Connecticut celebrated its second consecutive NCAA tournament title by defeating Purdue last season. … More
College basketball’s annual rite of spring — the NCAA men’s and women’s championship tournaments — begin in earnest this weekend. Upsets identified. Brackets filled.
Yet for all the on-court madness that “March Madness” engenders during the three weeks of tournament play, there is a method to the way teams are selected and seeded.
Before we get started, one thing is clear: The NCAA is serious about this, and it is a money-maker. March Madness is a federally registered trademark, as are The Big Dance, The Final Four, The Elite Eight and The Road the the Final Four, with or without the ‘The.’
CBS and Warner Brothers Discovery are in the first year of an eight-year extension that will pay the NCAA as much as a billion dollars a year through 2032, according to reported figures.
This season, Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida earned the No. 1 seeds in the men’s bracket, and UCLA, South Carolina, USC and Texas are the top seeds in the women’s field.
The process for choosing the field is well-defined, if not without its controversy. (See North Carolina.)
How The NCAA Tournament Slots Are Filled
The 68-team field for both the men’s and women’s tournaments are chosen based on regular-season results by a 12-member selection committee that includes athletic directors and conference commissioners.
The winner of each of the 31 conferences automatically qualifies, and the remaining 37 “at-large” teams are added by the selection committee based on a set of criteria that includes observation, consultation and data resources.
The 31 conference winners that automatically qualify: America East, American, Atlantic 10, Atlantic Coast, Atlantic Sun, Big 12, Big East, Big Sky, Big South, Big Ten, Big West, Colonial, Conference USA, Horizon, Ivy, Metro Atlantic, Mid-American, Mid-Eastern, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Patriot, Southeastern, Southern, Southland, Southwestern, Summit, Sun Belt, West Coast and Western Athletic.
The SEC placed a record 14 teams in the men’s tournament this year.
The NCAA’s Data Points
A team’s record and quality of victory has long been a standard for choosing the 37 at-large teams, but more recently detailed statistical analysis has been used as a tool to separate the contenders.
The NCAA replaced its RPI formula with its NET — NCAA Evaluation Tool — seven years ago, and a rating system devised by former U.S. Government meteorologist Ken Pomeroy has been used for years.
For the first time this year the selection committees used seven metrics, and they technically divided into two categories, according to USA Today. The NET, KenPom, BPI (ESPN’s power index) and Torvik ratings are in the predictive class.
ESPN’s strength of record, the Kevin Pauga Index (KPI) and wins above bubble (WAB) are results-based rankings that judge how hard it was for a team to attain its resume.
Seeding The NCAA Tournament Field
Ranking the teams and placing them into one of four brackets can be the most subjective part of the process, and it gives the selection committee the most leeway.
How important is it? Only three times in the 39 years has a team seeded lower than fourth won the tournament — No. 6 seed Kansas (1988), No. 7 seed UConn (2014) and No. 8 seed Villanova (1985).
Soft restrictions are in place to ensure teams from the same conference avoid each other whenever possible, although that proved difficult this because of the historic performance of the SEC.
The SEC was the first conference in history to have four of the top eight seeds, with No. 2s Tennessee and Alabama joining No. 1 overall seed Auburn and SEC tournament champion Florida.
What Is The NIT?
The National Invitation Tournament, founded in 1938 and held in New York City, was once so prestigious that teams opted to play there rather than in the NCAA tournament, which was established a year later.
Now teams that miss out on the NCAA tournament on selection Sunday are added to the 32-team NIT field, which uses home court sites until the semifinal and final rounds.
Traditionally, the field is composed of teams from mid-major conferences that only send one team to the NCAA or to middle-division finishers in the major conferences.
UC-Irvine, San Francisco, SMU and Dayton are the No. 1 NIT seeds this season.
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