Every year, millions of people count down the days until “Selection Sunday.” Within minutes of the March Madness bracket being released, fans rush to see where their favorite teams are placed.
The NCAA Tournament features 68 teams that compete in a single-elimination, bracket-style format. The teams are selected by a 12-member committee that evaluates regular-season performance, conference championships and strength of schedule, according to the NCAA.
Teams can qualify for the tournament by either automatic bids or at-large selections. The simplest path is winning a conference tournament, which guarantees a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Regardless of the seed, any team that wins its conference tournament earns an automatic bid and a spot in the NCAA bracket.
The remaining spots in the bracket are filled with at-large selections. These teams did not win their conference tournaments but impressed the selection committee with strong regular-season performances.
Once the 68 teams are selected, the committee seeds them from 1 to 16, placing them into four regions: East, Midwest, South and West. The highest-ranked teams receive the No. 1 seeds, while lower-ranked teams fill out the rest of the field. The bracket is designed to reward the strongest teams while still creating competitive matchups throughout the tournament. This “win or go home” style of play is why everyone, including people who do not typically watch sports, tunes in to college basketball for about a month.
The four No. 1 seeds in this year’s bracket are Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida. The reigning national champion, Florida, has the chance to win back-to-back championships for the second time in school history (2006 and 2007), according to the NCAA.
Looking ahead, I believe that higher seeds are likely to dominate the tournament, both this year and in the years to come. With bigger programs benefiting from having more money and the uptick in Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals, small schools will struggle to build rosters that can compete at the same level as big-ticket programs with larger sums of money.
With that being said, I do not have a double-digit seed advancing past the round of 32. In fact, my sweet 16 and elite 8 are almost entirely filled with teams on the 1-5 seed lines. I believe that this trend will continue in the upcoming years, and this is simply because small schools cannot afford to invest the same amount of money in athletes that power five schools can.
From a local perspective, Purdue stands as Indiana’s lone representative in the field. After winning the Big Ten Tournament, Purdue earned a No. 2 seed in the West region and will face Queens University (N.C.) in the program’s first-ever tournament appearance, according to basketball reference.
On the popular ESPN Tournament Challenge, the three most popular picks to be national champions are all one seeds, including Duke, Arizona and Michigan, which shows the public is leaning toward the favorites now more than ever. Dare I say that the years of the “Cinderella” are over?
My Final Four features Duke, Houston, Purdue and Michigan, all top-two seeds. With the Final Four and national championship taking place in Indianapolis, Purdue could have a meaningful advantage playing close to home.
While brackets are built on analysis and prediction, the magic of March lies in its unpredictability with last-second shots and moments no one saw coming. That is why we watch, because no matter how much you analyze games, anything can happen.
