2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

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The 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament will involve 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It is scheduled to begin on March 18, 2008, and will conclude with the championship game on April 7 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

Tournament procedure

For more details on this topic, see NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship#Tournament format.

A total of 65 teams will enter the tournament. Thirty of the teams will earn automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments. The automatic bid of the Ivy League, which does not conduct a postseason tournament, will go to its regular-season champion. The remaining 34 teams will be granted "at-large" bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.

Two teams will play an opening-round game, popularly called the "play-in game"; the winner of that game advanced to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since its inception in 2001.

All 64 teams will be seeded 1 to 16 within their regionals; the winner of the play-in game automatically will receive a 16 seed. The Selection Committee will seed the entire field from 1 to 65.

The four regionals are officially named after their four host cities, a practice which also began in 2004. The 2008 regionals are:

March 27 / 29

Charlotte Regional, Charlotte Bobcats Arena, Charlotte, North Carolina (Host: University of North Carolina at Charlotte)

Phoenix Regional, US Airways Center, Phoenix, Arizona (Host: Arizona State University)

March 28 / 30

Detroit Regional, Ford Field, Detroit, Michigan (Host: University of Detroit Mercy)

Houston Regional, Reliant Stadium, Houston, Texas (Host: University of Houston)

The first and second round games will be played at the following sites:

March 20 / 22

Arrowhead Pond, Anaheim, California (Host: Big West Conference)

Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado (Hosts: Colorado State University and Mountain West Conference)

Qwest Center Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska (Hosts: Creighton University and Missouri Valley Conference)

Verizon Center, Washington, D.C. (Host: Georgetown University)

March 21 / 23

BJCC Arena, Birmingham, Alabama (Host: Southeastern Conference)

ALLTEL Arena, North Little Rock, Arkansas (Host: University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

RBC Center, Raleigh, North Carolina (Host: North Carolina State University)

St. Pete Times Forum, Tampa, Florida (Host: University of South Florida)

Each regional winner will advance to the Final Four, held from April 5-7 in San Antonio at the Alamodome, hosted by the University of Texas at San Antonio.

External links

[NCAA Men's Basketball]

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