The NCAA tournament selection committee builds the bracket in three steps. Crashing the Dance uses brackets from past seasons to predict what the committee will do this season. More
32 teams make the field automatically as conference champions. The committee picks another 36 teams to fill out the field of 68. Unfortunately, the committee's deliberations are kept highly secret. We don't know what parts of each team's profile the committee values most. Crashing the Dance uses artificial intelligence to learn from previous seasons and predict which teams the committee will select. More
Over the last five seasons, Crashing the Dance has correctly forecast 97 percent of the at-large selections.
Next, all teams in the field are ranked from 1 to 68. This seed list is used to balance the field while building the bracket. More
Over the last five seasons, Crashing the Dance has correctly forecast 91 percent of teams within one line of their actual seed.
Finally, the committee places the teams one-by-one into the bracket. The committee attempts to "achieve reasonable competitive balance" while keeping teams "in or as close to their areas of natural interest as possible." Unlike the subjective selection and seeding steps, bracketing is largely straightforward based on the seed list and a set of principles and procedures. Crashing the Dance does not predict the bracket from the seed list, but we do provide some helpful information if you want to build your own bracket. More