The NCAA tournament’s field of 68 teams features nine from the ACC, seven apiece from the Big Ten and Big East, six from the Big 12, five from the SEC, and four from the Pac-12. Here’s a full accounting, via the team at CBS:
NCAA tournament 2017 bids by conference: ACC leads with 9 teams in bracket
It’s good to be a in a power conference, as usual.
CBS
CBS
There are 32 Division I men’s college basketball conferences. Every league gets at least one team in the field: the automatic qualifier who wins the conference tournament. But 20 or so leagues each year only place that one team in the field. That makes conference tournaments a do-or-die proposition for many.
Monmouth’s learned that lesson the hard way for the second year in a row. This year’s list of tournament snubs is loaded with mid-major teams that won their leagues in the regular season, then faltered in March. It’s an unforgiving world, and the tournament selection committee is notoriously hard on non-champion mid-major teams.
Only the AAC and WCC managed to break that trend this year. The power conferences are the ones packing the field, and someone out of a power league will almost certainly the be the last team left standing.
Here is a printable tournament bracket, if you’re the type to enjoy filling it one by hand. Here is SB Nation’s virtual bracket, updated all tournament long.
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