The NCAA News - News and Features

January 13, 1997

Policy to protect teams with high seeds reaffirmed

Several selection, seeding and bracketing policies either were adopted or reaffirmed by the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee at its most recent meeting.

The committee voted to reaffirm as an "additional consideration" a policy that would protect higher-seeded teams by ensuring that these teams would not have to meet an opponent in that opponent's area of geographical interest in the first or second round.

For example, a No. 1 seed would not play a lower-seeded team from the state of Utah in a West region game in Salt Lake City. Such a matchup likely would create a "home-crowd advantage" for a lower-seeded team.

Adhering to this generally has required teams to play away from their natural geographic areas.

It was the consensus that the committee adopt as a principle that the first four teams selected from a conference be placed different regions.

The committee also agreed to adopt a principle that after the fourth team in a conference is placed in the bracket, the fifth and higher teams selected from that conference shall not be placed in the same region as the top seed from that conference.

In addition, the committee voted to reaffirm that conference teams in the same region should continue to be placed in opposite halves of the bracket to ensure that they would not meet before the regional championship game.