Slate Map 2.27.26

By Sam Federman

March is coming. Here's the first Slate Map of the year.

For those of you unfamiliar, slate maps are a personal project I've been doing since the 2020-21 season for the final 17 days before Selection Sunday, showing you all of the games, where you can watch them, and their stakes with regards to the NCAA Tournament. I will not post a blog every day, but since it's the first day of slate maps for the year, here's the blog to accompany it.

It's the final weekend of purely regular season games, and we've got a ton of ball to keep an eye on. Last day of the Sun Belt regular season, with seven games and every seed (aside from the 14) still up for grabs. Because all of the games are so big, I'm just going to leave the CBB Analytics seeding matrix in the blog because I can't pick out an individual game to highlight.

Remember, the Sun Belt uses a ladder bracket format where the top two seeds only need to win two games, but the five and six need to win three, and so-on.

Other notes

• Miami OH looks to continue its undefeated season (and make it more likely that Jonathan Lidskin gets escorted out of the MAC Tournament) against Western Michigan

• Dayton has won four in a row and looks for a fifth against GW in D.C.

• Penn can lock up a spot in Ivy Madness with a win over Dartmouth and losses by Columbia (to Brown) and Cornell (to Yale), I think

• Michigan can clinch its first outright Big Ten title (not counting the 2021 COVID season when it only played 17 league games) since 2014 if it defeats Illinois

• The biggest mid-major rivalry that you don't talk enough about, Akron vs Kent State, is on national TV. Zips looking for a seventh win in a row over the Golden Flashes, a third straight season sweep, and to confirm that it won't be lower than the two seed in Cleveland.

No bubble games tonight, unless you're considering Miami OH a bubble game. Michigan would move back into position for the No. 1 overall seed if it wins and Duke loses to Virginia on Saturday.