In the end, wins mattered. Barely.
Miami (Ohio) earned a spot in the 2026 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, receiving an at-large bid from the selection committee with a 31-1 record.
The RedHawks completed a perfect regular season (31-0) before losing in the opening round of the MAC tournament earlier this week.
They will play a first-four play-in game against SMU on Wednesday for a No. 11 seed in the field of 64.
Miami (Ohio) is in, but it is still being disrespected
If it seems utterly preposterous for a 31-1 team to be on the bubble and having to fight with everything it had to get an at-large bid, it’s because it is. But this is life in the modern college sports world, where results are not necessarily as important as the manner in which they are achieved.
Or the name of the team achieving the results.
It also seems preposterous to make that 31-1 team participate in a play-in game just to actually make it into the field of 64.
While Miami (Ohio) was not the last team to make the field — it was in before North Carolina State, Texas and SMU — the fact it is still a play-in team illustrates just how much of a bubble team it actually was and how little respect the committee had for its record and the team as a whole.
Had it not been for the attention Miami (Ohio)’s record has achieved this season, and the potential blow-back that excluding it would have produced, the committee might have actually done the impossible here. Putting it in the play-in helps split the difference. It gets a spot in the tournament, but it still has to prove itself one more time to get into what most people consider the “real” portion of the tournament.
The argument against Miami (Ohio) is simple. It is the schedule. The MAC is one of the weaker conferences in the country, while Miami (Ohio) did not play an overly strong non-conference schedule. It did not play a single AP-ranked team or Quad 1 team all season, and that left serious doubt about how good it actually is, what its record actually means and whether or not it was enough for a spot in the tournament without a conference tournament win.
There is some validity to some of that argument, and strength of schedule does matter … to a point. It can not be the only thing that matters, and it can not be so much of the argument and process that it puts a team that went 31-1 on the bubble.
It should be the difference between seeding.
It should be the hairs you split when you are talking about bubble teams with double-digit losses.
It should not be a discussion when it comes to a 31-1 team having a guaranteed spot into the field of 64.
There are a lot of teams around the country that played in mid-major conferences and did not have strong out-of-conference schedules.
None of them did what Miami (Ohio) did during the regular season. Winning games still has to matter.
There is also the double-edged sword that Miami (Ohio) had to face when it came to piecing together its non-conference schedule. It gets criticized for not playing any major opponents. But when it tried to schedule the teams that would have helped its resume, they mostly declined the opportunity to play Miami (Ohio). It is another reminder that college sports has become big business, and only the biggest-profile teams with the deepest pockets truly matter.
Miami (Ohio) got its spot, as it should have. But it still feels like the committee wanted nothing to do with it.
