March Madness is here as NCAA Selection Sunday is just days away. Placements are beginning to be finalized as college basketball teams fight for unclaimed spots.
Selection Sunday is scheduled for Mar.13, 2022, at 6 p.m. ET on CBS. The 68-team field will be announced, and this year’s March Madness brackets will be created.
The selection process is somewhat of an extensive one. There are two ways that a team can make it into the tournament: an at-large or an automatic bid.
“The 32 Division I conferences all receive an automatic bid, which they each award to the team that wins the postseason conference tournament. Regardless of how a team performed during the regular season, if they are eligible for postseason play and win their conference tournament, they receive a bid to the NCAA tournament. These teams are known as automatic qualifiers,” according to the NCAA.
The process of an at-large bid is different. There is a selection committee — which is why selection Sunday is as big as it is – that will meet on Mar. 13, and decide which other 36 teams will compete. These decisions are based on their performance throughout the season and are up for more debate.
Once the selection committee decides the 68 teams, they assign seeds and place them in one of four regions, which makes up their matchups and the format for the brackets.
So far, the top four teams who get No. 1 seeds are seemingly decided with automatic bids, according to Sporting News. Those would be Gonzaga (24-3, 13-1 WCC), Arizona (25-3, 15-2 PAC-12), Kansas (23-5, 12-3 Big 12), and Auburn (25-4, 13-3 SEC).
With many teams already expected to make it into the tournament, the big thing to look out for will be the ‘bubble” teams. Those include Rutgers (16-12, 10-8 Big Ten), Michigan (15-12, 9-8 Big Ten), Loyola-Chicago (22-7, 13-5 MVC), and Mississippi State (17-2, 8-8 SEC).
The games to watch this tomorrow that will impact the decision will be Miami at Syracuse, Seton Hall at Creighton, Kentucky at Florida, Mississippi State at Texas A&M, and Houston at Memphis, on Sunday.
The first March Madness games will take place Mar. 15-16 in Dayton, Ohio.
