NCAATournamentBracket.org is produced in order to provide you relevant information about the current and past NCAA basketball tournaments and the current NCAA Tournament Bracket. Our entire purpose for this site is to find and disseminate information on NCAA Tournament brackets and other post-season play that you will find useful.
The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament is one of the most popular single elimination tournaments of its kinds in the world. It is held every March and has 65 college basketball teams compete with two of the 65 teams going head to head in a “plan-in”game to make the field of 65. The tournament was originally conceived in 1939, and the tournament bracket contains the conference champions of all Division I conferences. The remaining spots in the NCAA tournament are comprised of at-large bids that are picked by the NCAA selection committee. The committee uses a number of factors to determine the rest of the field to include their won/loss records, rankings, and RPI information.
Of the conferences who have automatic bids to the tournament, only the Ivy League awards their automatic bid to the regular season champion since they do not play a post-season tournament. When you are reading about teams who are hoping for at-large bids, those who have had OK to mediocre years, but not poor enough to be out of contention for making the tournament are considered to be on the “bubble” or “bubble teams” for making the tournament.
The NCAA tournament has four regions identified with the NCAA Tournament bracket is released on the evening of the final conference tournament championship games. Within each region, the teams are seeded or ranked from 1 to 16. In the opening round of the tournament the number 1 seed will play the number 16, number 2 plays number 15, and so forth. The idea being that the better you do during the season, the better or lower (closer to 1) your seed will be.
The NCAA tournament no longer has a 3rd place game, but has had one in its history with the last one occurring in 1981. The regions also had 3rd place games occurring as late as 1975. A term that has been applied to underdogs in the NCAA tournament who do well is to be labeled a “Cinderella” team. This is when a team succeeds against higher seeded teams and proceeds deep into the tournament bracket. Normally, these occur in the early rounds of the tournament with the #15 seed upsetting the #2 seed four times in the history of the tournament. There has never been a #1 seed lose to a #16 seed since the tournament went to a 64/65 team format.
The UCLA Bruins hold the record for the school with the most NCAA Tournament titles with 11, while the Kentucky Wildcats have 7, and the Indiana Hoosiers and North Carolina Tar Heels each have 5 national titles respectively.
Selection Sunday is still a few weeks away, but the 2010 NCAA Tournament schedule and blank 2010 printable NCAA Tournament bracket are available for your use.