With March Madness officially here, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Committee will reveal who makes up the tournament field on Sunday.
This committee puts in a lot of hard work to make sure everything is done right.
Who Makes Up NCAA Selection Committee?
Many college basketball fans want to know, though, who really is on the NCAA Selection Committee.
According to NCAA.org, 12 members are selected to five-year terms. There is one representative from each autonomy conference, four representatives from the seventh highest ranked nonautonomy conferences, and four representatives are selected from nonautonomy conferences.
The NCAA Selection Committee chairman is Keith Gill, commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference.
Other committee members include Greg Byrne of Alabama; Mark Coyle of Minnesota; Irma Garcia of Manhattan; Stu Jackson, commissioner of the West Coast Conference; Arthur Johnson of Temple; Zack Lassiter of Abilene Christian; Martin Newton of Samford; Lee Reed of Georgetown; Chad Weiberg of Oklahoma State; John Wildhack of Syracuse; and Tom Wistrcill, commissioner, Big Sky Conference.
MARCH MADNESS: Fill In Your Bracket Now!
So, how does the committee go about doing its work? According to the NCAA website information, 68 tournament teams are made up of 31 automatic qualifiers. They are teams who win their conference tournaments. Then, toss in 37 at-large teams.
The committee then uses metrics and evaluation tools to pick those at-large squads from the college basketball world. After all this is done, the committee then picks the 37 best at-large teams. The committee then goes and seeds the entire field of 68 teams. After this is done, the tedious work of placing teams in the championship bracket begins.
As far as the principles around selecting, seeding, and placing teams in the tournament bracket, the committee will pick the 37 best at-large teams, with no limit on how many can come from a single conference. Also, according to the NCAA website, the committee does hope to achieve reasonable competitive balance all throughout the tournament’s regions.
Duke (the overall No. 1 seeded team), Michigan, Arizona, and Florida earned No. 1 seeds from the selection committee as the NCAA Men’s Tournament bracket was being announced on CBS on Sunday afternoon.
For college basketball fans, March Madness has now entered into the tournament zone. Games will start on Tuesday with The First Four taking place in Dayton, Ohio. Then, the rest of the tournament field starts playing first-round regional games on Thursday and Friday.
Editor’s Note: This is a breaking news story and will be updated throughout the day as more information becomes available.
