[ironknee]

i have no idea how it works, sounds like fun

can any one explain it simply? thanks

[rickey939]

A total of 64 teams qualify for the tournament played in March and April. Thirty of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a postseason tournament, the regular-season conference champion receives an automatic bid. The remaining teams are granted "at-large" bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.

The tournament is split into four regions and each region has teams seeded 1-16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on.
Two teams play a play-in game game on the Tuesday preceding the first weekend of the tournament, with the winner of that game advancing to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since its inception in 2001.
Since 2004, the tournament has used the so-called "pod" system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Before the 2004 tournament, all teams playing at a first- or second-round site fed into the same regional tournament. The pod system was designed to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible.
In the pod system, each of the eight first- and second-round sites has two "pods", where a pod is a group of four teams who play each other. A host site's pods may be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments. The possible pods by seeding are:

1v16, 8v9
2v15, 7v10
3v14, 6v11
4v13, 5v12

The first- and second-round games are played on the first weekend of the tournament, either on Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday. The teams which are still alive after the first weekend (the Sweet Sixteen) advance to the regional semi-finals and finals played on the second weekend of the tournament (again, the games are split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday).

The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. Before the 2004 tournament, the pairings for the semifinals were based on an annual rotation. Since 2004 and the institution of the pod system, the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other.

The brackets are not reseeded after each round. The tournament is single-elimination and there are no consolation games—although there was a third-place game as late as 1981, and each regional had a third-place game through the 1975 tournament.

[sworthy]

hmmm.... I don't think I have anything to add to that...

Go George Washington!

[Ozmodiar]

My brackets are already shot to hell.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Ozmodiar

My brackets are already shot to hell.

I only missed one game yesterday (damn you Utah State)! It is the best I have ever done.

[wallinbl]

Originally Posted by Ozmodiar

My brackets are already shot to hell.

Yeah, I'm in last place in my pool already. It may bring an end to my run of second place finishes (I can't seem to win - I've been second 5 years running).

[Agasthya]

Indiana got so lucky at the end there. San Diego State played like a bunch of idiots. Damnit.