2025 NCAA Tournament: Official order of 1-68 seeds revealed for March Madness

Following the official bracket reveal, the NCAA tournament selection committee released its official list of the 1-68 seeds for 2025. It showed how each team ranked as overall seeds in the March Madness bracket.

Auburn, as expected, came in as the No. 1 overall seed in the group, followed by Duke and Houston. Florida was the No. 4 overall team in the field, meaning the Gators took the final spot on the 1-seed line in the tournament.

Farther down the list, North Carolina was the last team in the field – a decision that surprised many during the bracket reveal. The Tar Heels are the No. 46 overall seed, which sits ahead of 22 automatic qualifiers to the NCAA tournament.

Official NCAA Tournament seed list, 1-68. pic.twitter.com/BfDc5t3QsS

— James Fletcher III (@jdfletch3) March 16, 2025

North Carolina finished the regular season ranked No. 36 in the NET rankings. However, the Tar Heels only have one Quadrant 1 victory, and it came against UCLA in the early part of the non-conference slate.

But UNC fared well in Quadrant 2 games, finishing with a perfect 8-0 record in those matchups. While AD Bubba Cunningham – the chair of the NCAA selection committee – was not in the room for discussions about the Tar Heels, vice chair Keith Gill said they came in as the last team in the field. He also pointed out if UAB won the American Athletic Conference tournament, UNC would have finished as the first team out of the 2025 NCAA tournament.

“As the vice chair, I managed all the conversations that we had about North Carolina,” Gill said. “We had quite a few. Our policies require the AD of any school to recuse themselves and actually leave those discussions and they’re actually not allowed to participate in any vote as well. So we followed those, had lots of discussions about North Carolina.

“Saturday night, we took our final vote and voted in four teams in the field on Saturday night and we had a contingency vote. And, the contingency vote? That was the last team in the field. It was based on Memphis and UAB. If Memphis won that game then that was going to free up a spot in the tournament and that was going to be North Carolina. If UAB had won then Memphis was going to be in the tournament, UAB would have been in the tournament, and North Carolina would have been the First Team Out. And so that process played out today. Memphis won and that put North Carolina in the field.”