Who’s in it? Eventually, 64 teams. There will initially be
68, but eight teams will play for the last 4 slots in the
tournament. The 68
teams come from a pool of 345 Division I basketball
programs and are picked by the
NCAA Selection Committee who release seeding on Selection
Sunday. There are 345 basketball programs that are
affiliated with 32 conferences. 31 of the 32
conferences get an automatic bid for their conference
champion. The only conference that does not get an
automatic bid is the Great West Conference. That is
fine, 99.9% of basketball fans couldn’t name a single school
in the Great West Conference. Also, There are 6 Division
I
schools who are not affiliated with a conference.
Conference Championships: 30 of the 31 conferences that receive an automatic bid
have conference tournaments at the end of the season to
determine the conference. This makes things
interesting. It is feasible that a school loses every
regular season game, but wins the conference tournament and
advances to the NCAA tournament (only to get their butts
handed to them by Duke). There is only one conference
that determines their conference champion by regular season
victories and that is the Ivy League.
What about the rest? Once the conference tournaments are over, 31/68 slots for
the NCAA tournament are set. The remaining 37 slots go
to the remaining 314 schools in what are referred to as “at
large bids.” This is done by the NCAA selection
committee. Typically, the best schools who do not
receive an invite to the NCAA tournament will receive
invites to the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).
More...
|