March Madness Bracket How Does It Work
HR should make sure March Madness activity does not get out of hand. Make clear what types of games are allowed at work and remind employees about the proper usage of company-issued devices. The selection process for college basketball 's NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Championships determines which teams (68 men's, 64 women's) will enter the tournaments (the centerpieces of the basketball championship frenzy known as 'March Madness') and their seedings and matchups in the knockout bracket. March Madness is an elimination basketball tournament that is played by sixty-eight (68) college teams from the USA. These 68 teams are comprised of the 32 automatic qualifiers who win their respective conference tournaments and 36 'at-large bids' selected by a committee. I will explain the difference below. The first round occurs on March 19 and 20, the second round from March 21 to 22, Sweet 16 the following week between March 27 and 28, the Elite Eight between March 29 and 30, the Final Four on.
March Madness is an annual college basketball tournament held every spring in the US. The basketball teams included form part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA Division I schools all over the country vying for the national championship. The event is designed as a single-elimination tournament with a total of 68 schools trying to become the NCAA National Champion.
March Madness History
March Madness as a basketball tournament started in 1939 when it was first organized by the NCAA. The format was the idea of Harold Olsen, the Ohio State University coach back then. But it started as a yearly celebration as it is known now since 1984. The NCAA credited Bob Walsh of the Seattle Organizing Committee as the one who started it. Aside from March Madness, it was also popularly known as the Big Dance.
March Madness Set-Up
March Madness is composed of the national champions from the 32 Division I conferences all over the US. There are also 36 other basketball teams being awarded a berth in the tournament each year. The berths are chosen by the NCAA selection committee, which has also become a nationally televised event in itself.
All the 68 teams are divided in to four regions and organized into single elimination brackets, which pre-determines the match-ups. The winner in each bracket moves on to the next round and paired with the other bracket winner in the region. This goes on for six more rounds, with the last round determines the National Champion.
The single elimination tournament gives lower-ranked teams a greater chance of snatching the national championship, since it only takes one game to eliminate an opponent from the tournament. While there can be underdog teams that can potentially reach the finals, they still have challenges to face at each round as the lower-ranked teams are usually paired up with the stronger and higher ranked basketball teams.
March Madness Games
Basketball games during March Madness starts with the First Four, games between the lowest conference champion teams in the brackets and the lowest at-large teams. Winners of these games assume their place in the next round, the Round of 64. In the next round, with the higher ranked teams facing their respective lower-ranked team opponents. The matching structure ensures that the teams with higher ranking are always matched with lower ranked teams. This will help motivate basketball teams to increase their ranking prior to the tournament to have a better chance of advancing into the next round.
After the second round, the regional quarterfinals are played immediately. After these matches, winners form part of the next round, the regional semifinals also called the Sweet Sixteen. This leads to the Elite Eight, or the regional finals. After the Elite Eight, winners form part of the Final Four. The two winners then move on to the National Finals, which will determine the National Champion.
A bracket or tournament bracket is a tree diagram that represents the series of games played during a knockout tournament. Different knockout tournament formats have different brackets; the simplest and most common is that of the single-elimination tournament. The name 'bracket' is American English, derived from the resemblance of the links in the tree diagram to the bracket punctuation symbol ] or [ (called a 'square bracket' in British English). The closest British term is draw, although this implies an element of chance, whereas some brackets are determined entirely by seeding.
In some tournaments, the full bracket is determined before the first match. In such cases, fans may enjoy trying to predict the winners of the initial round and of the consequent later matchups. This is called 'bracketology', particularly in relation to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. This prediction is not possible in tournaments, such as the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League knockout phase, in which the pairings for a later round might not be made until after the previous round has been played (UEFA Champions League makes its ultimate bracket draw at the quarterfinal stage [1]).
Large March Madness Bracket
Usage in North America[edit]
Brackets are commonly found in major North American professional sports leagues and in U.S. college sports. Often, at the end of the regular season, the league holds a post-season tournament (most commonly called a playoff) to determine which team is the best out of all of the teams in the league. This is done because often in American professional sports there are at least two different conferences, and teams mostly play other teams in their own conference. Examples of this are the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference in the NFL, the American League and the National League in Major League Baseball, and the EasternConference and the WesternConference in the NBA or NHL.
When there are only two different conferences, there are two sides of the bracket. One conference is on one side, while the other is on the opposite side. Each side is organized according to a team's seeding; higher-seeded teams are matched against lower-seeded teams. Teams that qualify for the post-season tournament only compete against teams in their own conference, until only one team from each conference remains. These two teams, called the conference champions, play each other to determine the best in the league. Other leagues, like the NHL, have two conferences, each of which is divided into divisions, usually by region. In the post-season tournament, only the teams with the best records qualify, except the division winner (and also #2 and #3 in the division in the NHL) having an automatic entry into the tournament.
Some North American professional post-season tournaments are single-elimination format. If a bye is required, the top seeded teams usually get the bye. There is usually no third place match to separate the third and fourth place teams.
The concept is even more visible in college sports, most notably in reference to the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, in which millions of casual and serious fans 'fill out brackets'—predict the winners of each game in the tournament—in both formal contests, sponsored by various corporations, and informal betting pools among friends or colleagues. The brackets are much larger than those in North American professional leagues—while no more than 16 teams qualify for the postseason in any major North American league (this is the case in the NBA and NHL), 68 teams (out of over 350) advance to the NCAA men's tournament, with most bracket contests involving 64 of these teams.
Examples[edit]
The diagrams for formats other than single-elimination are more complex than a simple tree.
The double-elimination bracket from the 2004 national Science Bowl [Super Ball]
A triple-elimination tournament.
Australian Football League finals incorporating a bye for the highest two seeded, first round winners.
The Page playoff system used in various T20 cricket leagues.
Types of brackets[edit]
- Single Elimination
- Teams play 'Pool Play' games in order to be 'seeded' for the Brackets. Once in the brackets, teams play. Winners advance within the brackets to the right, whereas losers are eliminated in 'Single Elimination'
- Double Elimination
- Once again, teams play pool play games to gain their 'seeding' going into the brackets. Each team plays their first games. Winners advance to play the winners. Losers play a consolation round.
Versions of advancement[edit]
- March Madness Seeding (Best v Worst in a division)
- Divisions are broken into pools (e.g., North, South, East, West) and within each pool teams are ranked. The top seed plays the worst seed, the second best seed plays the 2nd worst seed within the pool, etc., until all teams play their first round. If the pool has an odd (not divisible by 2) number of teams, there will be a 'play in' game of the worst vs the 2nd worst team. Such a seeding system produces a wide variety of matches, but requires many games to determine an outcome.
Brackets March Madness
- Assuming an even number of pools (e.g., pool A, B, C, and D), each of the #1 ranked team based upon their pool play results play an initial game (A1 vs B1, C1 vs D1). Winners go to the championship. Losers play for 3rd and 4th place.
- Assuming an odd pools number of pools (e.g., pool A, B, and C), Seed 1 from Pool A (A1) plays seed 1 from Pool B (B1). C1 plays the 'Wildcard' from the second best finishers from within all 3 pools based upon the ranking criteria.
- All #2, #3, etc., ranked teams play in 'Consolation Rounds' to determine their ranked order
How To March Madness Bracket
References[edit]
- ^'UEFA Champions League quarter-final and semi-final draws'. UEFA.com. Retrieved 2 January 2021.