NCAA Tournament: Predicting the Bracket, Interim Ranking Reports

Updated June 2025

The purpose of this page is to provide guidelines, based on data from 2007 to the present, for using teams' weekly Monday RPI ranks to see which teams are in a range within which they are potential at large selections and seeds in the NCAA Tournament.  Information about the RPI rank reports is at this website's NCAA Tournament: Bracket Procedure page under the caption "RPI Publication Dates."

Basic Information

Using data from years since 2007, for each week of the season, I have identified the following:

1.  The RPI rank of the team with the best and poorest rank that ultimately got an at large selection to the NCAA Tournament;

2.  The RPI rank of the team with the best rank that ultimately did not get an at large selection to the Tournament; and

3.  The RPI rank of the team with the best and poorest rank that ultimately got #1 through #8 seeds in the Tournament.

Guidelines

This basic information results in the following table of guidelines for using the weekly rank reports to see the teams that are potential at large selections to the Tournament, the teams that are at risk of not getting an at large selection, and the teams that are potential seed candidates.  The table starts with ranks following Week 6 of the season.  NOTE: Beginning in 2025, the season has expanded by a week, so the numbers in the following table are a little different than tables for past years.

In this table, using Week 6 as an example and reading down the Week 6 columns:

For #1 Seeds, the poorest ranked team to get a #1 seed was ranked #38.  The best ranked team to get a #1 seed was ranked #1.  Thus for this week’s ranks, the rank range for teams that can be considered as potential #1 seeds is teams ranked #1 through #38.

For #2 Seeds, the potential seed group is teams ranked  #1 through #64.

For #3 seeds, the potential seed group is #1 through #114.

For #4 seeds, the potential seed group is #1 through #114.

For #5 seeds, the potential seed group is #1 through #114.

For #6 seeds, the potential seed group is #4 through #114.

For #7 seeds, the potential seed group is #13 through #114.

For #8 seeds, the potential seed group is #13 through #117.

For at large selections, the poorest rank to get an at large selection was #158 and the best was #1.  Thus the potential at large group is #1 through #158.

For teams not getting at large selections, the best rank not to get an at large selection was #8.  Thus teams that can be considered as at risk of not being in the tournament are teams ranked #8 or poorer.

It is worth noting that the data for 2007 through 2021 are for years when there were overtime games and for 2022 and after are for year when there were no overtime games except during conference tournaments.  Based on experience since 2022, it appears likely the change to no overtimes will not significantly affect these numbers.

Also, there have been #5 through #8 seeds only since 2022, so those seed groups are less reliable than the #1 through #4 seed groups.