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The 2006 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament will involve 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It will begin on March 14, 2006, and will conclude with the championship game on April 3 from RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Tournament procedure
A total of 65 teams will enter the tournament. Thirty of the teams will earn automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments. Because the Ivy League does not conduct a postseason tournament, the regular-season conference champion receives an automatic bid. The remaining 34 teams will be granted "at-large" bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee.
Two teams will play an opening-round game on March 14, popularly called the "play-in game"; the winner of that game will advance to the main draw of the tournament and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. This game has been played at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio since its inception in 2001.
This will be the third year of the so-called "pod" system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Before the 2004 tournament, all teams playing at a first- or second-round site fed into the same regional tournament. Since 2004, teams have been assigned to first- and second-round sites so as to limit the early-round travel of as many teams as possible. Half of the teams in a pod advance into separate regional tournaments.
All 64 teams will be seeded 1 to 16 within their regionals; the winner of the play-in game automatically gets a 16 seed. The Selection Committee seeds the entire field from 1 to 65. For the first time in 2004, the ranking of the four top seeds against each other would determine the pairings in the Final Four. The top overall seed would be seeded to play the fourth overall seed in the national semifinals, should both teams advance that far.
The four regionals are officially named after their four host cities, a practice which also began in 2004. The 2006 regionals are:
- Atlanta Regional (Georgia Dome, March 23-25)
- Oakland Regional (Oakland Arena, March 23-25)
- Minneapolis Regional (Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, March 24-26)
- Washington, D.C. Regional (MCI Center, March 24-26)
The first and second round games will be played at the following sites:
- March 16-18
- March 17-19
Each regional winner will advance to the Final Four, held from April 2-4 in Indianapolis.
Qualifying teams
- Penn, Ivy League regular-season champion
- Penn was the first team to qualify, clinching the league title on March 3.
- Winthrop, Big South tournament champion
- Craig Bradshaw scored with 9.1 seconds remaining to lift Winthrop over Coastal Carolina on March 4.
- Belmont, Atlantic Sun tournament champion
- Also on March 4, the Battle of the Boulevard, the neighborhood rivalry between Belmont and Lipscomb, had its highest stakes ever, as both teams were playing for their first NCAA bid. The Bruins won 74-69 in overtime behind a career-high 32 points from Justin Hare.
- Murray State, OVC tournament champion
- Also on March 4, the Racers used a balanced attack, with two starters and two substitutes each scoring in double figures, to ease past Samford.
- Davidson, Southern Conference tournament champion
- The Wildcats annihilated Chattanooga 80-55 on March 5 to punch their ticket. In the process, they exorcised their demons from last season, in which they went 16-0 in the regular season but lost in the conference tournament.
- Southern Illinois, Missouri Valley tournament champion
- Also on March 5, the Salukis recovered from a 1-3 finish to their regular season by winning the MVC tournament, easily defeating Bradley 59-46 in the final.
- UNC Wilmington, Colonial Athletic Association tournament champion
- The Seahawks, who shared the regular-season conference title with George Mason, defeated Hofstra 78-67 in the final on March 6.
- Iona, MAAC tournament champion
- Also on March 6, the Gaels cruised past Saint Peter's 80-61 to advance to the "Big Dance."
- Gonzaga, West Coast Conference tournament champion
- Also on March 6, the Bulldogs survive a close call for the second straight night, coming back from a 15-point second-half deficit to beat Loyola Marymount 68-67 and secure an automatic bid (the Bulldogs were taken to overtime by San Diego the night before). Bubble teams everywhere breathed a sigh of relief, as Gonzaga would certainly have taken an at-large bid if it had lost in the WCC tournament.