Not every conference gets an autobid. For example, there’s no automatic bid for the winner of the ACC, because the ACC has only 5 members, and the requirement for an autobid is a minimum membership of 6. Also, a conference has to have been in existence, as a D-1 conference, for 2 or 3 yrs before being eligible for an autobid. The ASUN was able to skirt that rule last year, because the ASUN used to be a D-1 Lacrosse league, but then stopped playing for a couple of years, and then resurfaced by adding a bunch of independents (i.e. Utah, Cleveland St, RMU, and Bellarmine), who were already playing D-1. And since Bellarmine was already an “ASUN school”, it qualified the ASUN as a D-1 Lacrosse league who’d already met the minimum requirement for an autobid.
Under the “autobid” rules, the only conferences that qualify are the Top-7 conferences, as rated by the D-1 Nat’l Committee, of the following: America East, ASUN, Atlantic 10, Big East, BigTen, Colonial, Ivy, Metro Atlantic, and Patriot League. The bottom two would have to play in the “play-in” game, for the right to get trounced by the #1-seed in the national tourney. And right now, that’s looking like the “play-in” teams will be the conference champions of the Metro Atlantic and the Atlantic 10.
For what it’s worth, even without an autobid, there’s very little chance an ACC team doesn’t get in. I can’t remember a single tournament that didn’t have multiple ACC teams playing in it. And as I’d mentioned before, the latest bracketology has Utah facing 3rd-seeded UVA. In that link I’d just provided, you’ll also find Duke, North Carolina, and Notre Dame earning at-large slots — or essentially, every team in the ACC not-named Syracuse. And those 4 ACC teams constitute a full quarter of the entire tournament.
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