Last week I began to take a look at the NCAA selection committee and explain how they put together the seed list of every team in the tournament from 1-68. But what happens after the seed list is compiled? How does the committee build the bracket every year? Keep reading to find out!
Contrary to popular belief, the committee does not create match-ups for ratings purposes. For example, Last year Kansas faced Wichita State in the second round of the tournament. The two schools are both located in Kansas and are only separated by about 160 miles. This game only happened out of pure luck, not because the committee decided it would be a good potential match-up.
Let's walk through the process. The committee begins by placing the top 16 teams into the bracket in the seed list order, i.e. the number 1 overall team gets placed in the bracket first, followed by the number 2 team all the way down to 68. Each of the first 16 teams are placed in the closest geographical region. For example, Last year the top 4 seeds were Kentucky, Villanova, Duke, and Wisconsin in that order. Kentucky was placed in the closest regional site (Cleveland), Villanova was placed in the closest regional site to them (Syracuse), Houston is further away from Duke than Cleveland or Syracuse but because those sites were already filled they were sent to the closest remaining site (Houston), and Wisconsin was sent to the last remaining regional (Los Angeles). This continues until the first 16 teams are seeded.
There is one rule the committee has to follow when placing the first 16 teams into the bracket. Teams from the same conference cannot be placed in the same regional. If a conference has 5 teams in the top 16, the committee must relax the rules, because there are only four regions. Each team is then placed in their first/second round sites, which is again done geographically, keeping in mind that a team cannot play any games in their home court. Marquette for example, will not play any NCAA tournament games in Milwaukee even though it's obviously the closest site because they would be the host school in that scenario.
Once the committee has placed the first 16 teams in the bracket, they will check the relative balance of each of the regions to ensure that one region isn't stronger or weaker than the rest. After they check the balance, every other team is then placed into the bracket.
The way the bracket is set up plays a role in how teams are placed. For example, the 1 and 16 seeds play in the first round and the winner of that game will meet the winner between the 8 and 9 seeds. What this means for bracketing purposes is that the 1, 16, 8 and 9 seeds in a region must be placed in the same first and second round sites.The same goes for the 4, 13, 5, and 12 seeds and so on and so forth. Last year the 4 seeds were sent to play their first and second round games in Portland, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Jacksonville and because they would match-up with the 5 seed in a potential second round game the five seeds must also be sent to those four sites.
The committee follows a few rules when placing the teams in the bracket. First, they try to avoid rematches of non conference games and match-ups from the previous 2 tournaments in the first round. Secondly, teams from the same conference may meet as early as the second round if they played only once during the regular season and conference tournament. If they played twice, they could meet as early as the Sweet Sixteen. Three time, they could meet as early as the Elite Eight.
At no time does the committee change these rules to create a match-up like the Kansas-Wichita St game I mentioned earlier. I wrote an article last year detailing how the bracket was put together if you are interested. Thanks for reading and I hope this helped explain how the tournament bracket is built every year!
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