March+Madness

=Notice!! All gifted decision seminar students in G1 and G11 should report to lunch in my room on Monday, Mar. 15th. If you do not, you will not be able to choose your teams for March Madness. =

The **[|NCAA] Men's [|Division I] Basketball Championship** is a [|single elimination] [|tournament] held each spring in the United States, featuring 65 [|college basketball] teams, both conference champions and at-large selections. The tournament, organized by the [|National Collegiate Athletic Association] (NCAA), was [|created in 1939] by the [|National Association of Basketball Coaches] and was the brainchild of Kansas coach [|Phog Allen][|[1]][|[2]] The NCAA took over the tournament the following season. Held mostly in March, it is informally known as **March Madness** or the **Big Dance**; the national semifinals (the **Final Four**) have become one of the nation's most prominent sporting events.

The **selection process** for [|College basketball]'s [|NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship] determines which 65 teams will enter the tournament, known as //March Madness//, and where they will be seeded and placed in the bracket. It is done by a special selection committee appointed by the [|NCAA]. Thirty teams have [|automatic bids] by winning their [|conference tournament]; the [|Ivy League] regular-season champion receives an automatic bid because the Ivy League has no conference tournament [|[1]]. Therefore, only 34 teams (the [|at-large bids]) rely on the selection committee to secure them a spot in the tournament. The selection process primarily takes place on Selection Sunday and the days leading up to it. Selection Sunday is also when the brackets and seeds are released to the public.Type in the content of your page here.

Vocabulary to learn:

Cinderella team at large team sweet sixteen elite eight selection sunday final four NCAA March Madness automatic bids seed bracket bracketology on the bubble

=Selection Sunday - Picking the Field= Selection Sunday (March 14, 2010) is the day when the NCAA Tournament participants are announced, placed and seeded accordingly. It is known as the selection process. The NCAA committee gathers to select and place 65 teams that they deem worthy of an invitation to the NCAA Basketball Tournament. The field consists of the following:
 * //Automatic bids//** - These bids, 31 in all, go to conference champions. Of these bids, 30 go to conference tournament champions. Most conferences have their tournaments on the week preceding Selection Sunday. The Ivy League is the only conference that does not conduct a postseason tournament; in that conference, the regular-season champion receives the automatic bid.
 * //At-large bids//** - These are schools that the NCAA selection committee deems worthy of a tournament bid. The NCAA tournament has 34 at-large bids available. The "major" conferences of the Big East, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10, and SEC traditionally earn at least 4 bids each in the tournament. The selection committee takes great care, however, to treat teams from "mid-major" and "minor" conferences fairly; however, the selection of a fourth-place (or lower) "major" conference team over a "deserving" second- or third-place "mid-major" conference team always brings out the usual critics charging "bias" on the part of the selection committee.

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