Every year, in the middle of March, one of the greatest tournaments of the year begins, entitled March Madness. March Madness is a college basketball tournament that takes place every year, where they start with a field of 68 teams that all have a chance to win the college basketball championship. This years selection takes place on Sunday, March 15, where they determine the 68 teams that will be in it, who will play each other, and what seed each team will be in the four different regions.

The four different regions are East, West, South, and Midwest. In each of those regions, the teams are numbered 1-16 with the best team being number 1 and the worst being 16. The first seed plays the 16 seed, two seed plays the fifteen seed and it goes so on and so forth from that point in the first round in each region.

Some might think, why is there a field of 68 when there are 16 teams in four different regions? This is because the last four teams in have to play one another on Tuesday, March 17 to get into the field of 64. Once those games are played, the field of 64 will be set to start on Thursday, March 19. The winner of those two games will be a 16 seed in one of the four regions, so therefore they will be playing a 1 seed.

The seeds for the NCAA tournament are based off of strength of schedule. That’s why you usually have a team like Duke or North Carolina as a one seed or a higher seed because they have a harder schedule than most of the other teams that make the tournament. The higher your seed is the better chance you have of getting further into the tournament because you will be playing weaker competition. Every year, you are going to have a Cinderella team that makes it to the elite eight, but typically one of the higher ranked teams wins the national championship. Another thing top seed teams typically receive is the advantage of traveling less, but not always. For example, if Duke is a 1 seed, they would most likely play in North Carolina, or the closest city that is hosting NCAA tournament games.