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Tickets to the Dance

Each tournament has its own committee. The selection committee meets between the Thursday and Sunday prior to the date selected for the tournament's first game. Its job is to filter out the teams deserving of an invitation. The decisions are announced on television during Selection Sunday.

There are 31 teams that get an automatic invite to the tournament, which is their reward for winning their respective conferences. Thirty of these teams win their tournament through conference tournaments. The Ivy League does not hold a tournament.

The remaining invites, 34 for men and 33 for women, are left in the hands of the selection committee. Of the teams left in the pool, there are certain teams that are assured a spot in the tournament, teams that don't make the cut, and then there is a third group of teams, called "bubble" teams, that could go either way.

Decision Criteria

The committee is sequestered in a hotel during the selection process, not unlike a jury for an important court case. This committee must weigh the evidence provided to them though certain criteria. During the selection process, each member must submit a list of teams that should, without a doubt, be in the tournament. This list cannot include the school that the member represents. If eight members put a team on their list, that team is put into the field of tournament teams.

Here are some of the criteria used by the selection committes:

• Rating Percentage Index (RPI) (For information on RPI, go to CollegeRPI.com
• Ranking in national polls
• Conference record
• Road record
• Wins versus ranked opponents
• How a team finishes the regular season

There is also an "adjusted RPI" used by the selection committee. The adjustments take into account such factors as wins against highly ranked teams. This adjusted RPI is not made public.

For those teams that aren't invited, there is no appeals process. The committee's decisions are final. The only conciliation for these teams is the possibility of playing in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), which invites another 32 teams for postseason play.

Now that you've learned how teams are selected, let's go to the next section and look at how teams are seeded by the committee.

Pods and Seeds

Talking about the college basketball tournament can sometimes sound like a conversation about gardening. Like gardens, the tournament includes pods and seeds. Seeds refer to the placement of a team in one of four regions, and pods refer to the method of grouping seeds at particular first-round and second-round sites. The same committee that selects teams for the tournament also decides how teams are seeded and where they play.

As you learned earlier, the field of 64 teams is divided into four geographical regions. Each region has teams that are assigned a seed number of 1 through 16, with the best team in the region awarded the 1 seed. One region of the men's tournament actually includes 17 teams, with the two lowest-ranked teams playing an opening-round game to gain the No. 16 seed in that region.

Traditionally, the highest seeds (1 through 8) have enjoyed more success than the lower seeds (9 through 16). The lower seeds represent potential "Cinderellas" of the tournament. A Cinderella team is a team that unexpectedly achieves success in the tournament. Traditionally, Cinderella's chariot turns back into a pumpkin before getting to the Final Four.

Matching Up Seeds

After the committee assigns seeds, it assigns the top four teams in each region to a first/second round site that is most geographically compatible to those teams, regardless of where the team might play in subsequent rounds. For example, a team from an eastern state that is seeded second in the West region might play its first- and second-round games at a site in the eastern part of the country and then play in the West Regional. A Regional is a tournament within a tournament. The champion of each regional comprises the "Final Four".

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