March Madness: Twelve questions (and answers) ahead of the 2024 men’s NCAA Tournament

March Madness is finally upon us.

The 2024 NCAA men’s basketball Tournament will, once again, feature 68 schools from across the country vying for the title of national champion.

Locally, John Calipari’s high-flying, high-scoring Kentucky team will be the main focus. Morehead State also will be a local point of pride.

But there are plenty of other compelling story lines set to take center stage.

With the NCAA Tournament now here, you probably have some questions about everything from how to watch the games to which players will emerge as postseason heroes.

Here are 12 questions and answers to get you ready for this year’s NCAA men’s basketball Tournament:

When and where is the Final Four this year?

The 2024 NCAA Final Four will take place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The venue is normally home to the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL. Final Four games will take place on Saturday, April 6, with the NCAA Tournament championship game being played Monday, April 8.

Where are the other NCAA Tournament games being played?

Thirteen locations will host NCAA Tournament games this year, in addition to the Final Four site.

First Four games will be played at the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.

First- and second-round games will be played in Brooklyn, (Barclays Center); Charlotte, North Carolina (Spectrum Center); Indianapolis (Gainbridge Fieldhouse); Omaha, Nebraska (CHI Health Center); Pittsburgh (PPG Paints Arena); Salt Lake City (Delta Center); Spokane, Washington (Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena); and Memphis, (FedExForum).

Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games will be played in Boston (TD Garden); Dallas (American Airlines Center); Detroit (Little Caesars Arena) and Los Angeles (Crypto.com Arena). Boston is hosting the East Regional, Dallas gets the South, Detroit hosts Midwest and the West is in Los Angeles.

Who’s the defending champ and favorites to win in ‘24?

Last year, Connecticut won the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed to earn the Huskies their fifth national title, all of which have come since 1999.

The Huskies are among the favorites to repeat as national champs: Head coach Dan Hurley’s team won the Big East regular-season championship in dominating fashion, with standout guards Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer leading the way.

Other top contenders to lift the national title trophy include Houston (outright regular-season winners of the Big 12, the best league in the country according to KenPom), Purdue (outright regular-season Big Ten champions for the second straight year) and Tennessee (winners of an outright SEC regular-season title for the first time since 2008).

Not all of these contenders have the past pedigree of UConn, though: Houston made the Final Four in 2021, but lost in the Sweet 16 last season. Purdue suffered a shocking upset loss as a No. 1 seed in last season’s NCAA Tournament to 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson. Tennessee has never made a Final Four.

What TV channels will the games be on?

All 67 games of the NCAA Tournament will be broadcast by CBS Sports and Turner Sports: The games will be shown across CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV and digital platforms, including March Madness Live.

How much do schools earn by winning NCAA Tournament games?

The distribution of money from the NCAA Tournament is a somewhat complicated process. According to Sportico, the NCAA distributes money to conferences, instead of individual schools.

The amount of money each conference gets is based on the number of tournament games that teams from the conference play before the national title game: Teams earn “one unit” of NCAA Tournament monetary distribution for each game it plays before the championship game.

This means 132 units are awarded each tournament (including the First Four games).

Last year, the SEC earned the most money of any conference from the NCAA Tournament. The league sent eight teams to the Big Dance and brought in about $34 million from the event. Those eight SEC teams combined to play 17 games, which means each game played was worth about $2 million.

The aforementioned units stretch out over six years, providing annual payments to conferences well into the future. Payments to the SEC from last year’s NCAA Tournament will continue through 2029.

The value of a unit changes each year, so the total payment for a win in the 2024 NCAA Tournament won’t become clear until 2030.

How much money are players paid?

NCAA student-athletes can earn money from use of their name, image and likeness.

So, while winning and losing in the NCAA Tournament won’t directly provide or take away earnings, you can expect to see several college basketball stars in commercials and other advertisements during the national postseason. And they will be compensated as part of those deals.

For example, former UK men’s basketball player Jacob Toppin starred in an AT&T commercial during March Madness last year. The commercial was commonplace during game broadcasts, even after Kentucky was eliminated in the second round.

Who has won the tournament the most times?

UCLA has won the most national championships with 11, but the Bruins won’t be in the field this year, falling well short of preseason expectations.

Kentucky is second all-time with eight national titles, followed by North Carolina (six) and a trio of schools with five (Duke, Indiana and UConn).

The Wildcats, Tar Heels, Blue Devils and Huskies will all be in the 2023 tournament.

How many times has Kentucky won the tournament, and what should we expect this year?

As mentioned above, Kentucky has won eight national championships in the program’s illustrious history on the hardwood: 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998 and 2012.

While Kentucky won’t be the betting favorite to bring home a ninth national title this year, the Cats certainly have a shot.

This freshman-heavy UK team is one of the highest-scoring squads in the nation, with players like fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves and freshman guard Rob Dillingham able to seemingly score at will.

But if UK is to have NCAA Tournament success, it will likely be the result of continued defensive improvement: The Wildcats have struggled on that end of the court all season long.

UK’s defense, at one point, was bad enough to disqualify it from national championship consideration. That has started to change.

What other Kentucky connections exist this year?

In addition to Kentucky, the commonwealth will also be represented in March Madness by Morehead State.

After winning a share of the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season championship, the Eagles went a perfect 3-for-3 at the OVC Tournament to earn the first automatic bid awarded to the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

The Eagles are dancing for the ninth time in school history and the second time in four years. Thirty-seven-year-old Morehead State head coach Preston Spradlin formerly served as a graduate assistant and an assistant director of basketball operations under John Calipari at UK.

Other people with UK connections dot the NCAA Tournament field.

Top of this list is BYU head coach Mark Pope. After transferring to Kentucky midway through his college career in the 1990s, Pope became an indispensable part of some legendary UK squads: He was a team captain on UK’s 1996 national championship team, playing more than 20 minutes per game for that group.

Pope’s BYU team has more than 20 wins this season in its debut season in the Big 12 Conference.

Stetson will be making its first trip to the NCAA Tournament, and a man with Kentucky connections is leading the Hatters. Head coach Donnie Jones is an alumnus of the University of Pikeville (formerly known as Pikeville College). A Stetson assistant coach, Shawn Finney, was an assistant coach on UK’s 1998 national title team, and leading scorer Jalen Blackmon (21.5 points per game) is the son of former UK star James Blackmon.

Player-wise, ex-Cats Jemarl Baker and Lance Ware represent a limited pool of former UK players in March Madness.

Now at his fourth school after signing with UK as part of the 2017 recruiting class, the 25-year-old Baker is in his first season at New Mexico. The veteran guard is having a career year from 3-point range for a Lobos team coached by Rick Pitino’s son, Richard Pitino. New Mexico will be dancing for the first time since 2014.

Ware, who transferred from Kentucky to Villanova last offseason, was often praised during his three-season Kentucky career by UK head coach John Calipari, even if his statistical production was far from significant. Now at Villanova, the senior forward is a role player for the Big East school.

Of course, former Kentucky and Louisville head coach Rick Pitino is also very much in the mix for another trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Pitino is in his first season as the head coach at St. John’s, and after an up-and-down regular season the Red Storm find themselves right where most preseason expectations had them: on the NCAA Tournament bubble entering Selection Sunday.

St. John’s hasn’t won a game in the Big Dance since 2000.

How long has the NCAA Tournament been around?

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament was first contested in 1939, with only eight teams in the field.

It has been held every year since, except for 2020 when the tournament was canceled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Why are there 68 teams in the NCAA Tournament?

The NCAA Tournament has undergone several rounds of expansion over the years.

After debuting with eight teams in 1939, the tournament field doubled to 16 teams in 1951. More expansion followed in the ensuing decades and a 64-team tournament was established in 1985.

Starting in 2001, the tournament field consisted of 65 teams, with one play-in game prior to the first round. The current 68-team field was established in 2011, with the First Four featuring a quartet of play-in games prior to the first round.

It appears likely that NCAA Tournament expansion is on the horizon again, although the number of teams that would be added to the field is very much up in the air.

Who are 5 players everyone will be talking about?

Here are five names to know for the NCAA Tournament.

Amir Abdur-Rahim: Let’s start with one of the hottest potential names from the mid-major coaching market. Last year Abdur-Rahim (a former Texas A&M and Georgia assistant) led Kennesaw State to the ASUN Tournament title, securing a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in that school’s history. The Owls then pushed No. 3-seed Xavier all the way in a narrow first-round loss.

Abdur-Rahim is at it again in 2024, this time with South Florida. The Bulls won the outright American Athletic Conference regular-season championship over heavily fancied Memphis and Florida Atlantic, a Final Four squad last season. South Florida will be dancing for the first time since 2012, and for just the fourth time in school history.

Zach Edey: The massive 7-foot-4 Purdue center is likely to repeat as the national player of the year, and his credentials are more that worthy of this distinction. He averages a double-double for the Boilermakers and has gotten more mobile on the defensive end, despite his size.

Edey is set to become the first repeat winner of the John Wooden Award since Virginia’s Ralph Sampson in the early 1980s. He’s likely the most recognizable player in men’s college basketball and is the driving force behind a Purdue team seeking its first Final Four appearance since 1980.

Dalton Knecht: One of the keys to winning in modern college basketball is securing top players from the NCAA transfer portal, and no transfer has been better this season that Knecht. The former standout guard at Northern Colorado has continued his elite play with the Volunteers.

Among the SEC leaders in scoring, Knecht has gone for 36-plus points on at least four occasions this season and is an elite 3-point shooter as well.

Riley Minix: Morehead State’s star player has the potential to lead the Eagles to another NCAA Tournament upset win. A former NAIA All-American, Minix is a fifth-year player who transferred up to the Division I level last offseason. His production at Morehead has been outstanding: Minix was named the OVC Player of the Year and averages 20.8 points and 9.8 rebounds for the Eagles.

Entering the NCAA Tournament, Minix has scored at least 20 points in 12 of his last 13 games.

Reed Sheppard: You already know his name, but feel free to spread the word among non-Kentucky fans. The son of UK basketball legends Jeff Sheppard and Stacey Reed Sheppard, he is a leading candidate for national freshman of the year thanks to his do-it-all ability, even while coming off the bench for the Cats.

He’s one of the best 3-point shooters in the nation, boasts pinpoint accuracy was long-distance passes and has a penchant for stealing the ball on defense.

Sunday

NCAA Selection Show

When: 6 p.m.

TV: CBS-27

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