NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men's Division I Basketball Tournament is a single- eliminationtournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 6. The tournament, organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was created during 1. National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen.[1] Played mostly during March, it is known informally as March Madness or the Big Dance, and has become one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States. The NCAA has credited Bob Walsh of the Seattle Organizing Committee for starting the March Madness celebration during 1. The tournament teams include champions from 3. Division I conferences (which receive automatic bids), and 3.
These "at- large" teams are chosen by an NCAA selection committee in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the First Four play- in games, currently held in Dayton, Ohio, and dubbed Selection Sunday, as detailed below. The 6. 8 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single elimination "bracket", which pre- determines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each team is "seeded", or ranked, within its region from 1 to 1. After an initial four games between eight lower- ranked teams, the tournament occurs during the course of three weekends, at pre- selected neutral sites across the United States. Lower- ranked teams are placed in the bracket against higher ranked teams. Each weekend eliminates three quarters of the teams, from the first round consisting of 6.
Sweet Sixteen", and for the last weekend of the tournament, a Final Four. The Final Four is usually played during the first weekend of April.
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These four teams, one from each region (East, South, Midwest, and West), then compete in one centralized location for the national championship. The tournament has been at least partially televised since 1.
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Currently, the games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and tru. TV by the trade- name NCAA March Madness. Since 2. 01. 1, all games are available for viewing nationwide and internationally, such as in the Philippines and Canada. As television coverage has grown, so too has the tournament's popularity. Currently, millions of Americans fill out a bracket,[4] attempting to correctly predict the outcome of all 6.
With 1. 1 national titles, UCLA has the record for the most NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships; John Wooden coached UCLA to 1. The University of Kentucky is 2nd, with 8 national titles, while the University of North Carolina, Duke University, and Indiana University are tied for 3rd with 5 national titles. The University of Connecticut is 6th with 4 national titles. After that the University of Kansas and University of Louisville are tied with 3 championships. Since 2. 00. 0, Duke and Connecticut have each won three championships; Florida and North Carolina have won two championships; and Maryland, Syracuse, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State and Louisville have all won one championship. Current tournament format[edit]. A ticket from the 1.
Kansas City, Missouri. The NCAA has changed the tournament format several times since its inception, most often representing an increase of the number of teams.
This section describes the tournament as it has operated since 2. For changes during the course of its history, and to see how the tournament operated during past years, go to Format history, below. Qualifying[edit]A total of 6.
March and April. Thirty- two teams earn automatic bids as their respective conference champions. Thirty- one of the thirty- two conferences hold championship tournaments to determine which team receives the automatic qualification.
The Ivy League is the only conference that does not conduct a tournament. Instead its regular season champion automatically receives a tournament berth. A one- game playoff determines the berth if two Ivies share a regular season championship. The remaining thirty- six tournament slots are granted to at- large bids, which are determined by the Selection Committee in a nationally televised event on the Sunday preceding the First Four play- in tournament and dubbed Selection Sunday by the media and fans, by a group primarily of conference commissioners and school athletic directors who are appointed into service by the NCAA. The committee also determines where all sixty- eight teams are seeded and placed in the bracket.
Regions[edit]The tournament is divided into four regions and each region has at least sixteen teams, but four additional teams are added per the decision of the Selection Committee. See First Four). The committee is charged with making each of the four regions as close as possible in overall quality of teams from wherever they come from. The names of the regions vary from year to year, and are broadly geographic (such as "Southeast", "East", or "Midwest").
The selected names roughly correspond to the location of the four cities hosting the regional finals. For example, during 2. South (Atlanta, Georgia), East (Boston, Massachusetts), Midwest (St.
Louis, Missouri), and West (Phoenix, Arizona).[5]Seeding and bracket[edit]The selection committee seeds the whole field of 6. The committee then divides the teams amongst the regions. The top four teams will be distributed among the four regions, and each will receive a #1 rank within that region. The next four ranked teams will then be distributed among the four regions, each receiving a #2 rank with their region, and the process continues down the line.
Carried to its logical conclusion, this would give each region seventeen teams ranked 1- 1. The First Four section below).
The selection committee is also instructed to place teams so that whenever possible, conference teams cannot meet until the regional finals. Additionally, they are also instructed to avoid any possible rematches of regular season or previous year's tournament games during the First and Second rounds.[6] Further restrictions are listed in the Venues section below. To comply with these other requirements, the selection committee may move one or several teams up or down one seed from their respective original seed line.[6] Thus, for example, the 4.
The bracket is thus established, and during the semifinals, the champion of the top overall number 1 seed's region will play against the champion of the fourth- ranked number 1 seed's region, and the champion of the second- ranked number 1 seed's region will play against the champion of the third- ranked number 1 seed's region.[6]In the men's tournament, all sites are nominally neutral: teams are prohibited from playing tournament games on their home courts prior to the Final Four (though in some cases, a team may be fortunate enough to play in or near its home state or city). By current NCAA rules, any court on which a team hosts more than three regular- season games (in other words, not including conference tournament games) is considered a "home court".[7] The exception to this rule is the University of Dayton, which would be allowed to play a game in the "First Four" round in their home arena[8] as they did in 2. However, while a team can be moved to a different region if its home court is being used during any of the first two weeks of the tournament, the Final Four venue is determined years in advance, and cannot be changed regardless of participants. For this reason, in theory, a team could play in a Final Four on its home court; in reality, this would be unlikely, since the Final Four is usually staged at a venue larger than most college basketball arenas. The most recent team to play the Final Four in its home city was Butler during 2. Lucas Oil Stadium in its Final Four configuration.)The tournament consists of several rounds. They are currently named: The First Four.
The First Round. The Second Round. The Regional Semi- finals (participating teams are known popularly as the "Sweet Sixteen")The Regional Finals (participating teams are known commonly as the "Elite Eight")The National Semi- finals (participating teams are referred to officially as the "Final Four")The National Championship.
The tournament is single- elimination, increasing the chance of an underdog "Cinderella team" advancing; although these lower- ranked teams are forced to play stronger teams, they need only one win to advance (instead of winning a majority of games in a series, as in professional basketball). First Four[edit]The "First Four" refers to the number of games played, not the number of teams. First held during 2. First Four are games between the lowest four at- large teams and the lowest four automatic bid (conference champion) teams. They are not normally the lowest eight teams in the field; the lowest four at- large teams usually have higher rankings among the entire field of 6.
The four games are held to determine which teams will assume a place in the First Round. Unlike other early games in the tournament, the teams are not matched with disparity intended. Rather, equality governs match ups (e. While other NCAA tournament games are played Thursday through Sunday (and the final game on a Monday), the First Four games are played earlier in the first week, between Selection Sunday and the First Round on Thursday and Friday. To date, two games are played on the Tuesday following Selection Sunday, and the remaining two are played on Wednesday. Once the First Four games are played, the four winning teams assume their places in the bracket of 6.
Typically, the two Tuesday winners are paired with their next opponent on Thursday; and, the Wednesday winners play on Friday. With the Second Round being played on Saturday and Sunday, this scheduling allows for six consecutive days of televised competition during the first week of the tournament. Every year that the First Four has taken place, at least one of the teams that participated went on to win in the round of 6.