2026 NCAA Tournament: Official order of 1-68 seeds revealed for March Madness
With the 2025-26 regular season and conference tournaments in the books, we have a March Madness bracket. After the release, the NCAA Tournament selection committee also released the official order of the 68 seeds for 2026, ranked 1-68.
Entering Selection Sunday, the sense was Duke would be the No. 1 overall seed, and that was the case Sunday. The Blue Devils repeated as ACC regular-season and tournament champions to take a 32-2 overall record into the NCAA Tournament. Duke’s only conference loss came to North Carolina in the rivalry affair.
From there, Arizona became the No. 2 overall seed while Michigan came in at No. 3. According to NCAA Tournament selection committee chairman Keith Gill, the Wolverines were actually in position for the No. 2 spot before a loss to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament championship earlier Sunday. Here is the full list of the Nos. 1-68 seeds in March Madness.
There was plenty of intrigue around this year’s bubble with multiple teams in play for the last few spots. One of them was Miami (OH), which went a perfect 31-0 during the regular season before falling to UMass in the MAC quarterfinals. That meant a bid-stealer – Akron – came out of the MAC and an at-large spot was taken off the board.
The RedHawks wound up as one of the last teams in the field. Missouri, Texas and SMU also made the cut, which spelled bad news for Auburn and Oklahoma. The Tigers and Sooners were both among the first four teams out of the March Madness bracket.
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However, one of the No. 1 seeds dropped its final game before the 2026 NCAA Tournament. Michigan fell to Purdue in the Big Ten tournament championship, which marks just the Wolverines’ third loss of the year. They’ve also been a bit shaky since losing point guard LJ Cason to injury.
As a result, CBS’ Clark Kellogg had a warning to Michigan. He wondered if UM would be “vulnerable” as the tournament goes along after receiving its draw in the Midwest Region. The Wolverines will start tournament play against the winner of UMBC vs. Howard.
“Michigan is a little vulnerable,” Kellogg said on the bracket reveal show. “This LJ Cason injury, I think, is going to eventually start to catch up as they move forward. They struggled a bit today in a way where I think it gives some other teams some confidence.”