NCAA Basketball betting fans hyped for March Madness

[BangTheBook]

NCAA Basketball bettors are getting ready for the biggest event in College Basketball, otherwise known as March Madness.


The NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship starts with 64 teams that are eventually narrowed down to the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, and finally, the 2008 NCAA Men’s Final Four at the Alamodome in San Antonio from April 5 to 7.

BetOnline.com will have basketball betting lines available for all the action through the three weeks of March Madness, and right into the Final Four.

Since many bettors are intimidated by the sheer size of March Madness, here is some basic information on how it works:

The tournament “Bracket” is made up of conference tournament champions from each Division I conference, which receive automatic bids. The remaining slots are called “at-large berths,” with teams chosen by an NCAA selection committee.

The selection process and tournament seedings are based on several factors, including team rankings and win-loss records.

Two low-seeded teams – usually teams with poor records that qualified by winning their conference tournament championships – play the "opening round" game to determine which will advance into the first round of the tournament, with the winner advancing to play the top seed in one of the four regions.

Each of the eight first and second round regional sites is assigned two “pods,” each consisting of four teams. A host site's pods may be from different regions, and thus the winners of each pod would advance into separate regional tournaments.

The first and second round games are played on the first weekend of the tournament, either on Thursday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday. The teams which are still alive after the first weekend advance to the regional semi-finals (the Sweet Sixteen) and finals (the Elite Eight) played on the second weekend of the tournament.

The winners of each region advance to the Final Four, where the national semifinals are played on Saturday and the national championship is played on Monday.
The UCLA Bruins currently hold the record for most national titles with 11, followed by the University of Kentucky Wildcats with seven.

At BetOnline.com, you can choose between Big Bonuses and Low Juice for all your NCAA College Basketball betting.