NCAA College Basketball isn’t like any other college sports playoffs. They play a tournament called March Madness. March Madness consists of 64 teams competing for a shot to win the NCAA National Championship.  Last year’s winner was UConn, who defeated San Diego St. 76-59, ending the improbable championship run.

Ever since 1982, March Madness has been the biggest basketball tournament of the year. The first NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament was played in 1939, but this tournament only had eight teams in it. After this, the number of teams in the tournament gradually increased to 64 teams from all around the country. 

The format for the tournament breaks 64 teams into four groups which are ranked 1-16. Rankings are determined by tournaments for each of the Division I collegiate divisions a week before March Madness starts. There are 7 rounds and each round will eliminate half of the teams. Each round halves the number of teams in the tournaments. 

This year’s one seeds are UConn, Houston, North Carolina and Purdue. One seeds are considered the best team heading into the tournament. The one seeds will play the four worst teams in the tournament (16 seeds). The next best seed plays the next worst seed and so on. See bracket below.

The tournament begins with the Round of 64, followed by the Round of 32, the Sweet Sixteen, The Elite Eight, the Final Four and the National Championship. Every region for each round has a specific neutral court to play at.

A trend that many fans like to do before the tournament starts is creating their own brackets. The brackets are the pre-tournament predictions for every game. In 2023 there were over 20 million brackets made. 

But the biggest thing about March Madness is the fact that nobody has ever created a perfect bracket. The chances of picking a perfect bracket are one in 120 billion and no one has ever done that. In other words you have better odds of:

• odds of getting hit by lightning: 1 in 15,300 odds
• odds of winning the Mega Millions: 1 in 302 million
• odds of winning an Oscar — 1 in 11,500
• odds of finding a pearl in an oyster — 1 in 12,000