What is 'Wins Above Bubble,' the key metric that determines who gets into the NCAA tournament

It all started, Seth Burn says, with his “absolute hatred” for blind-résumé tests.

He used to fight the urge to hurl the remote at his TV screen whenever a college basketball analyst would compare two unnamed NCAA tournament bubble teams using an incomplete, cherry-picked set of data points.

“There has to be a fairer way of selecting teams than this,” Burn often thought to himself. So the professional sports gambler from Bronxville, New York, put his background in statistical analysis to use and tried to come up with one.

On Feb. 1, 2015, Burn wrote a blog post introducing a new résumé-based metric that he created to help objectively compare the achievements of teams that played vastly different strengths of schedules. Wins Above Bubble measures a team’s total number of victories compared to how many wins the average bubble team would be expected to rack up against the same schedule.

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What began with a few paragraphs on an obscure personal website more than a decade ago has since spread beyond Burn’s wildest dreams. WAB has rapidly become the key metric used by the NCAA tournament selection committee to help determine which bubble teams deserve one of the last at-large spots in the field.

When asked by reporters last month which of the seven metrics on the team sheets used by the selection committee are most important, NCAA vice president of men’s basketball Dan Gavitt went out of his way to highlight WAB, “especially when it comes to selecting teams.” Gavitt said that the selection of last year’s final at-large teams was more highly correlated to WAB than it was to any other metric.

One high-profile example of that was the surprise inclusion of North Carolina in the 2025 NCAA tournament despite its egregious 1-12 record in Quadrant 1 games. Last year’s committee took note that the Tar Heels had a higher WAB than West Virginia and Indiana, who combined for 10 Quadrant 1 wins yet were among the first teams left out.

“WAB certainly has grown in importance in the last several years,” NCAA media coordinator for March Madness David Worlock told Yahoo Sports. “While the NET and some of the other predictive metrics are certainly helpful for the seeding process and for giving an idea of the general strength of teams, WAB actually answers the question: ‘What have you accomplished?’ That’s essential to the selection process.”

When Worlock first became aware of the Wins Above Bubble metric nearly a decade ago, he was unfamiliar with Burn. He didn’t know that the inventor of WAB was an opinionated but well-respected sports bettor with a longstanding frustration about aspects of the NCAA tournament selection process that he considered unjust.

A self-described math nerd with an encyclopedic knowledge of Syracuse basketball, Burn graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1999 with degrees in economics, accounting and philosophy. He went on to apply his mathematical talents to analyzing data and building predictive models to find edges over bookmakers.

In his late-20s, Burn quit his job as an accountant because he was so successful betting on NFL point spreads and college basketball over-unders. He only returned to the corporate world a decade later when his father asked Burn to take over his accounting firm.

There was no financial incentive for Burn when he invented WAB.

“I created WAB to help people understand who the most deserving teams were,” he said. “This was purely to help the world see through clear eyes.”

TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE

WAB

TEAMS ON THE BUBBLE

WAB

Miami (Ohio)

2.57

Virginia Tech

.18

Texas A&M

1.96

Indiana

.15

UCF

1.83

SMU

.04

Missouri

1.55

Stanford

.02

Santa Clara

1.55

Cal

-.05

VCU

1.06

New Mexico

-.37

NC State

.82

San Diego State

-.49

Texas

Oklahoma

-.73

Auburn

.39

Cincinnati

-1.07

The first time Worlock remembers WAB coming up during the selection process, committee members were debating whether to include 28-win UNC Greensboro in the 2019 NCAA tournament. The Spartans had a much gaudier record than power-conference bubble teams but fewer marquee wins.

UNC Greensboro’s positive WAB was “largely the reason,” according to Worlock, that the Spartans initially received enough support to be the committee’s final at-large team. Worlock even began preparing committee chairman Bernard Muir to defend the selection by introducing WAB to the public and explaining that the Spartans scored highly.

That planning went to waste when a bid thief struck the night before Selection Sunday. Oregon upset Washington in the Pac-12 title game, sending the Huskies into the at-large pool, shrinking the NCAA tournament bubble by a spot and dooming UNC Greensboro to the NIT.

WAB continued to gain traction in the public discourse as Bart Torvik included it on his website and others cited it on social media. Even those bracketologists who were initially resistant to WAB had to give in after July 2024 when the men’s basketball committee approved the addition of Burn’s metric on its team sheets.

“Now that it is on the team sheets, they do have to talk about it,” Burn said. “And I smile.”

Where WAB can be a guiding light during this year’s selection process is helping the committee figure out how to evaluate unbeaten Miami (Ohio). The Redhawks enter this week’s MAC tournament with a 31-0 record but they have only beaten one team all season ranked higher than 129th in the country.

While Bruce Pearl famously questioned whether Miami should make the NCAA tournament ahead of his son’s 15-loss Auburn team, WAB, of course, disagrees. Miami is 31st in WAB, the equivalent of a No. 8 seed. Auburn, despite playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules, is 45th because it hasn’t won enough of those games.

Miami isn’t the only team who will benefit if this committee pays close attention to WAB when determining the final at-large teams. Texas A&M (36), UCF (37) and Santa Clara (40) each appear to be in strong positions. Conversely, SMU (48), Stanford (49) and New Mexico (52) each appear to have work left to do.

The more the committee uses WAB to guide the selection process, the prouder Burn will be.

“With the NCAA tournament, we just want the process to be fair,” Burn said. “This is a tool that will help the committee do its job.”

What is ‘Wins Above Bubble,’ the key metric that determines who gets into the NCAA tournament — and who doesn’t?

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