One Response for "What Are The Specific Criteria For Getting Into The Ncaa Basketball Tournament?"

1. DodgerDa October 29th, 2009 at 12:06 pm 1

   Here’s how it works….
   The Division I Men’s basketball Basketball Championship Tournament provides for a field of 65 teams (not 64), 31 of which automatically qualify as conference champions. An opening round game will be conducted because more than 30 Division I conferences are eligible for automatic qualification. Conferences that automatically qualify are:
   America East, Atlantic Coast, Atlantic Sun, Atlantic 10, Big East, Big Sky, Big South, Big Ten, Big 12, Big West, Colonial Athletic, Conference USA, Horizon, Ivy, Metro Athletic, Mid-American, Mid-Continent, Mid-Eastern, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, Northeast, Ohio Valley, Pacific 10, Patriot, Southeastern, Southern, Southland, Southwestern, Sun Belt, West Coast and Western Athletic.
   In the 31 above conferences, 30 teams qualify after winning their conference tournament, which is played at the conclusion of their conference schedule. The Ivy League does not hold a conference tournament, so their regular season conference champion receives an invite to the Big Dance.
   The other 34 slots (known as at-large berths) are chosen by an NCAA selection committee. The selection process and tournament seedings are based on several factors, including team rankings, win-loss records and RPI data.
   If a regular season champion does not win their conference tournament, they usually always receive an at-large berth. Sometimes, a team that won their conference but lost their tournament is left out of March Madness because their conference has a low power ranking, and other teams with a higher rating deserve the slot. That’s why each year there are 1 or 2 teams in the tournament with a losing record, because they caught fire at the end of the season and won their conference tournament and the automatic berth, thus leaving the conference champion out in the cold without an invite to the dance.
   Here’s a link from last year:http://www.ncaa.org/library/handbooks/ba…