Over a chaotic conference championship weekend, five teams that weren’t otherwise going to make the NCAA tournament rose up, won their league tournament and secured a bid … or stole one, depending on your viewpoint.
North Carolina State took the ACC’s automatic spot, UAB the American, Duquesne the Atlantic 10, New Mexico the Mountain West and Oregon the Pac-12.
That turned the race for one of the 37 at-large bids into a race for one of the 32 at-large bids. All those lists of “last four in” quickly became "first four (actually five) out.