NCAA Men's Basketball

NCAA men's basketball is played by teams of student-athletes that are fielded by American universities, colleges and military academies. The regular season runs from November through the beginning of March. The NCAA divides basketball teams into three divisions. This article focuses on the highest and most popular level, Division I.

There are 347 schools in Division I men's basketball. The schools are divided into 32 conferences and 6 schools competed as independents during the 2009-10 season. Each conference except for the newly formed Great West Conference receives one automatic bid to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. 34 bids to that tournament go to at-large teams.

Each conference, with the exception of the Ivy League, holds a post-season conference tournament which determines its representative as the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament (the Ivy League sends its regular season champion). A selection committee chooses the 34 at-large teams to join the 31 automatic bids to play in the single-elimination tournament.

NCAA Tournament History

The first NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was held in 1939. The tournament, first organized by the National Association of Basketball Coaches and legendary Kansas Coach Phog Allen, was taken over by the NCAA the following season.http://www.nabc.org/about/about-history-keydates.html The modern tournament determines a national champion in the sport, but in the early days of the tournament, a competing tournament, the National Invitational Tournament was considered a more prestigious tournament by many teams. Some teams entered both tournaments, while others by-passed the NCAA Tournament for the NIT. Eventually, the NCAA mandated that all its member schools were required to participate in its tournament if invited, cementing the NCAA Tournament's place as the premier tournament.

The tournament began with an eight team field through its first decade, but has gradually expanded to the current 65 team field that exists today. In 1951, the field expanded to 16 teams, then fluctuated between 22 and 25 teams between 1953 and 1974. In 1975 the NCAA, for the first time, allowed more than one representative from each conference into the tournament field. Also that year, the field was expanded to 32 teams. Over the next decade the field was gradually expanded, reaching a field of 64 teams in 1985. That format is essentially the one currently used, with the addition of the 65th team via an opening round ("play-in") game in 2001. The NCAA is currently considering expansion of the tournament again, possibly to a field of 96 teams.http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_3_0_t&ct3=MAA4AEgDUABqAnVz&usg=AFQjCNGHf1WbNO_MTph2kIZ1poF8s3ueDQ&sig2=c6rt21xMHoIK6Jpb38ZhgQ&cid=8797516145034&ei=dX2aS-iGKtn-lQfRxtx_&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fhostednews%2Fap%2Farticle%2FALeqM5i9f_nTPX4wf1lRT-fsI3XwDJSOOQD9EC15BO0