5 biggest March Madness snubs for the 2023 NCAA Tournament

3. Biggest March Madness Snubs – Vanderbilt Commodores

There weren’t many teams in the country that got hotter down the stretch than Vanderbilt, which made a huge second-half surge in the SEC. The Commodores proved they could beat quality competition with seven wins over teams in the field, including a pair of victories against Kentucky in the last month.

Five of Vanderbilt’s 20 wins were of the Quad 1 variety, which is more than the likes of bubble teams that made the cut, including the aforementioned NC State. The bigger issue for Vanderbilt was the fact that it compiled 14 losses on the season, including two Quad 3 defeats and a Quad 4 loss.

Those metrics led to a 5-11 record in Quad 1 games, which Selection Committee chairman Chris Reynolds mentioned in an interview on the CBS Selection Show as a problem for other bubble teams who squandered their Quad 1 opportunities. Vanderbilt’s NET ranking of 81 was also obscenely high for a potential bubble team, putting them behind teams such as Cincinnati, UCF and Bradley that weren’t close to the cut line.

Doing better work in the non-conference portion of the schedule may have saved the Commodores, who lost close games to Grambling, VCU and NC State in November and December. Flipping two of those results may have been enough to get the Commodores in the field.