NCAA Tournament: How the Bracket is Built
By Alex Miller
When the brackets are released every year, the NCAA Tournament selection committee and their decisions get placed under the microscope, from the seeding to the building of the bracket. While we can’t pretend to know exactly how the committee seeds teams *cough UCLA cough* it is easy to see how and why they placed every team in their respective opening and round of 32 sites (or pods, as they’re called) and regional sites. Busting Brackets takes a look at every team 1-68 to see why they were sent where they ended up.
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First of all, there are some rules the committee has to follow. The top four teams selected from a conference must be placed in different regions if they are a 1,2,3, or 4 seed. For example, the Big 12 had 4 teams in the top 16 of the seed list so every team must be placed in a separate regional. Exceptions can be made, however, as there are 5 such teams from the ACC and only 4 regions.
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Teams from the same conference can’t meet until the Elite Eight if they played three times during the regular season and conference tournaments. If they played twice they can’t meet until the Sweet Sixteen, and the round of 32 if they played only once.
Rematches of regular season non-conference games should also be avoided in the opening round as well as rematches from the previous 2 NCAA tournaments.
These are just a handful of the rules the committee follows, and the full list of their procedures can be found here. It’s important to know that there are 8 opening and round-of-32 sites so only 2 teams in the top 16 can be sent to each pod. Geography plays the biggest role in determining where to send teams, but the committee sometimes has to make a judgement call if two locations are equidistant from a certain school. Enough with the rules already, onto the Seed list!
Next: Seed List 1-16