When Adam Zucker announced Auburn as the No. 1 overall seed during the 2025 NCAA Tournament Selection Show on CBS last March, it came as no surprise even though the Tigers had five losses.
All seven CBS Sports writers tasked with predicting the order of the No. 1 seeds for a piece that morning correctly pegged Auburn at No. 1 overall, despite the glaring truth that the Tigers had suffered more defeats than Duke, Houston, Florida and St. John’s.
There was no mass-scale meltdown from college basketball fans claiming Auburn was undeserving. In retrospect, it’s surprising there wasn’t more pushback, especially considering the Tigers lost head-to-head against Duke and Florida in the regular season.
Why did an Auburn team with more losses than the Blue Devils and Gators and a combined 0-2 record against them get the benefit of the doubt and land as the No. 1 overall seed?
For one thing, it’s because head-to-head results and loss volume are insignificant factors in the scope of data used during the NCAA Tournament selection process.
That’s worth remembering as Selection Sunday 2026 creeps ever closer, especially in light of where things stand with the No. 1 seeds in CBS Sports Bracketology entering a consequential Saturday of college basketball.
The margin between Arizona, currently the No. 1 overall seed in CBS Sports Bracketology, and fellow No. 1 seeds Duke and Michigan is slim when considering the Wildcats are the only remaining unbeaten high-major team. In the race for the final No. 1 seed, things are also tight after UConn’s 81-72 loss at St. John’s on Friday night.
That result caused Illinois to jump ahead of UConn for the final No. 1 seed, even though the Huskies have one fewer loss and a head-to-head win over the Illini.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out the full field of 68 at the CBS Sports Bracketology hub.
What the Auburn precedent taught us
Not only did Auburn have more losses than its closest neighbors on Selection Sunday last year, it wasn’t No. 1 in the NET or in KenPom. Duke held both those honors, and the Blue Devils were also No. 1 in the AP poll.
Furthermore, Duke, Florida, Houston and St. John’s each won their conference tournaments while Auburn didn’t even make the SEC Tournament title game. The Tigers also didn’t have the nation’s best Quad 1 winning percentage, as Houston held that distinction at 14-3 (82.4%) in the top quadrant.
And hardly anyone batted an eye at Auburn — anything but a traditional blueblood — being the No. 1 overall seed? Here’s why:
Resume-based metrics worked in Auburn’s favor, as the Tigers ranked No. 1 in WAB (wins above bubble) and SOR (strength of record). Auburn led the nation in Quad 1 wins with 16 and had more gold-plated “Quad 1A” victories (9) than Duke, Florida, Houston and St. John’s. As a result, it was tops in WAB and the No. 1 overall seed, despite all the metrics where it didn’t rank No. 1.
WAB and SOR can also shed light on what the CBS Sports Bracketology model produces along the No. 1 seed line in the weeks ahead as a fierce battle for the top spots in the 2026 bracket takes shape.
Why WAB matters
SOR is fairly self-explanatory. It provides an assessment of the strength of a team’s record in a sport where not all 25-8 seasons or 19-12 seasons or even all 30-3 seasons are created alike. WAB is trickier. Introduced officially for the 2024-25 season, wins above bubble is the newest addition to college basketball’s gargantuan lexicon of acronyms and metrics.
This one is worth remembering because of how significant it proved to be last season in consequential calls from the selection committee. Teams won’t be seeded exclusively according to their WAB ranking — don’t get that twisted — but look for the selection committee to be even more comfortable in Year 2 when it comes to using WAB as a driving force in decision making.
WAB calculates how many wins you have accrued relative to how the average bubble team (No. 45 in the NET) would be expected to perform against your schedule.
Duke, which is currently 21-1 and No. 1 in WAB (narrowly over Arizona) entering Saturday’s showdown with North Carolina, owns a 7.85 WAB score. That means it has 7.85 more wins at this point than the average bubble team would have against its schedule.
Check out colleague Isaac Trotter’s piece from last month for a longer explanation on how WAB works.
How Duke narrowly slipped ahead of Arizona
The CBS Sports Bracketology model caused a ruckus earlier this week when it placed Duke ahead of Arizona as the No. 1 overall seed. The Wildcats have fewer losses (0) than the Blue Devils (1), who suffered a 1-point loss to Texas Tech on a neutral floor in December.
Despite the difference between the two teams in the loss column, Duke was No. 1 in the NET and No. 1 in WAB. Though the teams both had nine Quad 1 wins, Duke owned a 9-7 edge on the Wildcats in number of victories over teams inside the CBS Sports Bracketology model’s field of 68.
In creme de la creme opportunities, known informally as Quad 1A games, Duke has five wins versus four for Arizona. That was reflected in WAB, which rewards Duke’s wins over quality teams without punishing the Blue Devils too harshly for a neutral-site loss to a quality Texas Tech team.
The Blue Devils were, in essence, functioning like a version of 2025 Auburn, with their top-ranked WAB score and sheer volume of high-caliber victories carrying the day over loss volume in the fight to be No. 1 overall.
Why Arizona is No. 1 overall now
The pendulum swung back in Arizona’s favor when Duke slipped from No. 1 to No. 3 in the NET and the Wildcats gained a 10th Quad 1 victory without even playing a game. That happened because Arizona State rose in the NET, thus converting the Wildcats’ Jan. 31 road win over the Sun Devils from a Quad 2 win to a Quad 1 win.
It was a relatively insignificant data point, and it did not change Arizona’s standing behind Duke in WAB. But it did bring another 2025 Auburn precedent into play, as Arizona returned to the top of the heap nationally in terms of sheer volume of Quad 1 wins.
It’s a virtual certainty that a selection committee with humans evaluating comparable resumes would defer to the unbeaten team over teams with a loss, and the model did as well once other metrics began to work in Arizona’s favor.
But the 2025 Auburn precedent offered a reminder that, in the end, number of losses aren’t the deciding factor in who winds up being the top dog on Selection Sunday, which is why Duke and Michigan are right on Arizona’s heels for the top spot.
The fourth No. 1 seed debate
The Auburn precedent also offered a reminder that head-to-head results hold only minor value, otherwise Auburn may have been usurped by Duke or Florida on Selection Sunday last season.
This isn’t college football, where the CFP Selection Committee has just 12-13 games to use in its evaluation of a condensed group of Power Four teams competing for a handful of at-large spots in a 12-team bracket. With 365 teams playing 30+ games while jockeying for seeding in a 68-team field, there is enough resume variance in college basketball that head-to-head evaluations are scarcely needed.
In fact, if the committee leaned too heavily into head-to-head, it would end up chasing its tail throughout the entire bracket, trying aimlessly to make sense of a sport that often produces surprising head-to-head outcomes.
Creighton went 2-1 against UConn before Selection Sunday last season, had a slightly better overall winning percentage and ended up as a No. 9 seed while UConn ended up as a No. 8. It’s just one example that illustrates the committee’s overall lack of sensitivity for head-to-head matchups. The Bluejays even ranked five spots higher in WAB than UConn on Selection Sunday.
In the end, the Huskies ended up No. 31 in the 1-68 hierarchy while Creighton ended up at No. 33. The justification was likely that UConn owned a 4-2 record in Quad 1A, whereas Creighton was 2-5 in such games. The Huskies also rated higher in the NET and at KenPom.
Now, UConn is on the bad side of a similar equation in the CBS Sports Bracketology model. It owns a head-to-head win over Illinois and has a slightly better winning percentage because it has one fewer loss. But Illinois has six Quad 1 wins compared to UConn’s five and four Quad 1A wins compared to UConn’s three.
The Illini also rate higher at KenPom and in the NET, giving them an edge for now in a tight race for the last spot on the No. 1 line.
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