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Matching Up Seeds - March Madness

Continued from previous page...There are eight sites for the first/second rounds. Teams are placed at these sites in groups of four, which comprises a pod, and there are two pods at each site. For each region, there are four pods.

• One pod includes seeds 1, 16, 8, and 9.
• A second pod includes seeds 4, 13, 5, 12.
• The third pod includes seeds 2, 15, 7, 10.
• The fourth pod includes seeds 3, 14, 6, and 11.

Each week, teams play at a different site. The Final Four is played at a new venue each year, but is usually played in a major metropolitan area.

While it sounds complicated, the NCAA tournament is actually pretty simple. The tournament keeps subtracting teams until there is only one. That team is the champion of college basketball.

Tournament Play - March Madness

The NCAA tournament is played over a period of three weeks, usually beginning on the third Thursday in March. After the sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth teams of the men's tournament play in an opening round, the real tournament begins. In the women's tournament, there is no sixty-fifth team so there is no "opening round."

Over the first two full days of the tournament, the field of 64 teams is pared to 32. In the next two days, the field is trimmed to 16 -- the Sweet 16, as it is often called. These final 16 teams take a four-day break before resuming play on the next Thursday. During the second week of the tournament, the field is trimmed from 16 to four. These teams comprise the tournament's Final Four.

In the third and final week of the tournament, the teams that survive the mayhem of March and make it to the Final Four battle it out in April for the crown of college basketball. In the next section, we will take a closer look at this final championship game.

The Final Four - March Madness

Many sports use a tournament format to decide their champion, including professional sports. The "Final Four" of college basketball refers to the semifinal round of the Division I Men's or Women's Basketball Tournament. In this round, there are four teams left, and two games are played to determine which two teams will head to the finals.

The words "Final Four" belong only to college basketball. In fact, if you watch college basketball you will frequently hear the term, especially from CBS, which uses the phrase "Road to the Final Four" in its coverage.

Making it to the Final Four means that a team won its first four tournament games, and it only has to win two more to be the national champions. A team that reaches this point in the tournament is already envisioning the hanging of a National Championship banner from the rafters of its home arena, which is a common tradition.

As mentioned before, the Final Fours are played in April, but they are still full of the March Madness syndrome. Typically, the men's semifinal games are played on the first Saturday in April, and the women's are played on the first Sunday. The winners of those games move on to face each other in their respective championship games, which are played on the subsequent Monday.

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