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Founded in 1939, the NCAA Tournament is a single elimination event held every spring at the culmination of the regular college basketball season. Originally only an 8 team tournament, it has grown to its current number of entrants of 65 competitors. Commonly referred to as ‘March Madness’ because most of the games take place during the month of March, the tournament features conference tournament winners and other teams receiving at large bids to compete for the National Championship.
The tournament breakdown is that of four separate divisions, or as most refer to them, brackets. These brackets are identified by the geographical location of the games, so the four brackets are known as the East, South, West and Midwest. After the play-in game, each bracket features 16 teams seeded 1 through 16. In the first round, the 1 seed plays the 16 seed, the 2 seed against the 15 seed and so on all the way down to the 8 vs. 9 seed. The winner of each bracket then goes to the Final Four to play another bracket winner. The winners of these games will then face off for the National Championship. For a team to win the title, they have to win six games in a row, seven if you are the play-in game winner.
NCAA Tournament Facts:
-No #16 seed has ever won a first round game vs. a #1 seed.
-UCLA has won the most National Championships (11)
-Since the seeding system began in 1979, the NCCA Championship game has only seen five #1 vs. #1 match ups. They were UNC vs. Georgetown (1982), UNC vs. Michigan (1993), Duke vs. UConn (1999), UNC vs. Illinois (2005), and Florida vs. Ohio St. (2007).
-Arizona is the only team to beat three #1 seeds in the same tournament (1997)
