NCAA Tournament A Review On The Basketball Field

NCAA Tournament- A Review on the Basketball Field

March Madness

The popular name given to The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is March Madness. This is considered as the most prestigious championship game ever held in American Collegiate sports. Even the baseball playoffs don’t seem to match the 7 seeds of the best of the best round in the championship. NCAA is indeed the height of sports in the making. Sixty-five teams go inside the battlefield, only one remains standing.

Tournament Field

The field is composed of 65 teams. Thirty-four of which is selected by the committee and is determined by bids “at-large”. The other 31 proceeds to the conference championship. Most of those who proceeded are chosen to be in smaller tournaments done after the season. Usually this takes place during the first week of March.

65 Teams?

Got that right. Sixty-five teams are going to battle it out. This is because NCAA didn’t want teams get eliminated at-large bids. Instead, they added “play-ins”. This is the part when number 64 and 65 face off and the team who wasn’t squashed can have the chance to play with the number one seeds.

One fact that you have to be aware of and is very evident in the play-in game is: it’s not what you put inside the brackets that you filled out in your pool or on a website.

Lingo

What in the world are seeds, RPI, regions and ranks?

When the 64 teams split, they are sectioned into 4 regions. The selection committee set up the particular regions. This committee is responsible for making it a point that every region must be equal in strength and weakness.

Seedings are not the same when talking about rankings.

Every team is seeded equally based on their abilities. How does seeding take place? Theoretically speaking, seeding happens upon hailing the best players. Those 4 teams chosen as the best becomes seed number 1, the next best as seed number 2, and the seeding goes on.

Seeding is said to be specific until the tournament ends. It is not interchangeable. Unlike in rankings, the team’s performance is defined. It can be manipulated through the entire game by how good a team’s game went. Rankings are unofficial and are gathered through polls generated through the sportswriter’s decision.

Next, RPI, which stands for three words - ratings, percentage, index. This is the strict mathematical method of ranking each team. RPI is somewhat a secretive attempt to rank a team. Guess that added up to the confusion. But that would be all right, the important thing is, you have grasp at least something.

Schedule

A tournament schedule is not actually fixed. It can change every year, including the location. Although the sequence is forever the same.

The first week within the month of March is called as the Championship Week. This is the time when the tournament’s championship games are held. The Sunday wherein the Championship Weekends is called as the Selection Sunday. It is held on a late Sunday afternoon.

Sweet Sixteen is the term given for the 16 teams that qualify after the first weekend has passed. These 16 who remains will be divided into two. The first 8 will play on a Thursday and the next 8 on a Friday. After the two Sundays and Saturdays that passed, the Final Four is announced.