College Basketball

For college students, alumni, professional gamblers, and sports enthusiasts, there is nothing quite like the NCAA college basketball season. Starting in November and ending with the NCAA Championship in early April, college basketball offers thousands of games to watch and plenty of great players to see development throughout their careers. On any given night in these four months of basketball, a fan can watch dozens of games on cable, over the Internet, or listen to their favorite team every couple of days on radio. The reasons why college basketball is so great are plenty, but the biggest reason is that it is exciting and much more balanced in terms of talent than college football. While there are great teams like Duke University and North Carolina, teams like Southern Illinois, Northern Iowa, and Gonzaga have been able to climb from mid-major conference powers to nationally known schools. For gamblers, there are plenty of opportunities at winning big on a nightly basis. For college students, probably the biggest fans of college basketball, a connection to their school and its rivalries, as well as a love for the game, compels them to crowded gyms and pep rallies for every game their team plays.

The game of college basketball is essentially the same as the pro game with a few exceptions. One of the most important distinctions between the pro and college game is in terms of the shot clock. The NBA and other professional leagues use a 25 second shot clock, in which a team must have the ball hit the rim or lose possession. However, college basketball employs a 40 second shot clock for each possession. In this way, college basketball allows a more patient offensive and defensive setup, with many teams making a number of passes on offense before taking their first shot. The 40 second shot clock allows college teams to create better opportunities through longer offensive sets and requires greater stamina in man and zone defenses.

Another timing difference between the pro and college game comes with the game clock. Professional basketball uses four 12 minute periods to divide up the game, while college basketball uses two 20 minute halves. The college basketball game clock stops every four minutes for a television time out, which gives teams five additional time outs to their usual array of full and twenty second timeouts. The difference in time is often attributed by rookie professional players as a reason why they hit a proverbial wall part way through their first professional season.

A final difference between the pro and college basketball game is in terms of legal defenses. While the NBA has opened up the option of zone defenses, previously illegal throughout league history, there are still restrictions on the type of defense played. However, college basketball features unfettered defensive formations, whether it is man or zone. Often, teams will be defined by the defense they play. For example, Temple University is renowned for its skilled zone defense while Texas Tech and Indiana University, both coached by Bobby Knight, have been known for their man-to-man defense. While both leagues share the three-second lane violation, the defensive schemes for both are quite different.

NCAA college basketball is divided into divisions and further into conferences in order to ensure the best possible competition for each team. Throughout NCAA sports, there is a division of teams into Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3. Division 1-A is the top level of competition in NCAA basketball, with all of the most renowned teams playing each other at this level. However, some great basketball is played at the Division 1-AA and 1-AAA level, considering many have in-state rivalries and players that are hometown heros. As well, the Division 2 and Division 3 levels are very competitive but are smaller schools that don’t have the same budgets as their Division 1 college basketball counterparts. The difference among divisions is essentially school size, athletic budget, and level of talent on an annual basis.

With 334 teams and 31 conferences, Division 1-A is filled with competitive teams and great players. Some of the most renowned professional players and coaches have come from the major basketball conferences like the ACC, SEC, and Big Ten. However, conferences like the Missouri Valley Conference and the Horizon League have become more competitive over the last decade with teams like Southwest Missouri State and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee upsetting higher profile schools in the NCAA tournament. The conferences rarely change from year to year, maintaining competitive balance and the rivalries that make college sports so great.

The college basketball regular season can be broken up into three sections: early season tournaments, non-conference games, and conference games. Many teams participate in a series of weekend or two day tournaments with regional teams or others looking to get exposure in different markets. However, more high profile tournaments like the Maui Invitational, the Great Alaska Shootout, and the Preseason NIT pit great teams against each other to build up excitement for potential match ups in conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament.

Once the tournament season is over, usually around the end of December, non-conference games are played by every team in Division 1-A college basketball. Typically, these games are arranged a few years in advance in order to schedule tougher teams, regional rivals, or teams that they have never played before in order to give a little variety to the players and fans. Non-conference games offer fans the ability to see teams they may not normally see because they aren’t in conference or don’t get the same exposure in a certain market. The college basketball non-conference schedule also allows teams to build up their credibility against tough competition and rack up wins that are important later in the season.

The true test for every college basketball team is the conference schedule, which features some of the best rivalries in the game and demonstrates some of the best performances of the college basketball season. Great rivalries, including the North Carolina-Duke and the Texas-Oklahoma games, are looked forward to by fans and college sports enthusiasts alike on a yearly basis. However, the conference schedule is key for the hopes of any team that think they may have a chance at the NCAA college basketball championship. Conference games allow a variety of opportunities for a team to demonstrate their skill and clutch ability, with surprise teams rising from conference schedules to steal tournament spots and great teams falling to upstart teams on regular basis.

Once the regular season is over, college basketball conference tournaments are played to determine the champions of each conference. As well, conference tournaments provide a chance for great teams to get automatic bids to the NCAA college basketball tournament. All 31 conferences provide automatic bids to the tournament for their champions, which gives teams good and bad the incentive to play well for the few games they play in the tournament. The tournament season begins at the end of February and finishes at the beginning of March.

College basketball conference tournaments take place in a variety of locations that often rotate on an annual basis. For a few tournaments, however, the location remains the same on a regular basis in order to build additional viewership for their games. The Big East tournament, which features some of the best teams in the nation, plays their tournament at the relatively neutral Madison Square Garden of New York City. While St. John’s University plays in New York, fans from all around the country come to New York City to support their team and watch a great week of games. However, conferences like the Big Ten and the Big 12 rotate their tournaments on a yearly basis to different sites to bring fans to conference schools that may not normally get big crowds or exposure to great teams.

For college basketball coaches, players, and fans, the culmination of the regular season and the most important member of each college basketball season is the NCAA tournament selection process. Selection Sunday, as it has been dubbed by the media and teams, is an eagerly awaited from the beginning of the season. With coverage by network and cable sports channels, fans and sports enthusiasts can find out their team’s fate the instant it is decided.

A collection of experts, including conference chairmen, former coaches, and former analysts, take a look at a number of factors in determining which teams make it into the field of 65. This group of decision makers is given 31 conference tournament winners that must be included in the final college basketball tournament field. That leaves 34 open positions for the 300 teams across Division 1-A that play all season for Selection Sunday. Overall record and conference record are important considerations for these experts, with the magical number usually around 17 or 18 wins overall. However, it is almost unheard of that a team with 20 plus wins does not make it into the tournament. Records can be dispelled or supported by the various measures of strength provided by media outlets, though the most commonly used measurement of a team’s strength is the RPI rating. This rating ranks the teams based on conference difficulty, points per game, and Top 25 rankings. With these numbers and more subjective measures in tow, the college basketball brain trust make their decision.

Teams are slotted into four regions of 16 teams that are ranked one to 16 based not only on regular season performance but on potential match ups that look intriguing to college basketball fans. Typically, the four best teams in the nation as defined by the previously defined measurements are the number one seeds in each region. In contrast, the teams that just barely make it into the tournament or that come from weaker conferences are placed in the bottom seeds of the college basketball tournament.

The NCAA college basketball tournament takes place for a couple of weeks from the beginning of March through the first week of April. The first weekend of action, from Thursday through Sunday, sees the field dwindled from 65 teams to 16 teams, or the Sweet Sixteen. The first game overall is the play-in game, which pits the bottom two teams in the tournament against each other to see who gets to play the best team overall in the tournament. The college basketball tournament is watched by millions of people in the United States alone, who are often in office college basketball pools and watch their tournament brackets to see how their picks fare. As well, people often hold college basketball parties and take vacation days in order to watch the first few days of basketball, which goes from mid day through mid night of the first Thursday and Friday.

The tournament precedes from the Sweet Sixteen to the Elite Eight teams in college basketball, which usually features one or two teams that aren’t expected to be there. In 2005, George Mason University went from unlikely victor in the first round of the tournament to a Final Four team. The Elite Eight gives way to the Final Four, which is played in order to determine the two teams in the NCAA college basketball championship.

College basketball is beloved because of its sense of history. Some of the game’s best coaches are still on the sidelines of major schools, including Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University, and Don Cheney of Temple University. These coaches become the faces of their college basketball teams, considering that their players leave in four years or less and that college students that are basketball fans graduate and move on at the same rate. However, some of the best college basketball players have gone on to become great professional players. Former North Carolina guard Michael Jordan, former UCLA center Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Wake Forest center Tim Duncan are only a few of the big names that practiced their craft in college and became great players in the NBA. Some of the great college basketball teams in NCAA history, including the John Wooden-led UCLA teams of the 1970s and the Duke University teams of the 1990s, could probably have competed fiercely with their contemporaries in the professional game. The NCAA embraces the history of college basketball with efforts to develop connections between players and coaches of the past and the generation that is now in school.

Following the NCAA Championship, graduating players and other outstanding players past their freshmen year in college prepare for a career in professional basketball. The major goal for college basketball players interested in a career as a professional player is the National Basketball Association (NBA), which is incredibly popular not only in the United States but worldwide. From April’s championship game through the July NBA Draft, college basketball players interested in playing further go through a battery of interviews, camps, and other tests of their physical and mental abilities. Pro coaches get plenty of opportunities to watch players declared for the draft with a number of basketball camps in Arizona, Illinois, and elsewhere that allows potential pros the opportunity to show their individual skills and team play. As well, college players get the chance to sit down with NBA scouts, coaches, and general managers to demonstrate their game intelligence and general communications skills. With this information in tow, NBA teams make selections in two rounds from a big group of college players and international players.

For the many college basketball players that don’t make it to the NBA, there are many other professional options available. In the United States, there are a number of minor basketball leagues like the ABA or the NBA sponsored NBDL. These leagues are at a lower level than the NBA but provides a steady pay check, an opportunity to play basketball, and a chance at making it to the professional game. For college basketball players that were successful, went to the Final Four or the NCAA tournament regularly, they may want a higher level of competition and a chance to make bigger bucks. The international basketball scene has risen over the last two decades and many college basketball players go overseas to England, Spain, Brazil, or Israel, among other places. In the professional leagues in foreign countries, college basketball players get a high level of competition, great pay, and increasingly get scouted more by NBA teams looking for the next big player.