| Hudson Johnson and Mary Hardin-Baylor get one more trip to start the NCAA Tournament. d3photography.com photo by Ryan Coleman |
Here’s who’s going where when the NCAA Tournament starts on Friday. Because of NPI, we already knew the 64 teams who were playing, but we also knew a good amount about who might be playing each other. It’s not just the teams, but the seeding and the locations.
One minor difference is that the committee got one extra flight, more than we projected, and used it to bring Whitworth down to Texas and send Mary Hardin-Baylor to the Midwest. That’s a win for general geographic diversity in this bracket.
This year, all we’re left with is some questions about how teams got seeded where they are. Why did Babson, the No. 21 seed, get put into a pod with the No. 1 overall seed, Trinity (Conn.)? In a normal seeding, Trinity would face someone closer to the No. 32 seed in the second round, and our mock bracket came really close to that. Redlands, the No. 16 overall seed, is not hosting because it would make a general destructive mockery of the bracket, but instead is sent to the No. 17, and given a first-round opponent in Susquehanna, the No. 48 seed, perfectly appropriate for Redlands’ placement in the bracket.
Lehman coach Steven Schulman actively campaigned — OK, well, posted on X — that his team would be glad to leave the immediate New York City area. That did not work out, as Lehman was sent to Middletown, Connecticut, to play Wesleyan. But there is a lot of travel in this bracket, most of which could be readily predicted by any of a number of mock brackets, such as Penn State-Behrend going to the University of Chicago, Heidelberg going to Illinois Wesleyan, and Amherst going to Mary Washington.
This year’s Division III men’s basketball NCAA Tournament ends at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, with the national title game played on Sunday, April 5. The D-III final was last played at the D-I Final Four host city in 2013, although it was scheduled to in 2020 before the COVID pandemic caused the cancelation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament after the field was whittled to 16.
The full list of seedings from 1-64, via the NPI.
| Rank | Team | Conf | NPI | How? | At-large rank |
Overall seed |
| 1 | Trinity (Conn.) | NESCAC | 72.862 | AQ | – | 1 |
| 2 | Emory | UAA | 71.491 | AQ | – | 2 |
| 3 | St. Thomas (Texas) | SCAC | 70.633 | AQ | – | 3 |
| 4 | Mary Washington | C2C | 69.817 | AQ | – | 4 |
| 5 | Chicago | UAA | 69.626 | At-Lg | 1 | 5 |
| 6 | Randolph-Macon | ODAC | 69.086 | At-Lg | 2 | 6 |
| 7 | Endicott | CNE | 67.586 | AQ | – | 7 |
| 8 | Wesleyan | NESCAC | 67.533 | At-Lg | 3 | 8 |
| 9 | Tufts | NESCAC | 67.335 | At-Lg | 4 | 9 |
| 10 | Illinois Wesleyan | CCIW | 66.577 | AQ | – | 10 |
| 11 | Christopher Newport | C2C | 66.498 | At-Lg | 5 | 11 |
| 12 | Gustavus Adolphus | MIAC | 65.826 | AQ | – | 12 |
| 13 | UW-La Crosse | WIAC | 65.652 | AQ | – | 13 |
| 14 | Washington U. | UAA | 65.506 | At-Lg | 6 | 14 |
| 15 | Montclair State | NJAC | 65.372 | At-Lg | 7 | 15 |
| 16 | Redlands | SCIAC | 65.197 | AQ | – | 16 |
| 17 | Hood | MACC | 65.141 | AQ | – | 17 |
| 18 | Mount Union | OAC | 64.365 | At-Lg | 8 | 18 |
| 19 | UW-Whitewater | WIAC | 63.898 | At-Lg | 9 | 19 |
| 20 | UW-Stevens Point | WIAC | 63.668 | At-Lg | 10 | 20 |
| 21 | Babson | NEWMAC | 63.095 | AQ | – | 21 |
| 22 | Roanoke | ODAC | 63.067 | AQ | – | 22 |
| 23 | Catholic | LAND | 63.007 | At-Lg | 11 | 23 |
| 24 | New York University | UAA | 62.939 | At-Lg | 12 | 24 |
| 25 | Franklin and Marshall | CC | 62.905 | At-Lg | 13 | 25 |
| 26 | Trinity (Texas) | SAA | 62.712 | At-Lg | 14 | 26 |
| 27 | Claremont-Mudd-Scripps | SCIAC | 62.507 | At-Lg | 15 | 27 |
| 28 | Bates | NESCAC | 62.346 | At-Lg | 16 | 28 |
| 29 | TCNJ | NJAC | 62.083 | AQ | – | 29 |
| 30 | WPI | NEWMAC | 62.01 | At-Lg | 17 | 30 |
| 31 | UW-Platteville | WIAC | 61.998 | At-Lg | 18 | 31 |
| 32 | John Carroll | NCAC | 61.708 | AQ | – | 32 |
| 33 | Amherst | NESCAC | 61.512 | At-Lg | 19 | 33 |
| 34 | Johns Hopkins | CC | 61.477 | At-Lg | 20 | 34 |
| 35 | Otterbein | OAC | 61.305 | At-Lg | 21 | 35 |
| 36 | Mary Hardin-Baylor | ASC | 61.264 | AQ | – | 36 |
| 37 | Rhodes | SAA | 61.175 | AQ | – | 37 |
| 38 | Cortland | SUNYAC | 60.973 | AQ | – | 38 |
| 41 | Grinnell | MWC | 60.607 | AQ | – | 39 |
| 44 | Gettysburg | CC | 60.398 | AQ | – | 40 |
| 46 | Whitworth | NWC | 60.339 | AQ | – | 41 |
| 56 | Western Connecticut | LEC | 59.114 | AQ | – | 42 |
| 61 | Loras | ARC | 58.887 | AQ | – | 43 |
| 62 | Washington & Jefferson | PAC | 58.86 | AQ | – | 44 |
| 64 | Yeshiva | SKY | 58.624 | AQ | – | 45 |
| 65 | St. Joseph’s (Maine) | GNAC | 58.552 | AQ | – | 46 |
| 71 | Aurora | NACC | 58.217 | AQ | – | 47 |
| 75 | Susquehanna | LAND | 57.841 | AQ | – | 48 |
| 78 | Hope | MIAA | 57.693 | AQ | – | 49 |
| 80 | Vassar | LL | 57.57 | AQ | – | 50 |
| 99 | Maine-Farmington | NAC | 56.309 | AQ | – | 51 |
| 100 | Transylvania | HCAC | 56.309 | AQ | – | 52 |
| 101 | Penn State-Behrend | AMCC | 56.279 | AQ | – | 53 |
| 105 | Heidelberg | OAC | 56.128 | AQ | – | 54 |
| 114 | Stevens | MACF | 55.738 | AQ | – | 55 |
| 122 | N.C. Wesleyan | USAC | 55.576 | AQ | – | 56 |
| 129 | Penn State-Harrisburg | UEC | 55.404 | AQ | – | 57 |
| 144 | Lehman | CUNYAC | 54.365 | AQ | – | 58 |
| 157 | Worcester State | MASCAC | 53.611 | AQ | – | 59 |
| 165 | Neumann | AEC | 53.181 | AQ | – | 60 |
| 187 | MUW | SLIAC | 51.88 | AQ | – | 61 |
| 203 | Belhaven | CCS | 51.257 | AQ | – | 62 |
| 217 | Bethany Lutheran | UMAC | 50.496 | AQ | – | 63 |
| 234 | Keuka | E8 | 49.569 | AQ | – | 64 |