Help!!!! Who will win the madness??
2007-02-27 08:14:42 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Sports ➔ Basketball
The NCAA consists of three divisions for basketball. Division I holds a tournament that is the most popular sporting event in the month of March. The media coverage and popularity of the tournament have created the nickname of "March Madness".
2007-02-27 08:20:28 · answer #1 · answered by bradhurt2003 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Almost all the universities in the US are divided up into conferences (although there are a few independents that don't belong to a conference). Each conference consists of a group of universities who have banded together for athletic purposes. Typically in Basketball each team in the conference will play every other team in their own conference, usually twice (once on each team's home court).
At the end of the season, most if not all conferences have a conference tournament. The winner of each conference tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament (referred to as March Madness by a lot of people). Then, a selection committee determines which of the remaining teams (that didn't win their conference tournament) should get an "at large" bid to the NCAA tournament. They fill out to a total of 65 teams. The two lowest seeded teams have to play what they refer to as a "play-in" game, after which there are 64 teams. These 64 teams play a single elimination tournament until there is only one victor. It is called March Madness because usually teams you expect to win don't, and teams you think can't possibly get anywhere win a lot of games. It's Madness!
2007-02-27 08:29:52 · answer #2 · answered by Tom P 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are 64 teams that get invited to the tournament. Some of these are automatic bids that teams get from winning their conference tournaments and the rest are based on the teams ranking, strength of schedule, etc. Go to ESPN.com and type in RPI. This will give you an idea how teams rank up. If a team doesn't win its league tournament, the higher it is ranked, the better chance it has of being let into the tournament. The selections are made by a tournament selection committee after the league tournaments are over. A group of like 35 people sit around a table and debate the merits of individual teams.
As far as winning it all...UCLA is going all the way this time (I'm a bit biased though).
2007-02-27 08:22:55 · answer #3 · answered by dlewisdm 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is a group of college basketball experts who vote every week (I believe it is saturday or mabey sunday). They vote for who should be the top team, 2nd best, 3rd best, 4th best and so on untill 25 in division 1 basketball. As for march madness, there are 65 mens teams invited and 64 womans teams invited. Then, there is a commitee that cuts teams based on certain categories such as RPI, Ranking, conference record, road record, record versus ranked opponents, and how the team finishes in the regular season. They cut the teams unill they get the top 32 teams. Then from there it is single elimination untill you have a national championship.
2007-02-27 08:29:03 · answer #4 · answered by ryansraysrule 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Go to NCAA.com and read about it there. That's too much to explain here. North Carolina will win!
2007-02-27 08:22:10 · answer #5 · answered by RodneyRowland 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship is a single elimination tournament held each spring featuring 65 college basketball teams in the United States. Colloquially known as March Madness or the Big Dance, the tournament takes place over 3 weeks at sites across the U.S., and the national semifinals (the Final Four) have become one of the nation's most prominent sports events.
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, except for the Opening Round game (or "play-in game" as it has been called), which aired on TNN in 2001, and ESPN since 2002.
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 University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio each subsequent year.
A Most Outstanding Player honor is awarded by the Associated Press at the end of each tournament.
Tournament format
A total of 65 teams qualify for the tournament played in March and April. 30 of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a post-season tournament, its 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 63 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. For example, in 2000, the winner of the West Regional played the winner of the Midwest regional, and the South winner played the East winner; in 2001, the West winner played the East winner and the South played the Midwest; in 2002, the West played the South and the East played the Midwest. Since 2004 and in response to complaints that too often the two best teams remaining squared off in a semifinal game and not in the final game (such as when the last two remaining 1 seeds, Kansas and Maryland, played in one semifinal while a 2 seed and a 5 seed played in the other semifinal), the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other. The four number one seeds are ranked before the tournament begins: in 2006, Duke was the overall #1 seed, followed by Connecticut, Villanova and Memphis. Which regional winner is to face which other regional winner is determined based on this ranking. Had all of the #1 seeds reached the Final Four, Duke (from the South) would have played Memphis (from the West) and Connecticut (from the East) would have played Villanova (from the Midwest). As it happened, none of the #1 seeds made the Final Four in 2006, but the South winner (LSU) still played the West winner (UCLA) in a #2/#4 matchup, while the East (George Mason) played the Midwest (Florida) in a #11/#3 matchup.
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 calls came in 1989 when Georgetown University defeated Princeton University 50–49 and the University of Oklahoma beat East Tennessee State 72–71, and in 1990 when Michigan State had to go to overtime to beat Murray State 75-71.
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— : 65 teams (with a play-in game to determine whether the 64th or 65th team plays in the first round)
For a complete history of the tournament bracket design the NCAA has a description here
Selection process
For more details on this topic, see NCAA basketball tournament selection process.
A special selection committee appointed by the NCAA determines which 65 teams will enter the tournament, and where they will be seeded and placed in the bracket. Because of the automatic bids, only 34 teams (the at-large bids) rely on the selection committee to secure them a spot in the tournament.
2007-02-27 08:28:36 · answer #6 · answered by Brite Tiger 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
division 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Division_I_Basketball_Championship
Division 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Division_II_Basketball_Championship
Division 3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Men%27s_Division_III_Basketball_Championship
selection process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_basketball_tournament_selection_process
2007-02-27 09:20:22 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋