As the landscape tilts toward the Power Four, a look at 2027 Pac-12 bid possibilities | NCAA basketball

It was a grim Selection Sunday for the conference that won’t exist until July 1. Only two members of the reconstituted Pac-12 qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Utah State and Gonzaga received automatic bids, meaning the conference was shut out of the at-large field.

“For the non-Power Five, your margin of error is very small,” San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher told reporters after his Aztecs missed the NCAAs for the first time since 2019.

“We put a really good resume together, but when there are only four bids for the rest of the country, it makes it harder.”

It won’t get any easier next season when the Pac-12 comes online as a nine-school basketball league that aspires to be the best of the second tier, below the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC.

Not with an economic reality that greatly favors the richest programs.

Not with the increasingly narrow path into the at-large field.

Given Gonzaga’s status as a March Madness fixture and the frequency with which San Diego State and Utah State have participated in recent years, the rebuilt Pac-12 should collect three bids consistently (one automatic, two at-large).

And if things break just right, both internally and across Division I, the conference could grab four.

That may not seem like much, but four bids would reflect 44 percent of the new Pac-12’s membership — the equivalent of the engorged Big Ten sending eight teams to the NCAAs.

How did we arrive at the figure? With a morsel of guesswork, a deep dive into the data and an acknowledgement of the immensely challenging landscape.

The number of at-large bids allocated to conferences outside the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and Big East has been sliced in half since the most recent round of realignment two years ago.

In 2024, eight teams made the NCAA at-large field that weren’t members of those five leagues: Gonzaga, Florida Atlantic, Dayton, Boise State, Colorado State, Nevada, San Diego State and Utah State.

In 2025, only four participated through the at-large pool: Saint Mary’s, New Mexico, San Diego State and Utah State.

This year, only four: Miami (Ohio), St. Louis, Santa Clara and Saint Mary’s.

That’s four at-large teams from 26 conferences that have been steadily marginalized by the power leagues.

(The Big East doesn’t sponsor football and therefore isn’t considered a power conference. But it’s typically a first-rate basketball league and has produced four of the past nine national champions with Villanova and Connecticut both winning twice.)

The major football-playing conferences aren’t just bigger than they were before realignment. They are exerting greater influence over the future of college sports. Thanks to the wealth conferred by football, the legality of NIL and revenue sharing and the availability of players through the transfer portal, the heavyweights can poach the top talents at will off mid-major and low-major rosters.

That wealth also allows the power conferences to buy home games and dictate the framework of non-conference scheduling, which leaves everyone else (except Gonzaga) scrambling to find enough quality opponents to create a respectable schedule.

The loss of talent to schools higher on the food chain combined with the scheduling squeeze makes the 37-team at-large pool increasingly unattainable for programs that aren’t members of the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten and SEC.

Among the new Pac-12 schools, only San Diego State was close to snagging a spot this year. The Aztecs were the third team out, behind Oklahoma and Auburn, with a resume that Dutcher believes would have been good enough “any other year.”

“We finished alone in second place and made it to the conference championship game, and you would think that would be enough to get us in,” he added. “The Mountain West was undervalued this year. And if you look at the metrics, they were pretty good.”

They should be better next year.

For all the headwinds facing the rebuilt Pac-12, there is reason for optimism. And it’s buried within the data that drive the NCAA Tournament selection process.

To illustrate the situation, we’ll reference the NET rankings. Several metrics are used in the selection and seeding process, but the NET’s breakdown of quadrant results makes it a valuable sorting tool for the committee. It rewards teams for quality wins, punishes teams for bad losses and takes schedule strength and game location into account.

The average NET ranking for teams in the Mountain West this season was 113.7, with the West Coast Conference average considerably lower (137.5).

The schools that will make up the Pac-12 next season, including Texas State from the Sun Belt, had an average NET ranking of 103.4.

That seems like an insignificant difference relative to the Mountain West, in particular, and suggests a direct correlation between how the selection process played out for the nine teams (no at-large bids) and how the teams would have fared if the new Pac-12 had been in existence this season.

Except the NET ranking features a multiplier effect, meaning the conferences with the highest floors will benefit. Put another way: One or two low performers can undercut the collective.

San Diego State’s NET ranking this year (No. 47) was caused, in part, by two games against Air Force (No. 350). Next season, the Aztecs won’t play the Falcons, but they will have two dates with Gonzaga (No. 7).

(For the five Mountain West schools, the desire to leave low performers behind in both basketball and football was integral to the decision to join the Pac-12.)

Gonzaga’s metrics will benefit, as well. The Zags played six games against WCC opponents with NET rankings in the 200s (Portland, San Diego and Pepperdine).

Of the schools in the reconstituted Pac-12, only one, Texas State, had a NET in the 200s this season. But like San Diego State and Gonzaga, the Bobcats (No. 235) were victimized by low performers within their conference.

They finished 19-13 overall and 11-7 in the Sun Belt (one game out of first place) but played four conference games against teams with NET rankings in the 300s.

Sure, the Bobcats need to improve their basketball program. Same with Oregon State (NET: 170), Fresno State (No. 153) and Washington State (No. 146). But the elimination of conference games against sub-200 teams will benefit everyone in the new conference.

Or as an industry source said: “You’re only as good as the bottom of your league.”

For that reason, the NET ranking San Diego State carried into Selection Sunday last week (No. 47) isn’t a fully accurate reflection of SDSU’s metrics had the new Pac-12 existed this season.

Everyone’s NET would have been higher thanks to the multiplier effect.

In theory, that change will help the conference counteract the challenging realities of the shifting economic landscape and the shrinking access to at-large bids.

The nine-school Pac-12 should reasonably expect to place three teams in March Madness on an annual basis, with a shot at four on occasion.

And if the tournament expands to 76 teams – a distinct possibility with a decision looming in April – then the path to four bids should widen.