NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Championship
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| Sport | Basketball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1957 |
| No. of teams | 64 |
| Country | NCAA Division II (USA) |
| Most recent champion(s) |
Northwest Missouri St. (1) |
| Official website | NCAA.com |
The NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Championship is an annual championship tournament for colleges and universities that are members of NCAA Division II, a grouping of schools in the United States (plus one school in Canada) that are generally smaller than the higher-profile institutions of Division I. The tournament, originally known as the NCAA College Division Basketball Championship, was established in 1957, immediately after the NCAA subdivided its member schools into the University Division (today's Division I) and College Division. It became the Division II championship in 1974, when the NCAA split the College Division into the limited-scholarship Division II and the non-scholarship Division III, and added the "Men's" designation in 1982 when the NCAA began sponsoring a Division II women's championship.
Like all other NCAA basketball divisions for men and women, the champion is decided in a single-elimination tournament. The Division II tournament has 64 teams. The Division II tournaments for men and women differ in a major respect from those in Divisions I and III. The finals of both Division II tournaments consist of eight teams, instead of the four in the other two divisions. The eight survivors of regional play meet in the Elite Eight at a predetermined site.
As of 2017, a total of 64 bids are available for each tournament: 24 automatic bids (awarded to the champions of the twenty-two Division II conferences) and 40 at-large bids.
The sixty-four bids are allocated evenly among the eight NCAA-designated regions (Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast, and West), each of which contains three of the twenty-four Division II conferences that sponsor men's basketball. Each region consists of three automatic qualifiers (the teams who won their respective conference tournaments) and five at-large bids (which are awarded regardless of conference affiliation).
Source:
CBS Sports holds rights to the semi-final and final rounds of the Division II tournament, with the semi-final games broadcast on CBS Sports Network and the final on CBS (covered as part of the NCAA March Madness package). In 2015, CBS Sports reached a long-term deal to continue broadcasting the Division II men's semi-final on CBS Sports Network through 2024.
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