How are teams selected to play in the men's NCAA basketball tournament?

Answer 1

There are 65 teams selected to play in the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. 30 teams are selected by winning their conference tournaments. The Ivy League conference winner is also selected even though they don't have a conference tournament. The other 34 teams are selected by the NCAA selection committee. The selection committee is made up of ten athletic directors and conference commissioners from Division I men's and women's basketball. With a mix of Major and "mid-major" schools being represented. Generally, any team in the top 25 is assured a seed in the tournament. Many of the teams not assured of a spot in the tournement do not know if they will be selected until the selections are announced on TV on Selection Sunday. The women's tournament selection process is basically the same as the men's selection process.

Answer 2

Well, for starters, this year, they have expanded the 64-team field to 68.

There are certain people on a selection committee that use a series of different tools [Overall Record, Conference Record, RPI, SOS, etc.]

There are two types of bids: Automatic and At-Large

A majority of the bids are at large.

To obtain an automatic bid, you would, depending on your conference, have to win your conference, or at least finish in the top three.

I'd say there's about 20 automatics in this 68-team field, and these are partially so that small conference teams have a "chance to dance" per Se, [be in the tournament].

Back to the subject ... minus the 20 automatics, this leaves 48 at-larges. The selection committee's job is to pick the 48 best teams for the tournament to be competitive, and there you have it.

Answer 3

There are two ways that a team can get into the NCAA tournament. The first way is that they can win their conference tournament (the Ivy League does not have a division tournament, the regular season champion goes instead). There are 31 teams that qualify through this method. In my opinion, this is not a good method of deciding which teams should get to go to the tournament, because some conferences are much better than others. In the 2011 tournament, the lowest seeds (13-16) were all tournament winners (or Princeton, who won the Ivy League regular season).

The remaining 37 teams are selected based on their performance in the regular season and their conference tournament. I believe that this is a better method of selecting teams.