2026–27 Men’s College Basketball Pool

Highlighted rows: teams in the field in at least half of the simulations.

Scoring

All points accumulate. A team can score at most 43 points.

How the odds work

Team strength comes from ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI), updated daily. A BPI difference estimates the margin on a neutral court. Each simulation draws every team’s true strength around its BPI, with more uncertainty early in the season, then plays every remaining game. Live games use the current score and clock.

Regular-season conference champions have the best conference win percentage. Tied teams each count as champion. Conference tournaments are seeded by conference record; formats are approximate. Tournament winners take the 32 automatic bids. The 44 at-large places go to the best remaining teams by strength plus wins above bubble (WAB), with selection noise. The committee also uses WAB. Following the NCAA’s 2027 rules, the 12 lowest at-large teams play each other in the opening round (last vs. second-to-last, and so on). The 12 lowest automatic qualifiers (overall seeds 65–76) play for two 15 seeds and four 16 seeds. The 64-team bracket is placed on an S-curve into four regions.

Expected points = points × probability, summed over every result. Swing compares simulations where a team wins with simulations where it loses. Tied pool wins split probability equally. Estimates include simulation noise.

Opening-round teams score the +2 for qualifying. An opening-round win scores nothing; Round of 64 wins start the round scoring. Current limit: the actual NCAA Tournament bracket and results are not tracked yet.