2009 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

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The 2009 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 17, 2009, and will conclude with the championship game on April 6 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan.

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. The 2009 game will be played on March 17 at University of Dayton Arena, Dayton, Ohio, as it has 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 NCAA seems to have gone back to naming regionals after geographic regions despite naming them after their four host cities from 2004 to 2006. The 2009 regionals are:

March 26 / 28

East Regional, TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, Massachusetts (Host: Boston College)

West Regional, Cardinals Stadium, Glendale, Arizona (Host: Arizona State University)

March 27 / 29

South Regional, FedExForum, Memphis, Tennessee (Host: University of Memphis)

Midwest Regional, Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis, Indiana (Hosts: Horizon League & Butler University)

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

March 19 / 21

Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Host: Saint Joseph's University)

Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, North Carolina (Host: Atlantic Coast Conference)

Sprint Center, Kansas City, Missouri (Host: Big 12 Conference)

Rose Garden, Portland, Oregon (Host: University of Oregon)

March 20 / 22

University of Dayton Arena, Dayton, Ohio (Host: University of Dayton)

AmericanAirlines Arena, Miami, Florida (Host: Florida International University)

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Host: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)

Taco Bell Arena, Boise, Idaho (Host: Boise State University)

Each regional winner will advance to the Final Four, held from April 4-6 in Detroit at Ford Field, hosted by the University of Detroit-Mercy.

External links

[NCAA Men's Basketball]

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