The field of 68 for the men’s March Madness tournament is officially set in stone.
Following the conclusions of the last few conference tournaments on Sunday, the NCAA revealed the full brackets for the men’s and women’s college tournaments.
Defending champion Connecticut, along with Houston, Purdue and North Carolina, are the top seeds in a March Madness bracket that started going haywire even before the pairings came out Sunday.
Of the four top seeds, only UConn heads into the tournament coming off a win. That played into the Huskies receiving the No. 1 overall seed. The other three top seeds lost in their conference tournaments.
Those were hardly the only surprises over the final weekend of hoops before the sport’s main event hits center stage.
Unexpected titles placed teams like Oregon, North Carolina State and even Duquense, none of whom were projected to make the field, into the field of 68 via the automatic bid that goes to conference champions. The teams they beat gobbled up a handful of the 34 at-large bids, thus shrinking the number of spots available to teams on the so-called bubble.
