2025 College Basketball Crown

The 2025 College Basketball Crown was a single-elimination, fully-bracketed men's college basketball postseason tournament featuring sixteen National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I teams not selected to participate in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. It commenced on March 31 and concluded on April 6. All games were played on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, with all first-round and quarterfinal games at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and the semifinal and final games at The first-round and quarterfinal games aired on FS1 and the semifinal and final games on Fox.
The bracket was unveiled on March 17, 2025, during the FS1 show Breakfast Ball by Fox Sports college basketball broadcaster, writer, and insider John Fanta. The tournament featured a Name, Image, And Likeness (NIL) prize pool that paid $300,000 for the championship team, $100,000 to the runner-up team, and $50,000 to each of the other two teams that reach the semifinals but failed to advance.
The University of Nebraska Cornhuskers defeated the University of Central Florida Knights 77–66 to claim the championship. The All-Tournament Team was composed of Tyson Degenhart, Eric Dixon, Juwan Gary, Darius Johnson and Brice Williams ; Gary was also selected Most Valuable Player.

Participating teams

Note: Team records are as of the beginning of the tournament.

Team	Conference	Record
Arizona State	Big 12
Boise State	Mountain West
Butler	Big East
Cincinnati	Big 12
Colorado	Big 12
DePaul	Big East
George Washington	Atlantic 10
Georgetown	Big East
Nebraska	Big Ten
Oregon State	West Coast
Tulane	American Athletic
UCF	Big 12
USC	Big Ten
Utah	Big 12
Villanova	Big East
Washington State	West Coast

Declined bids

Field synopsis

Rankings, ratings and records were through March 16, 2025 Selection Sunday and prior to any additional post-season activity. This also includes a "KNIT" score, which is leveraged as a criteria and evaluation tool for the National Invitation Tournament selection committee; it average of the following seven metrics, then ranks based on the results:BTR: Bart Torvik "T-Rank" RankingBPI: ESPN Basketball Power IndexKPR: Ken Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings KPI: Kevin Pauga IndexNET: NCAA Evaluation ToolSOR: Strength Of Record, as calculated by ESPNWAB: Wins Above Bubble, as calculated by Bart Torvik
The operators of the CBC have not publicly disclosed the criteria used to select participating teams. It is unknown whether one, some, all or none of the metrics mentioned above were considered in deciding which teams to invite. While each of the Big 12, Big East and Big Ten conferences committed to send two teams to the tournament, how these teams were chosen is unknown.

Bid	KNIT	School	Conference	Conference Place	Conference W–L	Division I W–L	Overall W–L	BTR	BPI	KPR	KPI	NET	SOR	WAB	Road W–L	Neutral W–L	Home W–L	Quad 1 W–L	Quad 2 W–L	Quad 3 W–L	Quad 4 W–L	Non D-I W–L
At-Large	51	Boise State	Mountain West	T–4th				50	48	50	50	44	55	53
Automatic	54	Cincinnati	Big 12	T–12th				44	40	55	66	50	59	61
Automatic	55	Nebraska	Big Ten	T–12th				62	55	54	55	59	60	57
Automatic	59	Villanova	Big East	6th				52	41	56	95	55	61	71
Automatic	67	UCF	Big 12	T–12th				69	64	68	75	71	65	67
Automatic	69	USC	Big Ten	T–12th				59	60	63	69	70	83	81
At-Large	75	Utah	Big 12	11th				67	61	76	96	73	75	76
At-Large	76	Arizona State	Big 12	15th				65	77	70	82	74	81	80
At-Large	86	Colorado	Big 12	16th				81	82	81	100	86	91	93
Automatic	88	Butler	Big East	T–8th				77	65	77	135	83	97	118
At-Large	90	Georgetown	Big East	7th				94	84	87	129	88	82	98
At-Large	92	Oregon State	West Coast	5th				91	98	85	113	85	108	90
At-Large	110	Washington State	West Coast	T–6th				106	114	124	116	112	106	105
At-Large	117	George Washington	Atlantic 10	T–7th				116	116	113	119	124	126	135
At-Large	122	DePaul	Big East	10th				112	105	118	170	119	118	138
At-Large	150	Tulane	American Athletic	4th				138	127	138	174	145	154	174
	87		Average	9th				80	77	82	103	84	89	94

Quality of participating teams compared with NIT

Fox Sports leveraged its media rights relationships with the Big East, Big Ten, and Big 12 conferences to create the CBC and thereby create postseason college basketball content for itself. Each of those three conferences committed to send at least two teams to the CBC. In addition, non-NCAA tournament teams from those three conferences were contractually prohibited from playing in any other postseason tournament, including the 2025 National Invitation Tournament, if they declined an invitation or removed themselves from consideration for a bid to the CBC. Even if Big East, Big Ten, or Big 12 schools might have preferred to play NIT games at home instead of CBC games in Las Vegas or anticipated they might have more attractive matchups in the NIT, they did not have that option, which may have degraded the quality of the NIT field. No Big East or Big Ten teams appeared in the 2025 NIT, and Oklahoma State was the only Big 12 team to accept an NIT bid. Atlantic Coast Conference teams Georgia Tech, SMU, and Stanford were the only other power conference teams to accept bids to the NIT. In contrast, eleven of the sixteen CBC participants were from power conferences.
An analysis of the NET rankings as of Selection Sunday for the teams participating in the 2025 CBC and NIT is set forth in the table below.
Like all metrics used to rank or rate college basketball teams, the NET is imperfect; however, it is consistently applied and represents one way in which teams can be compared. Since the NIT had to fill thirty-two tournament berths, whereas the CBC had only sixteen, data are shown for both the full NIT field as well as the top sixteen teams based on NET rankings. Of course, there are other metrics that could be used to compare the fields of the two tournaments, including the number of power conference teams participating.