Texas remains among the last four teams in while Indiana has slid to the first four out, with Selection Sunday three days away and conference tournaments still sorting the field.
Three days before the field of 68 is announced and March Madness starts, two programs with some of the richest histories in college basketball find themselves staring at the wrong end of the bubble. Texas and Indiana are both fighting for their tournament lives heading into Selection Sunday on March 15, and the results of this week’s conference tournaments could determine which one makes it and which one watches from home.
Texas is clinging to the last line
Texas entered the SEC Tournament with enough of a resume to project as one of the last four teams in the field. Six Quad 1 victories gave the Longhorns a legitimate case, more than several teams from stronger seeds in the same conference. But a loss to Ole Miss in the opening round of the SEC Tournament was the sixth defeat in their last seven games, and that kind of late-season slide tends to draw hard looks from the selection committee.
Without the ability to add to their resume through the conference tournament, Texas is now in the category of teams that can only wait and hope the losses do not outweigh the earlier work. The committee will weigh those six quality wins against a finish that looked nothing like a tournament team. It is a close call, and it may stay that way until Sunday afternoon.
Indiana’s late collapse has been costly
Indiana entered March with enough to work with but has spent the past two weeks dismantling its own case. A double-digit loss to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament was the sixth defeat in seven games for the Hoosiers, a stretch that has pushed them out of the projected field entirely in the most recent bracketology projections from FOX Sports analyst Mike DeCourcy. Indiana now sits as the first team outside the bracket looking in, meaning a single shift in results elsewhere could still let them back in or push them further out.
The Hoosiers no longer control their fate. With their conference tournament run over, they cannot add to their resume and must rely on other bubble teams collapsing over the next three days.
The broader field is taking shape
Beyond the two teams fighting for their lives, the overall picture of the 2026 tournament is becoming clearer. The SEC leads all conferences with a projected 10 teams in the field, reflecting a regular season in which the league sent quality opponents at each other night after night. The Big Ten follows with nine projected bids, with the ACC and Big 12 each projecting eight.
The Big East and West Coast Conference each have three projected teams in the field, while the Mountain West and Atlantic 10 are each projected to land two at-large bids alongside their automatic qualifiers.
VCU, SMU, Texas and New Mexico round out the last four teams currently projected inside the bracket. On the outside, Auburn, Seton Hall, San Diego State and Indiana represent the programs with the strongest cases among those currently projected to miss the field.
What still needs to happen before Sunday
The schedule leading to Selection Sunday begins with the First Four on March 17 and 18 in Dayton, Ohio, followed by first-round action on March 19 and 20 across eight sites including Buffalo, Greenville, Oklahoma City, Portland, Tampa, Philadelphia, San Diego and St. Louis. The Sweet 16 and Elite Eight follow the last week of March, with the South and West regionals in Houston and San Jose and the Midwest and East regionals in Chicago and Washington. The Final Four returns to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on April 4 and 6.
Before any of that happens, the committee has three more days of conference tournament results to process. For Texas, Indiana and every other team on the bubble, those results matter as much as anything that came before them.