NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship
From NCAA Wiki
The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is held each spring featuring 65 college basketball teams in the United States.
The 20-day tournament, colloquially known as "March Madness" or the Big Dance, has become one of the United States' most prominent sports events.
The tournament, whose field includes regional conference champions and other top teams, is staged in a single elimination format. Since its 1939 inception, it has built a legacy that includes dynasty teams and dramatic underdog stories. In recent years, friendly wagering on the event has become something of a national pastime, spawning countless "office pools" that attract expert fans and novices alike. All games of the tournament are broadcast on the CBS broadcast television network in the United States.
The tournament bracket is made up of champions from each Division I conference, which receive automatic bids. The remaining slots are at-large berths, with teams chosen by an NCAA selection committee. The selection process and tournament seedings are based on several factors, including team rankings, win-loss records and RPI data.
The two lowest-seeded teams (typically teams with poor records that qualified by winning their conference tournament championships) play a pre-tournament game to determine which will advance into the first round of the tournament, with the winner advancing to play the top seed in one of the four regions. This play-in game was added in 2001 and has been played in Dayton, Ohio each subsequent year.
A Most Outstanding Player honor is awarded by the Associated Press at the end of each tournament.
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Tournament format
A total of 65 teams qualify for the tournament played in March and April. Thirty of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a postseason tournament, the regular-season conference champion receives an automatic bid. The remaining teams are granted "at-large" bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.
The tournament is split into four regions and each region has teams seeded 1-16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on.
Two teams play a play-in game game on the Tuesday preceding the first weekend of the tournament, with the winner of that game advancing to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since its inception in 2001. These two teams share equally in the share of funds as if they had qualified for a first round game, and wins in the opening round game are considered wins in the NCAA tournament. Thus, properly, the tournament has 65 teams, although in practice most brackets only include the 64 teams, with one spot blank (to be filled in after the play-in game). Since no #16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed in the men's championship, the result of the opening round game is largely deemed irrelevant for bracket-filling purposes.
Since 2002, the tournament has used the so-called "pod" system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Before the 2002 tournament, all teams playing at a first- or second-round site fed into the same regional tournament. The pod system was designed to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible.
In the pod system, each regional bracket is divided into four-team "pods". The possible pods by seeding are:
- Pod #1: 1v16, 8v9
- Pod #2: 2v15, 7v10
- Pod #3: 3v14, 6v11
- Pod #4: 4v13, 5v12
Each of the eight first- and second-round sites is assigned two pods, where each group of four teams play each other. A host site's pods may be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments.
The first- and second-round games are played on the first weekend of the tournament, either on Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday. The teams which are still alive after the first weekend advance to the regional semi-finals (the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (the Elite Eight) played on the second weekend of the tournament (again, the games are split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday).
The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. Before the 2004 tournament, the pairings for the semifinals were based on an annual rotation. Since 2004, the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other.
The brackets are not reseeded after each round. The tournament is single-elimination and there are no consolation games—although there was a third-place game as late as 1981, and each regional had a third-place game through the 1975 tournament. The single-elimination format produces opportunities for Cinderella teams to advance despite playing much tougher teams. Meanwhile, despite the numerous instances of early-round Tournament upsets, including four instances of a #15 Seed defeating a #2 Seed, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round to a #16 seed. The closest call came in 1989 when Georgetown University defeated Princeton University 60-59 and when University of Oklahoma beat East Tennessee State 72-71.
Tournament Format History
The NCAA tournament has expanded a number of times in the last 65 seasons. This is a breakdown of the history of the tournament format:
- 1939-1950: eight teams
- 1951-1952: 16 teams
- 1953-1974: 24 teams (sometimes 22-25 teams)
- 1975-1978: 32 teams
- 1979: 40 teams
- 1980-1982: 48 teams
- 1983: 52 teams (four play-in games before the tournament)
- 1984: 53 teams
- 1985-2000: 64 teams (in 1991 three play-in games before the tournament)
- 2001-Present: 65 teams (with a Play-In Game to determine whether the 64th or 65th team plays in the first round)
NCAA Championships
| Rank | School | # |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | UCLA | 11 |
| 2 | Kentucky | 7 |
| 3 | Indiana | 5 |
| 4 | North Carolina | 4 |
| 5 | Duke | 3 |
NCAA Tournament Appearances
| Rank | School | # |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kentucky | 46 |
| 2 | North Carolina | 37 |
| 3 | UCLA | 36 |
| 4 | Kansas | 34 |
| 5 | Indiana | 32 |
| 6 | Louisville | 31 |
NCAA Tournament Victories
| Rank | School | # |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kentucky | 96 |
| 2 | North Carolina | 88 |
| 3 | Duke | 83 |
| 4 | UCLA | 80 |
| 5 | Kansas | 73 |
| 6 | Indiana | 58 |
List of Champions
- Since 1997 The Mens NCAA Final Four has been played in a Domed Stadium
See Also
2006 NCAA Tournament 2007 NCAA Tournament 2008 Conference Records
