The madness before March Madness: Cinderella teams are born in this week’s conference tournaments

Two weeks before Selection Sunday, March Madness actually begins with the men’s and women’s conference tournaments.

Paige Bueckers #5 of the UConn Huskies dribbles the ball while being guarded by Chloe Kitts #21 of the South Carolina Gamecocks in the first quarter in the National Championship of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at Amalie Arena on April 06, 2025 in Tampa, Florida. [Photo: Getty Images]

There are 365 teams in Division I men’s college basketball; 363 in women’s college basketball. Only 68 qualify for the NCAA Tournament on each side, and many of those 68 teams in each bracket have already conquered the madness of March.

America is enthralled by the NCAA Tournament each year, picking brackets, slacking off during work hours to watch the games, wrapped up in the high-stakes, single-elimination basketball where every loss means the end of seasons and careers, and every win is a magical tale to be told for years to come.

There’s more where that came from.

Having begun on March 2 and running all the way up to the Selection Show on the 15th, there is high-stakes, single-elimination men’s college basketball every single day. While the numbers whittle down from 68 to leave us with one team standing over the three weeks of NCAA Tournament action, the two weeks prior bring us from nearly 365 all the way down to 68. And that’s just on the men’s side.

Each of Division I’s 31 conferences do it slightly differently, but they all award an automatic bid to the Big Dance for their postseason champion.

Every low seed has a story

You may not think much about the 14, 15, and 16 seeds that you pick to get walked over in the first round by traditional powerhouses, but behind each of those games is a deeply fascinating story that culminated in a conference tournament championship.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville lost 78-40 to top-seeded Houston in last year’s NCAA Tournament. SIU’s exit may have seemed brutally unceremonious, but for head coach Brian Barone, it was the moment he’d been waiting for his entire life. When Barone accepted the head coaching job in 2019, he hung a framed pair of scissors over the locker room door, symbolizing the goal of winning the program’s first ever Division I conference championship and earning a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

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