WAB credited for March Madness

Michigan won the 2026 men’s title, and a post-tournament bracket test from Thayer Partners says Wins Above Bubble was the ranking system that tracked that outcome best. (ncaa.com) (thayerpartnersllc.com) Michigan beat Connecticut 69-63 on April 6 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for its first national championship since 1989, finishing 37-3. The NCAA’s men’s Wins Above Bubble table published through games on April 6 listed Michigan No. 1 at 18.11, ahead of Arizona at 16.26 and Duke at 15.01. (ncaa.com 1) (ncaa.com 2) Thayer said it built ESPN Tournament Challenge brackets from single ranking systems, then compared how those systems performed as the field advanced. Its write-up said Wins Above Bubble beat alternatives including the NCAA Evaluation Tool, Strength of Record, ESPN Basketball Power Index, Bart Torvik’s T-Rank and KenPom in bracket success. (thayerpartnersllc.com) (forbes.com) Wins Above Bubble is a resume metric, not a power rating. The NCAA says it measures how many more or fewer wins a team has than a bubble team would be expected to get against that same schedule. (ncaa.com) (si.com) That distinction matters in March because the selection committee is choosing and seeding teams based on what they did, not projecting who would be favored on a neutral court. The NCAA says the committee tracks team sheets all season and uses metrics including the NCAA Evaluation Tool and Wins Above Bubble in selecting 37 at-large teams and seeding the 68-team field. (ncaa.org) (ncaa.com) Wins Above Bubble has been moving from niche bracketology into the mainstream this season. CBS Sports called it a key factor in selection, and Yahoo Sports reported last month that it had become a central data point for sorting the final at-large spots. (cbssports.com) (sports.yahoo.com) That does not mean Wins Above Bubble is a magic bracket formula. Thayer’s test was retrospective, based on one tournament, and its own premise was that the “best” bracket model is not always the same thing as the most accurate team rating system. (thayerpartnersllc.com) (sports.yahoo.com) Other systems still describe different parts of team quality. The NCAA continues to publish the NCAA Evaluation Tool rankings alongside Wins Above Bubble, and outside sites such as Warren Nolan and Bracketologists keep team sheets that pair resume metrics with predictive ones for side-by-side comparison. (ncaa.com) (warrennolan.com) (bracketologists.com) The cleanest takeaway from Michigan’s run is narrower than the hype: in a tournament shaped by committee seeding, the metric built to judge resumes ended the season with the champion sitting at No. 1. (ncaa.com) (thayerpartnersllc.com)