Several teams, including Oklahoma basketball, got the short end of the stick due to "bid stealers" in Sunday's NCAA Tournament field of 68 selection.

The Sooners (20-12, 8-10 Big 12) were listed as the first team out of the tournament. They were joined by Seton Hall (20-12, 13-7 Big East), Indiana State (28-6, 17-3 Missouri Valley) and Pittsburgh (22-11, 12-8 ACC) as the first four teams out.

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Part of the reason for the snub of Oklahoma was the high amount of 'bid-stealers,' or teams who won their conference championship to sneak into the NCAA Tournament who otherwise wouldn't have made it as an at-large team.

"The parity of the teams, the number of the teams we had on the board, the process, the conversations this year. We had five teams who took bids away from us. Over the past two years, we only had three bids taken away in totality," NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee Chair Charles McClelland said on ESPN.

"So there were a lot of teams on the board we had to discuss and the last spots just weren't there."

What teams were 'bid-stealers' in March Madness 2024?

NC State (22-14) won five games in five days to steal the ACC Tournament Championship and are a No. 12 seed in the tournament. Duquesne (24-11) won the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament, while Drake won the Missouri Valley Conference Championship and UAB (23-11) won the American Athletic Conference. Oregon (23-11) won the final Pac-12 Championship.

Oklahoma had a NET ranking of 46, Indiana State came in at 29 and Pittsburgh sat at 40. Most of those teams would not have regularly made the tournament but were pushed out. Only Seton Hall (67 NET) would have been a questionable fit into the tournament.

"There were three or four or five spots that we'd normally have as a committee to put those teams in," Selection Committee Vice Chair Bubba Cunningham said on CBS.

What is a bid-stealer?

A bid-stealers is a team that wouldn't have made it into the field of 68, but did so by earning an automatic qualifier as one of the 32 Division I conference champions.

New Mexico was one of the schools cited as a bid-stealer, as the Lobos wouldn't have made it as an at-large team. But by winning the Mountain West, it clinched a tournament berth by way of auto-qualifier.

McClelland said this was one of the hardest seasons to put together a bracket, adding that the committee was up until 2:30 a.m. Sunday morning finalizing the brackets.

"Very difficult. One of the most difficult things we've done on the committee in my five years," McClelland said. "I reference back to my first year was the year we had to cancel due to COVID. Next to that, this was probably the most difficult process I have been apart of."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma basketball: Sooners hurt by 'bid stealers' in NCAA Tournament snub