Click on image below for the full-page map of the ’2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Second Round (64 teams), with team attendances’…
2011 March Madness, Second Round map (32 teams)
CBS Sports/College BK home.
ESPN/College Basketball home.
I have to admit that I was so caught up in getting the 68-team Tournament map out as quickly as I could, that I failed to notice how the new expanded field of 68, and the Play-in games, have messed with traditional Tournament bracket pools and March Madness picks. That is because 4 of the 8 teams in the Play-in games are not 16th-seeds, but instead are 11th or 12th seeds. Most everyone who follows the NCAA Basketball Tournament knows no 16th seed has ever beaten a #1 seed, so putting 4 significantly higher seeds in the preliminaries, and having one of those games end close to midnight (Eastern Time), just over 12 hours before the 64-team field begins play the following day…well, that has turned the process of being in a Tournament bracket pool from a fun thing to something more like a chore. Because if you are serious about winning the bracket pool you’re in, you probably want to have that USC-or-VCU spot down correctly, and not just guess on it, since it looks like most Tournament bracket pools are by-passing the Play-in games, yet most Tournament bracket pools’ deadlines will still be on Thursday morning. That means the bracket-player on the East Coast who doesn’t want to risk starting the Tournament bracket pool already-one-result-wrong has to stay up until almost midnight, find out who won that last Play-in game, then rush to submit that bracket by the next morning. Like I said, it’s more like work than play now to be in a Tournament bracket pool – on the East Coast, at least. Why couldn’t the NCAA have the 11th and 12th seed Play-in games on Tuesday? I mean, they know how many people are involved in Tournament bracket pools. Who’s kidding who – bracket pools made the Tournament what it is today.
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The map shows the 64 team field. On the far right of the map page are all the 68 teams’ average attendances from last season (2009-10 season). [I would have listed 2010-11 average attendances, but the NCAA does not release the current-season attendance figures until May]. I decided to include the attendances of the 4 teams that were eliminated in the Play-in round…they are listed in light gray, and their logos have been removed from the map itself. In the next two maps – the map of Third Round (32 teams); and the map of the Regional Semifinals, aka Sweet Sixteen (16 teams), I will continue this procedure.
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Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia,org, ‘2010 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament‘.
Attendances from NCAA.org, here.
