Decoding the NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Selection Show Process

The road to the NCAA Division II Men’s Elite Eight is a five-month journey that culminates with the DII men’s basketball championship tournament.

A Brief History of the Tournament

The tournament can be traced back to 1957 when it was the NCAA College Division Basketball Championship. Wheaton (Ill) finished off its 28-1 season by defeating Kentucky Wesleyan 89-65 in Evansville, Indiana for the first national championship. It would remain that way - and in Evansville - until 1974, when Morgan State defeated Missouri State 67-52 in what is considered the first official Division II basketball championship. Kentucky Wesleyan apparently took that personally. Minnesota State made program history, preventing Nova Southeastern from becoming the second repeat champion in the past five years. Those same Sharks ran the table, joining the Northwest Missouri State team, Evansville , Cal State Bakersfield , Fort Hays State , and Findlay in the exclusive club of undefeated champions. Now that the season is over, the only date to remember is March 30, when Minnesota State hoisted it's first national championship. Wheaton was able to defeat Kentucky Wesleyan for that first national championship in 1957.

Tournament Structure

Like March Madness on the Division I level, there are 64 teams that enter the DII men’s basketball tournament. Of those 64 teams, 23 enter the bracket as automatic qualifiers from winning their respective conference tournaments. Those 23 conferences are split up into eight regions. The championship bracket is set up like the traditional 64-team bracket we have become accustomed to thanks to March Madness. Two regions are placed in four separate quadrants. Play begins in eight single-elimination regional tournaments. Beginning with the 2016 DII Men’s Elite Eight field, the remaining teams were seeded Nos. 1 through 8.

Selection Process

So, where do the other 41 teams come from? You could say the process begins three weeks before the season ends. This is when the NCAA releases its first regional rankings. Once the conference tournaments are complete and the 23 automatic bids are resolved, the DII men’s basketball selection committee goes to work. It starts with the won-lost record in Division II which needs to be .500 or better while having competed against at least 22 DII men's basketball programs. Record vs. In the Midwest Region, automatic qualifiers come from the winners of the Great Midwest, Great Lakes Valley Conference and Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The other five teams are chosen as at-large entries. The last two regular-season games hold a lot of importance for the Eagles. They will play host to first-place and No.

Host Site Selection for NCAA Championships

The Association chose over 240 host sites for preliminary and final rounds of predetermined championships across Divisions I, II and III, primarily for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons. The NCAA received more than 1,200 bids from member schools, conferences, cities and sports commissions across 47 states and Washington, D.C., all competing to host predetermined rounds for 87 of the NCAA’s 90 championships. “The enthusiasm and interest from around the country to host NCAA championships continues to be a testament to the quality of our events,” said Lynda Tealer, NCAA senior vice president of championships. “For this cycle we incorporated more data into the process to help our sport and oversight committees through the evaluation and selection of sites as we had so many quality venues and locations looking to host during these two seasons. Forty states plus the District of Columbia were selected to host at least one NCAA championship event, with Florida garnering the most with 22. Division II will hold both basketball Elite Eights at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum Arena in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2027 and 2028. Division II football will remain in McKinney, Texas, where the championship game has been hosted every season since 2018.

Division I Men’s Basketball Championship Host Cities

The Division I Men’s Basketball Championship will stretch across the country hosted by 25 cities in 18 states for the 2027 and 2028 tournaments. Two of the most frequent hosts are in this two-year rotation. Kansas City is hosting the 2027 Midwest Regional, which will increase its total of 137 tournament games, currently tied for second all-time with Dayton, Ohio. The University of Dayton will continue to host the NCAA First Four through 2028, as it has served as the site for the start of the Division I men’s basketball tournament since 2001. New York’s Madison Square Garden will host the 2027 East Regional, marking its 13th regional to tie Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium as the most frequent regional host venue in tournament history. Frost Bank Center in San Antonio and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles round out the 2027 regional hosts. “We are thrilled to bring the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship to so many terrific cities and hosts from all four corners of the country and points in between,” said JoAn Scott, the NCAA’s vice president of men’s basketball. “These 25 cities have previously been awarded the rights to host the tournament more than 300 times, accounting for more than 1,300 tournament games played in these locations.

Division I Women’s Basketball Championship Host Cities

Another focus of the site selection is the announcement of the 2027 and 2028 regional sites for the Division I Women’s Basketball Championship. Two sites were chosen for each year, continuing the format shift adopted for the 2023 tournament. Las Vegas and Philadelphia will host in 2027, while Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., will host in 2028. This will be the first time that the women’s basketball championship has been in Las Vegas since the 1991 West Regional and first time in Washington since 1997. It will be Washington’s first time serving as a regional host. Philadelphia will be hosting its first regional since 2011 and fifth overall, but it’s the first women’s basketball tournament action at the Wells Fargo Center since it hosted the 2000 Women’s Final Four. “The selection of Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland, and Washington, D.C., to host the 2027 and 2028 regional championships underscores the remarkable growth of the Division I Women’s Basketball Championship,” said Lynn Holzman, vice president of women’s basketball. “These cities, recognized as epicenters of the sport, have a proven track record of hosting successful events and possess the necessary infrastructure to support the expanding championship and its two-site regional format.

Other NCAA Championship Locations

A notable highlight of the bid selection process has a pair of Division I championships moving from arenas to stadiums. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis in 2028. The 2020 event was scheduled to be held at the same venue before being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship will head to San Antonio to play in the Alamodome in 2026, returning for the third time after a 15-year hiatus since the last visit in 2011. The Stagg Bowl, Division III’s football championship game, will return to Salem, Virginia, where Salem Stadium will host the game for the 27th time in January 2027, while Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, will host in 2028 for the third time. In 2028, the Men’s Frozen Four returns to Chicago’s United Center for the second time. The event’s top two arena attendance records of 19,783 and 19,626 were set there in 2017. In 2027, it will return to the nation’s capital for the first time since 2009 and just the second time in the more than 75 year history of the Men’s Frozen Four. The Women’s Frozen Four will return to Duluth, Minnesota, for the fifth time in 2027 and makes its debut in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 2028. The Divisions I, II and III Men’s Lacrosse Championships will take place in Philadelphia for the ninth time in 2027 at Lincoln Financial Field, while returning to Foxborough, Massachusetts, in 2028 for the seventh time at Gillette Stadium. The Division I Women’s College Cup will take place in Missouri for the first time when the new CPKC Stadium in Kansas City hosts in 2025, replacing the previously awarded bid to Sacramento. Men’s and Women’s College Cups will continue to take over Cary, North Carolina, returning in 2026 and 2027. WakeMed Soccer Park has hosted the College Cup 19 times since 2003 with 11 editions featuring the women and eight for the men and have upcoming hosting duties for both men and women in 2024 and men’s soccer in 2025. The Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, will continue to host the Division I Men’s and Women’s Golf Championships through 2028.

NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships Selection, Seeding and Bracketing Process

The road to the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships are filled with excitement, debate and meticulous analysis. But how do the 68-team fields actually get selected? Men’s and women’s teams that do not make the field of 68 are eligible for the National Invitation Tournament and the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament. The NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees, respectively, oversee the selection, seeding and bracketing process for each tournament. These committees evaluate teams starting with the first night of the season and all the way until Selection Sunday using data-driven metrics, game results and expert observations to determine the best at-large teams and ensure competitive balance in the tournaments. The committees meet multiple times throughout the season to analyze team performance and adjust rankings accordingly. The Division I men’s and women’s committees are composed of conference commissioners, athletics directors and experienced administrators from across Division I basketball. The Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees are responsible for selecting the 37 at-large teams and ranking them into their respective brackets. The top eight vote-getters are ranked 1 through 8 by each committee member, with the top four from that vote moving into the field. The top four vote-getters join the other four in holding for a rank of those eight teams. The NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Committees rank the 68 teams using a seed list, which orders teams from 1 through 68. This seed list remains unchanged once finalized and serves as the basis for placing teams into the tournament bracket. Throughout selection week and right up until the morning of Selection Sunday, the committees will revisit the seed list, scrubbing it until they are satisfied with the order of the 68 teams. The scrubbing process involves comparing the first team with the second, the second with the third, the third with the fourth, and so on. Understanding how teams are selected and seeded is critical for appreciating the complexity of March Madness. It’s a careful balancing act that combines data-driven analysis with subjective judgment. In men’s basketball, because there are five conference championship games played on Selection Sunday, there are contingent seed lists based on those outcomes. The NIT field is composed of teams with exempt bids, automatic bids and at-large bids. The remaining at-large field will be determined by the eight-member WBIT Selection Committee. NET vs. Compares a team’s results to what a bubble team (NET No. 45) would be expected to do vs.

Seeding Principles

The committee creates a seed list ranking all 68 teams from strongest to weakest. This list determines the order in which teams are placed into the bracket and remains unchanged once final. The NCAA bracket is organized into 16 seed levels (1-16) across four regions, allowing equal comparison of teams on the same seed line. Matchups are formed by pairing the last at-large teams against each other and 65 vs. 66, 67 vs. No. The four No. 1 seeds are assigned to the four regions, determining the Final Four semifinal pairings. The overall No. No. Assigned in true-seed order, with flexibility to move teams slightly to avoid placing the No. 5 seed in the same region as the overall No. Placement of No. 3 and No. If possible, the committee avoids nonconference rematches in the First Four and first round, and tries to avoid them again in the second round. Scheduling constraint for No. If all four No. 1 seeds would normally be placed at Thursday/Saturday sites, the fourth No. The committee selects the best non-automatic-qualifying teams to fill at-large spots, with no limit on how many teams may come from any single conference. Each conference receives two exempt bids. The 12 highest-rated conferences receive one exempt bid each. If any of these teams decline to participate, the remaining “first four out” teams stay as No. 1 seeds, and the NIT committee selects replacement No. If a “first four out” team does receive an exempt bid, that conference does not receive an additional exempt bid. Members list any number of teams they believe deserve at-large consideration. The committee creates a “seed list” ranking teams 1-16 in true-seed order, based on overall qualitative assessment. If all four “first four out” teams get exempt bids, the remaining exempt teams are seeded Nos. If fewer than four “first four out” teams get exempt bids, the remaining exempt teams are seeded Nos. The four teams with the lowest point totals are added to the seed list (in order of points). Place all No. Place the No. 2 seeds in the region closest to their corresponding No. Place the No. 3 seeds in the region closest to their corresponding No. Place the No. 4 seeds in the region closest to their corresponding No.

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