meets the commission’s threshold for what is considered balance.

Selection committee chairman Keith Gill revealed during the preview that the committee initially seeded Michigan State in the Midwest and Virginia in the West at No. 14 overall. That would have raised a flag alerting the committee to a competitive imbalance. In that scenario, the difference between the cumulative actual starting values ​​of the top four teams in the Midwest and West was greater than six. So it led to a trade between Virginia and Michigan State.

At the bottom of the bracket

If you thought that was complicated, this was just the beginning.

Amid consolidation of the conference and the proliferation of non-conference matchups between high schools, the committee will face additional challenges in avoiding regular season rematches as the committee takes up a full field in the coming weeks.

While the committee will still be firm in avoiding first round rematches, some second round rematches may be unavoidable. That’s why the CBS Sports Bracketology model occasionally produces second-round rematches between teams that have already played.

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When multiple teams on a starting line are from the same conference, there are times when the only alternative to avoiding a potential conference rematch is to create a potential non-conference rematch.

NCAA bracketing principles allow second-round games between conference teams as long as the teams in question played each other only once before the NCAA Tournament. For conference teams that have met twice prior to the NCAA tournament, the principles state that they may not meet before the Sweet 16. If the teams played three times, the bracket principles state that they may not play before the Elite Eight.

Regarding rematches of non-conference games, the principles state that they should be avoided “in the first four and the first round.” The committee will also “seek to avoid out-of-conference rematches in the second round.” But the committee prefers keeping teams at their natural seed line over changing their seed line to avoid a rematch.