The NCAA Tournament Format

Tournament format

Since 1996, the eight member schools field in their varsity teams in a double round eliminations, where the schools play each other twice. The four teams with the best records advance to the crossover semifinals, popularly known as the Final Four.

The two top teams have a twice to beat advantage. The lower ranked teams need to win twice against the higher ranked teams to advance to the best-of-three Finals, where the first team to reach two wins becomes the NCAA basketball champion.

Tie-breakers

* If two teams are tied, a playoff will be held.
* If three or more teams are tied, teams will be ranked by basis of head-to-head records, goal differential from games of the tied teams, then overall goal differential. Then the teams will be seeded on a mini-tournament in a series of elimination games.

Elimination Round sweep

If any event a team finishes the elimination round undefeated, that team will advance outright to the Finals. The third and fourth seed will have a sudden-death game to determine the opponent of the second seed. Then, the winner of the sudden-death match between the second seed and third/fourth seed advances to the Finals to face the first seed. Previously, the first seed holds a twice to beat advantage in the Finals (the Finals would not be a best of three affair), but since 2008, the finals was in a best-of-three series even if a team swept the elimination round.

Previous formats

Prior to 1998, when the NCAA had, for most part of its history, six teams, employed a double round robin tournament. The winner of the first round (the team with the highest standing) would notch the first Final berth, while the winner of the second round would notch the second Final berth.

If a team manages to have the best overall record, yet fails to win either round, that team will play the winner of the second round in a playoff game, to face the winner of the first round in the Championship game. The games of the Championship round are all single-elimination matches, until the 1980s when the Championship game was expanded to a best-of-three series.

If a team manages to win both rounds (not necessarily a sweep), the Championship round will be omitted, and that team will be declared outright champions.

In cases of tie, a playoff game will be played to determine which team won the round. If more than two teams are tied, each team will play the teams they are tied with once. If for example, a team won the first round, and is tied with another team for first place at the second round, a playoff game will be played to determine which team wins the round. If the team that won the first round wins in the playoff game, the Championship round will be omitted, since the team won both rounds. If the other team wins, a Championship round will held, since two different teams won the two rounds.

Source: Wikipedia