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March 11, 2012

2012 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament – the 68 teams – map, team locations and conferences listed / Plus 2010-11 average attendances listed.

Filed under: NCAA Men's Basketball — admin @ 8:20 pm

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The 2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is the 74th edition of what has become known as March Madness. The competition began in 1939, with an 8-team field, and was won by the Oregon Ducks, who beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 43-36, at Patten Gynamsium on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. For 2012, the defending champions are the Connecticut Huskies (aka UConn), and the Final Four games including the Final will be played at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the second season that the expanded-by-3-teams 68-team format is being used. Last season, one of the teams that played in the first Play-In round made it all the way to the Final Four – the VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) Rams, of Richmond, VA. So one would have to say that the 68-team format has turned out to be a brilliant innovation, satisfying the clamor for expansion of the tournament, without watering it down and wrecking the perfection that is the 64-team NCAA bracket format. Coach Shaka Smart‘s VCU Rams are back in the tourney this year, but this year they don’t have to get past the Play-In round, and go straight to the Second Round, as a 12th seed. The VCU Rams play the 5th-seeded Wichita State Shockers in Atlanta on Friday night at 7:15 EDT. Before that, the four Play In games will start on Tuesday with 2 games, the next two Play-in games are on Wednesday; and the 64-team Second Round will begin around noon on Thursday, on through to late Friday night.

At the top of this post and below are links for the schedule, as well as results and coverage. One note, you probably will be able to (like the last 2 years) watch all the games from your computer via the second ink (CBS sports).
ESPN – College BK/ home.
CBSsports.com/College BK.

Qualifying teams by conference can be seen at this link – ‘2012 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament: qualifying teams/Bids by conference‘. Once again, the Big East has the most teams in the tournament, with 9. Permit me a bit of boasting as I mention that tiny St. Bonaventure University’s Bonnies – my favorite college bk team – have made the tournament for the first time in 12 years, on the strength of Senior 6’9” power forward Andrew Nicholson, who hails from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, and who was voted the 2012 Atlantic-10 Player of the Year. The Bonnies play Florida State on Friday. That makes 4 teams from the Atlantic-10 in this year’s tournament (St. Bonaventure, Saint Louis, Temple, and Xavier) – not too shabby for a mid-major conference.

The state with the most teams in the tournament is North Carolina, with 5 – Davidson, Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, and UNC Asheville. Four states have 4 teams in the tournament – California, Kentucky, New York, and Ohio. There are 2 teams that are making their March Madness debuts – the Norfolk State Spartans, of Norfolk, VA; and the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, of Brookings, SD (population 22,000).

The Kansas Jayhawks are the team with the longest current streak of consecutive NCAA tournament appearances – it’s now 23 straight years that the Jayhawks have qualified for the tournament.

Kentucky is the #1 overall seed in the 2012 tournament, and the Kentucky Wildcats are also the team that have been in the tournament the most times (52 times). Here is the list of all-time appearances – ‘NCAA Men’s Division I Tournament bids by school‘.

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Announcement: due to health reasons (pinched nerve in shoulder), I will be cutting back on content output.

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Thanks to the Blogging the Bracket site, for bracket forecasts throughout February and early March – http://www.bloggingthebracket.com/.
Thanks to the contributors to the pages at en.wikipedia.org, ‘2012 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament‘.
Thanks to NCAA.org, for the 2011 attendance figures, ‘2011 NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL ATTENDANCE
(For All NCAA Men’s Varsity Teams)
‘.

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