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A total of 65 NCAA Basketball tournament teams qualify for the March Madness 2007 tournament played in March and April. Thirty of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a postseason tournament, the regular-season conference champion receives an automatic bid. The remaining teams are granted "at-large" bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.
The tournament for 07 March Madness NCAA Basketball is split into four regions with each region holding teams seeded 1-16, with the committee making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The best team for March Madness 2007 in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team will play the #15 team, and so on.
Two teams will then play a play-in game on the Tuesday proceeding the first weekend of the tournament, with the winner of that game advancing to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regional games. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since 2001. These two teams share equally as if they had qualified for a first round game. Wins in the opening round game are considered wins in the NCAA Basketball March Madness tournament. Thus the tournament has 65 teams, although in practice most brackets only include the 64 teams, with one spot blank which is later filled in after the play-in game. Since no #16 seed has ever beaten a #1 seed in the men's championship, the result of the opening round game is largely deemed irrelevant for bracket-filling purposes.
Since 2002, the tournament has used the so-called "pod" system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regional march madness games. Before the 2002 tournament, all teams playing at a first- or second-round site fed into the same regional tournament. The pod system was designed to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible.
Each regional bracket is divided into four-team "pods".
March Madness 2007 Schedule:
- Pod one: 1 vs. 16 and 8 vs. 9
- Pod two: 2 vs. 15 and 7 vs. 10
- Pod three: 3 vs. 14 and 6 vs. 11
- Pod four: 4 vs. 13 and 5 vs. 12
Each of the eight first- and second-round sites is assigned two pods, where each group of four teams plays each other. A host site's pods can be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments.
The first- and second-round games are played on the first weekend of the tournament, either on Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday of the NCAA Basketball tournament for March Madness. The teams which are still alive after the first weekend advance to the regional semi-finals (also known as the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (otherwise known as the Elite Eight) played on the second weekend of the tournament in which the games are again split into Thursday/Saturday and Friday/Sunday.
The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday. Before the 2004 tournament, the pairings for the semifinals were based on an annual rotation. Since 2004, the pairings are determined by the ranking of the four top seeds against each other.
The tournament is single-elimination and there are no consolation games although there was a third-place game in 1981, and each regional had a third-place game through the 1975 tournament. The single-elimination format produces opportunities for lesser qualified teams to advance despite playing much tougher teams. Meanwhile, despite the numerous instances of early-round March Madness 2007 NCAA Basketball Tournament upsets, including four instances of #15 Seed defeating a #2 Seed, no #1 seed has ever lost in the first round to a #16 seed. The closest call came in 1989 when Georgetown University defeated Princeton University 60 to 59 and when University of Oklahoma beat East Tennessee State 72 to 71.
NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament History
The NCAA tournament has expanded a number of times in the last 65 seasons.
- 1939-1950: 8 teams
- 1951-1952: 16 teams
- 1953-1974: 24 teams
- 1975-1978: 32 teams
- 1979: 40 teams
- 1980-1982: 48 teams
- 1983: 52 teams
- 1984: 53 teams
- 1985-2000: 64 teams
- 2001-2007: 65 teams
NCAA Basketball March Madness Selection Process
A special selection committee appointed by the NCAA determines which 65 teams will enter the tournament, and where they will be seeded and placed in the bracket. Because of the automatic bids, only 34 teams (the at-large bids) rely on the selection committee to secure them a spot in the tournament.
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