Get to Know a College Basketball Mid-Major

You know all about the Power 6 conferences in college basketball. You hear about those more than any other, and those groups often dominate the March Madness conversation. There are 25 other conferences out there, however, and our goal is to get you up to speed on the teams, players and fights in the standings to know before the conference tournaments, Selection Sunday and the official start of March Madness. It’s time for you to get to know the mid-majors. All of them. American “That tournament championship might be the lone way into the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, as well. In 2025’s tourney, the American (then the AAC) received just its automatic bid for the conference championship winner, Memphis, and no at-large bid. In 2024 and in 2023, the American (then the AAC) did receive both its automatic bid (UAB and Memphis, respectively) as well as an at-large bid in each season, so it’s not impossible that two teams make it … it will take a strong end-of-season showing, as well as a quality run in the American tournament, for an at-large bid to be granted to the conference this season.” READ MORE. America East “The last two years the men’s and women’s tournaments have been sponsored by sandwich shop Jersey Mike’s, so the official name of last year’s women’s tourney, for instance, was the 2025 Jersey Mike’s America East Women’s Basketball Playoffs.” READ MORE. Atlantic 10 “All 14 of the schools in the A-10 participate in the conference tournament, with the top four seeds receiving a double-bye into the quarterfinals, teams 5-10 getting a first-round bye and the bottom four essentially in a play-in first round. Winning the tournament, and the automatic bid, is of the utmost importance as is the case with every mid-major, but the Atlantic 10 has had multiple at-large bids at times over the past three years, across the men’s and women’s leagues.” READ MORE. Atlantic Sun Big Sky “There are 10 basketball schools in the Big Sky conference, a distinction that has to be made because a couple of affiliate member schools are there for football, specifically, and another for golf. In the fight for Starch Madness, though, we are just talking about 10 schools. And yes, Big Sky will regularly refer to its conference championship tournament as Starch Madness. As the old saying goes, when in Idaho.” READ MORE. Big South “This is a mid-major that historically gets just the automatic bid in both the men’s and women’s versions of March Madness, and things won’t be any different in 2025-2026. That’s not to say that just which teams will win the auto bids is set in stone — there is some competition there — but there are also clear favorites.” READ MORE Big West “The Big West name works in a couple of different ways. For one, most of it is located in California, which is about as big and west as you can get — for the purposes of this wordplay, Alaska is more like the big northwest. Hawaii is there, too, and while that isn’t big, it’s more west than the rest. While there have been plenty of other non-California schools in the Big West over the years and decades, in the present, it’s all California besides Hawaii. And next year, it will be all California besides Utah Valley, but that’s a 2026-2027 discussion.” READ MORE. Coastal Athletic Association “This isn’t a competitive conference on a national level, as no one is even approaching bubble territory and there will be, just like the last three years, an automatic bid to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and no at-large ones.” READ MORE. Conference USA Horizon Ivy League “The Ivy League was the last Division I conference to introduce a championship tournament; prior to 2017, the regular season champion of the Ivy was also granted the automatic bid to March Madness, and a tiebreaking playoff game was added if necessary. Since then, though, there have been six four-team tournaments at the end of the regular season, with Yale winning four of the men’s tourneys while Princeton has dominated the women’s with five victories.” READ MORE. Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Mid-American Conference “The format of the MAC tournament has changed a few times over the years. At first, seven teams made it into the three-round tourney, with the top seed getting a bye. In 2000, the Mid-American Conference changed things up so that every team qualified, and stayed basically that way until 2020, when qualification required being a top-eight team in the conference. With 12 teams in the conference now, that means four of them won’t be eligible for the conference tourney, on both the men’s and women’s sides.” READ MORE. Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Missouri Valley Conference “The “Valley” has been around for a long time — it’s the fourth-oldest collegiate conference in the nation, having formed way back in 1907, and the Big Ten is the lone Division I conference even older than it is. Back then it was known as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, and a number of its members eventually split to form what would be known, down the line, as the Big 8 — the predecessor to the Big 12. There’s history in the Valley, as the oldest mid-major there is, and parent, as it were, to an existing power conference.” READ MORE. Mountain West Conference NEC Ohio Valley Conference “The Ohio Valley Conference is in a weird spot, but at least the 2025-2026 season marks the final year of that being the case. The problem is that two of its teams — Southern Indiana and Lindenwood — are formerly Division II schools, and are in the final of four years of transitioning into Division I. Neither is eligible for March Madness until the 2026-2027 season, per NCAA rules, which means that if either were to actually win the OVC conference tournament, the automatic bid would go to the runner-up in that championship game.” READ MORE. Patriot League “It is not a conference known for its basketball, however, which partially has to do with some of the teams it’s lost along the way and that some of the more significant basketball schools it has had as associate members — like Villanova — were not there for basketball in the first place.” READ MORE. Southern Conference Southland Conference Southwestern Athletic Conference Sun Belt Conference “The Sun Belt is a 14-member conference, and you can probably guess from the name where most of its teams reside: as southwest as Texas, and only as northeast as the Virginias, across the southeastern states in an unbroken band. It has held Division I status since 1976, and starting with the 2022-2023 basketball season the conference tournament has included all 14 of its schools.” READ MORE. Summit League Western Athletic Conference “The Western Athletic Conference — or WAC — is one of the smaller ones out there, as there are just seven teams within it clustered within three states: one in California, and then two each in Texas and Utah. This is also the last year of its existence in its current form.” READ MORE. West Coast Conference “The West Coast Conference faces upheaval next season when the reformed Pac-12 stocks itself with new members, but in 2025-2026  it’s still the home of Gonzaga. The men’s basketball team has been the conference champion and recipient of the WCC’s automatic bid to March Madness 22 times since 1995, has finished as regular-season champion 26 times since 1994 and has appeared in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament 27 times since ‘95.” READ MORE.