The Athletic has live coverage of Selection Sunday and the NCAA Tournament bracket reveal. 

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Pure. Chaos.

Madness came early on Saturday, leaving a trail of stolen bids, burst bubbles and flummoxed bracketologists in its wake. Now? Selection Sunday is here.

We know we have four legit bid thieves: NC State in the ACC, Oregon in the Pac-12 and two more coming Sunday in the A-10 and AAC. Drake’s upset over Indiana State in the MVC title game might end up as a fifth functional bid thief. Wild.

Get your March Madness printable bracket

The bracket reveal is mere hours away. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to calculate the bubble math and take stock of an absolutely wild day of college hoops.

Here’s my best estimation of where things stand entering Sunday:

• There are 32 automatic qualifying bids via conference champions. There are 36 at-large bids. Total of 68.

• At least 21 of those 32 conferences will be one-bid leagues, including the Ivy League championship between Brown and Yale on Sunday. So let’s start with 21.

• Give at least four bids to the ACC: AQ and three at-large locks….

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Conference tournaments are here and Selection Sunday is nigh, which means Bubble Watch is in full swing.

One day before the bracket is revealed, bid thieves are the big storyline. We know we will already have one in the Atlantic 10 with Dayton out of the mix. Three more are lurking between now and the selection show: North Carolina State in the ACC, Oregon in the Pac-12, and anyone other than Florida Atlantic in the AAC. How those shake out will be critical for a bubble that is nearly at capacity.

NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt suggested on Saturday morning that there were “at least another four or five spots” up for grabs as far as at-large bids. That might be overstating it a tad, and will of course depend on how those possible bid thieves shake out, but there are clearly still decisions to be made.

“We have 35 at-larges out of the 36 voted into the field”

NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball, Dan Gavitt, joins @TheAndyKatz to explain the scrubbing process and give a seed line update! pic.twitter.com/RIMaSEuHRQ

— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB)

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

It only took until the day before Selection Sunday, but finally we can say for sure who the top eight seeds will be in the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

With Tennessee and Arizona losing on Saturday and North Carolina advancing to the ACC tournament, the Tar Heels will join Purdue, Houston and UConn on the top line. The only minor intrigue left there is whether Houston passes Purdue for the No. 1 overall seed.

Tennessee and Arizona will be on the No. 2 line, along with Marquette and Iowa State. The Cyclones beat Baylor to reach the Big 12 title game and have more than made up for a lackluster nonconference slate, while Marquette got to the Big East final without All-America point guard Tyler Kolek. Given the Golden Eagles’ impressive resume and insistence that Kolek will be back next week, a No. 2 seed is in order.

Clarity comes at the top, and the bubble continues to come into focus as well. Mississippi State and Texas A&M locked up spots by beating Tennessee and Kentucky, respectively. New Mexico beat Colorado State in the Mountain West semis and should be safely in. Colorado finally gets over…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Conference tournaments are here, and Selection Sunday is nigh, which means Bubble Watch is in full swing.

I’ll be making regular, daily updates to Bubble Watch from now until the bracket is revealed, so be sure to bookmark this page and check in all week as conference tourneys heat up and the NCAA Tournament field comes into focus. As soon as relevant games in each conference wrap up, I’ll have fresh thoughts on what it means for those teams and any other bubble watchers impacted by the results.

I’m in Kansas City covering the Big 12 tournament, but I’ll do my best to update things in real-time, and I’ll try to hop into the comments and answer questions as well. Even the mean ones.

An important note: An expanded “Movement” section for each conference will be refreshed as often as necessary, while the corresponding team charts will be updated each morning with accurate records, NET rankings and other metrics.

We’ll keep track of the number of auto-qualifiers as they roll in, whether or not there are any “bid thieves” among them, and how the math is shaping up for the rest…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Conference tournaments are here and Selection Sunday is nigh, which means Bubble Watch is in full swing.

I’ll be making regular, daily updates to Bubble Watch from now until the bracket is revealed, so be sure to bookmark this page and check in all week as conference tourneys heat up and the NCAA Tournament field comes into focus. As soon as relevant games in each conference wrap up, I’ll have fresh thoughts on what it means for those teams and any other bubble watchers impacted by the results.

I’m in Kansas City covering the Big 12 tournament, but I’ll do my best to update things in real time, and I’ll try to hop into the comments and answer questions as well. Even the mean ones.

An important note: an expanded “Movement” section for each conference will be refreshed as often as necessary, while the corresponding team charts will be updated each morning with accurate records, NET rankings and other metrics.

We’ll also keep track of the number of auto-qualifiers as they roll in, whether or not there are any “bid thieves” among them, and how the math is shaping up for the…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Conference tournaments are here and Selection Sunday is nigh, which means Bubble Watch is in full swing.

I’ll be making regular, daily updates to Bubble Watch from now until the bracket is revealed, so be sure to bookmark this page and check in all week as conference tourneys heat up and the NCAA Tournament field comes into focus. As soon as relevant games in each conference wrap up, I’ll have fresh thoughts on what it means for those teams and any other bubble watchers impacted by the results.

I’m in Kansas City covering the Big 12 tournament, but I’ll do my best to update things in real time, and I’ll try to hop into the comments and answer questions as well. Even the mean ones.

An important note: an expanded “Movement” section for each conference will be refreshed as often as necessary, while the corresponding team charts will be updated each morning with accurate records, NET rankings and other metrics.

We’ll also keep track of the number of auto-qualifiers as they roll in, whether or not there are any “bid thieves” among them, and how the math is shaping up for the…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

We feel 100 percent confident in at least one of our bracket picks after Tuesday: Wagner is going to Dayton.

The Seahawks, who ended the regular season 13-15 and were the No. 7 seed in the Northeast Conference tournament, upset Merrimack to clinch a bid to the NCAA Tournament. (Please, explain to us again why the tournament needs to be expanded so more teams have “access?”) The NEC ranked second-to-last among conferences this season, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an NCAA Tournament team with worse metrics than Wagner: 303rd in the NET, 293rd in KenPom, 11-10 (!) in Quad 4. That’s a No. 16-seed-play-in-game team if we’ve ever seen one.

What, you were hoping for a more interesting bracket update? Sorry, but Tuesday was relatively calm. We did get five more auto qualifiers, including Wagner and highlighted by Saint Mary’s beating Gonzaga in the WCC. Yes, the Zags really were in trouble of missing the tournament in early February. They aren’t now. We didn’t even change the seeding for either team (Gaels are No. 6 seed, Gonzaga a 7), though you could convince us either side…