It's the only conference that does not have a tournament this year. Normally the Field of 68 consists of 32 automatic qualifiers and 36 at-large bids. Here's a look at the full conference tournament schedule in alphabetical order. The list below will be updated as teams punch their tickets to March Madness.
Sporting News will track all the automatic bids to March Madness below as the bracket fills out. The rest of the automatic bids will be decided on Selection Sunday , which is March UCLA won seven in a row from , then again in , the last season Wooden coached for the Bruins. Wooden also achieved back-to-back titles in and The selection committee will offer 36 at-large bids to the NCAA tournament in addition to 32 automatic bids for those teams that won their conference tournament.
The committee will look at record, strength of schedule and quality of wins and losses, among other factors, to rank the field of teams from 1 to Theoretically, the top four teams will earn the No. The committee strives for balance in each of the East, West, Midwest and South regions. The overall No. In , the NCAA expanded the men's tournament to 68 teams and added a "First Four" play-in stage that included eight teams.
Those eight teams hold the four lowest-seeded automatic bids and four lowest-seeded at-large bids. The four winners of the First Four games move on to the field of 64 to compete in the first round of the tournament. To accomodate an additional automatic bid, which bumped the field to 65, the NCAA created one play-in game before the opening round. Since the arrival of the First Four in , the tournament has maintained the same team format. Sixty-four teams participate in the first round. From there, the field is narrowed down to 32 for the second round of competition.
The third round is referred to as the Sweet 16, or regional semifinal, and the fourth round is best known as the Elite Eight or regional final. The fifth round, or national semifinal, is part of the Final Four, as is the sixth round, the national championship game. It's been estimated that around 70 million brackets are filled out each year across the country for company or family pools and nationwide contests. The odds of filling out a perfect bracket are about 1 in If you filled out your bracket by flipping a coin or blindly guessing, your odds are much higher.
No one has filled out a perfect bracket—that we know of—in the history of the NCAA tournament. With a state that does touch the East Coast, does the basketball world truly count Virginia as an East Coast team? Michigan State is from the Midwest, while Auburn is from the South and Texas Tech is a Southwest team, thus they would not come as close to fitting the mold.
If the Cavaliers fit the narrative of East Coast, then the trend could very well continue to prove true. UNC won as a favorite in Last year, Villanova won as the favorite. But, before those two chalked it up, Nova beat North Carolina as a dog in , Duke upset Wisconsin as a slight dog in , and Connecticut upset Kentucky as a major underdog in Will any of the three trends listed above hold?
Or, will Auburn and Texas Tech prove best? Get your popcorn ready and watch one of the greatest sports events in the U. This might be true, but it comes with playing in a less prestigious conference. If no automatic bids were given, these four teams would undoubtedly go dancing. Even if automatic tourney bids were taken away, there are ways for small-conference teams to garner national attention and consequently earn respect from the NCAA Selection Committee.
Taking away automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament would make it difficult for small-conference teams to make the tournament, but not impossible. Not true. In , Gonzaga scheduled a number of high-profile teams e.
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