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Road To The Final Four

By: www.sportstickets411.com

The NCAA college basketball tournament follows a specific format to decide the champion team. Among the various levels of this tournament, the "Final Four" is a highly exciting phase. It is that level of the tournament where only four teams remain undefeated out of the total 64 participating teams. These are the champions of the tournament's four regional brackets. These teams now play the semi-finals. The semi-final round is more often called the "Final Four". Two games are played in this round. The winners move to the final round where they play for the championship trophy.

However, it is not that every semi-final in every game is known as the "Final Four". It is a specific term used for the college basketball semi-finals of the NCAA tournaments. This term is frequently used by CBS that broadcasts all the games of the tournament except the opening round games. CBS frequently uses the phrase "Road to the Final Four" in its coverage.

A team has to win all the first four tournament games in order to reach the "Final Four" round. Two more wins, and the team can become the national champion. As per a common tradition, a National Championship banner is placed in the home arena of the team reaching the "Final Four" of the March Madness. However, the semi-final games are played in the first week of April, but the March frenzy continues with a much greater intensity. Teams That Entered The Tournament Undefeated

In the exciting history of NCAA March Madness, the following have been some of the teams that entered the tournament undefeated.

In the year 1991, UNLV entered the tournament undefeated with a 34-0 record. However, the team could not become the tournament champion as they lost the national semifinal in the "Final Four" round to Duke. In 1979, the Indiana State entered the tournament undefeated with a 33-0 record. However, they could not emerge as winners of the NCAA tournament as they were defeated by Michigan State in the initial round match. UCLA Bruins has been the first team to enter the tournament undefeated and won the tournament chamionship as well. They repeated this miracle four times, including 1964, 1967 and two times in a row – 1972 and 1973. However, Indiana Hoosiers has been the last team to achieve this feat. They did it in the year 1976 when they entered the tournament undefeated and remained so throughout the tournament. They emerged as the winners of the 1976 title.

1976 is also remarkable in the sense that only this year in the history of NCAA tournaments, two "undefeated" teams met in "The Final Four". The first team was Indiana Hoosiers while the second one was Rutgers. Rutgers had entered the tournament undefeated with a 31-0 record. The team lost the semi-final round to Hoosiers and lost the game for the third place to UCLA. UCLA has won 11 national titles so far, which is the highest in the history of NCAA tournaments. Next to this team is the University of Kentucky with 7 national titles.

Al is the author and webmaster of a Football Tickets resource site.