NCAA Men's Basketball Facts

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is the governing body for sports such as basketball in colleges across the United States. The larger schools compete in Division I while the smaller institutions play in Division II or III. Division I basketball has distinct conferences, as do the other divisions, where schools in geographical proximity to one another compete. At the end of its regular season, NCAA basketball holds a tournament that eventually crowns one champion from each division.

College Vs. Professional

The rules of the college game are different from those of professional basketball. Under NCAA regulations the college game is divided into two 20-minute halves as opposed to four 12-minute quarters in the National Basketball Association. Each team has 35 seconds to shoot the ball on each possession, guided by a shot clock; the NBA uses a 24-second shot clock. The three-point field goal line is shorter in college than the pros, being 20 feet 9 inches from the basket. Players with five personal fouls have to leave the game, unlike the six it takes in the NBA. The college players can play any type of defense they desire while the NBA has strict guidelines about using zone defenses.

Conferences

In Division I basketball there are 32 separate conferences in which schools compete in basketball. While there are a handful of independent colleges that have no conference affiliation, the vast majority play within a conference. Some of the traditionally powerful conferences in basketball include the Big East, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big 12 Conference, the Pacific Ten Conference, and the Big Ten Conference. Teams play each other within their conference and complete their schedules with out-of-conference contests, playing most of these at the beginning of the season before conference play commences.

NCAA tournament

In mid-March each season the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament begins. Teams that have emerged as conference champions receive an automatic bid to the 65 team field and a special committee selects the schools most deserving to round out the tournament. The teams are divided into four brackets and seeded according to their strength. Each bracket matches teams against the other with higher seeds facing lower seeds. One team comes out of each bracket and these schools will then meet in what is known as the Final Four to determine a champion.

Most successful schools

The school that has won the most national titles in basketball is UCLA. The Bruins have claimed 11 championships over the years, with the first coming in 1964 under legendary coach John Wooden, who led the university to 10 in a span of a dozen years from 1964 through 1975 before retiring. Kentucky is second in the championship category, winning seven. North Carolina and Indiana each have five as of this writing in May 2009.

Stand-out players

Division I basketball's all-time leading scorer is Pete Maravich, who played at Louisiana State University from 1968 through 1970. Maravich scored 3,667 points in just three years and averaged an astounding 44.2 points per game. Other college basketball greats to play the game include UCLA centers Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, who dominated the game during their stays in school. Forwards such as North Carolina State's David Thompson and Kansas star Danny Manning also had outstanding collegiate careers as did centers Patrick Ewing from Georgetown, Bill Russell from San Francisco and Wilt Chamberlain from Kansas.