2012 NCAA Tournament

The 2012 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament is one involving 68 schools in a single-elimination campaign to determine who will be the national champion of men’s college basketball. The 2012 NCAA Tournament Bracket has not been released yet.

The 2012 NCAA Tournament Schedule for Men

The 2012 Tournament begins on March 13th and will last all the way until the championship game, which is scheduled for April 2nd at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans. Some sites around the USA will also take part in the contest and host each round of the tournament. These sites are:

• Portland, OR
• Albuquerque, NM
• Omaha, NB
• Nashville, TE
• Louisville, KY
• Dayton, OH
• Columbus, OH
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Greensboro, NC

Regionals and the Final Tour will be held in Phoenix, AR, St. Louis, MI, Atlanta, GA, and Boston, MA. A huge number of colleges and universities will take part in the Tournament.

The 2012 NCAA Women’s Division Tournament

The 2012 NCAA Division for women will take place between March 17th and April 3rd. The Final Four matches are to be played at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. There are 64 teams only in the women’s round of the tournament, compared to the 68 of the men’s teams. Many cities across the USA will take part in hosting both the men’s and women’s basketball tournament.

The 3 Divisions

There are 342 schools in Division I. Each school has a chance of fielding their team to the NCAA Tournament. In Division 2 there are 23 basketball conferences and in Division 3 61 teams compete to become the champion.

The NBA

The NCAA Tournament used to be the battlefield of the players who would one day get to the NBA. Previously, the best athletes to join the NBA were selected from the NCAA teams. The problem with this was that eventually a situation evolved where some schools began to exploit excellent and talented students who were good at basketball, but doing badly in other classes. They kept them playing ball and winning money for the schools while they remained unpaid for their sports. Eventually, the situation even ended up in court.

Now only a dozen or so college graduates are among the 60 selected annually by the NBA draft. Players now have to be 19 years old during the calendar year that they are drafted and US players must be at least one year removed from their high school graduation.

The Popularity of the NCAA

In some parts of the country, especially North Carolina and the upper Midwest (Louisville, Kentucky, Indiana), NCAA basketball is much more popular than the NBA. The support for the 2012 NCAA Tournament is very high in these parts of the country. Perhaps it is because people see the aspirations and dreams of young basketball players as a way to release the tensions of the week on Saturday or Sunday. Whatever the case, it’s through the NCAA and eventually the NBA that American Basketball gets most of its young talent from and the players for the future. View the 2012 PAC 12 Tournament Schedule.