What’s madder than a 68-team single-elimination college basketball tournament that takes a month?
A 351-team single-elimination tournament that takes five months.
That’s the plan for the NCAA Cup, an imaginary college basketball tournament going on right now.
The Rules
It’s inspired by the Cup tournaments in international soccer, like the FA Cup in England and the Copa del Rey in Spain. Those tournaments, and in the NCAA Cup of college basketball, follow these rules, each more insane than the last:
- The tournament proceeds in rounds
- For each game in a round, the winner advances and the loser goes home
- Every single team qualifies for the tournament
- All matchups are determined randomly
That’s right, each round’s matchups are random. That means that Gonzaga (#1 in the NCAA’s NET rankings) is just as likely to play #2 Kansas as they are to play the lowest-seeded team, #351 Chicago State.
The home team is also selected randomly, which means that Duke could start off playing on the road somewhere out of the way, like at Idaho State or Hawaii.
Winners of the first round games move on to the second round, and the matchups get picked again. In other words:
Get ready for some madness!
The Schedule
The 2020 NCAA cup began on April 7th, the day after Duke lifted the imaginary 2020 NCAA tournament trophy. The championship game is August 29th, the same day that the 2020 college football season starts.
Because NCAA Division 1 has an odd number of teams (351), two teams were randomly selected for a “round 0.5” play-in game. Half the teams are eliminated in each round; when this results in an odd number of teams, two are randomly selected for another play-in game.
Here is the schedule of when each round starts and stops:
| Round | Start Date | End Date |
| 0.5 | Tuesday, April 7, 2020 | |
| 1 | Friday, April 10, 2020 | Sunday, May 31, 2020 |
| 1.5 | Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | |
| 2 | Sunday, June 7, 2020 | Friday, July 3, 2020 |
| 3 | Saturday, July 4, 2020 | Tuesday, July 28, 2020 |
| 4 | Friday, July 31, 2020 | Tuesday, August 11, 2020 |
| 5 | Thursday, August 13, 2020 | Tuesday, August 18, 2020 |
| 5.5 | Thursday, August 20, 2020 | |
| 6 | Friday, August 21, 2020 | Sunday, August 23, 2020 |
| 6.5 | Tuesday, August 25, 2020 | |
| 7 | Wednesday, August 26, 2020 | Thursday, August 27, 2020 |
| 8 | Saturday, August 29, 2020 | Saturday, August 29, 2020 |
Every game is simulated on the whatifsports.com college basketball simulator, and results are announced in real time on the twitter feed @fixthemadness.
Round 1 is now complete, and we are in the middle of Round 2. Here’s what has happened so far, round by round. This page gives some highlight games, and I am now in the process of posting the complete results at my NCAA Cup page.
Results
Round 0.5
The randomly selected matchup for the play-in game was Virginia Commonwealth at Navy. The final score (click on the score for the box score from whatifsports.com):
| Date and time | Result |
| Wed Apr 8 8 PM ET | Navy 68 Virginia Commonwealth 59 |
…and so the Virginia Commonwealth Rams became the first team eliminated from the 2020 NCAA cup. That left an even number of teams for random selection in the first round – 350 remaining teams meant 175 games.
The games proceeded, three or four a day, from April 10th to May 31st. And here are the results!
Round 1
Round 1 is now complete! It began in America’s premier basketball city, New York City, with Columbia beating High Point 68-51, and it ended in Pullman, Washington, with Lamar upsetting Washington State 90-81.
I am in the process of posting the results of all 175 games to a separate NCAA Cup page, but here are some highlights – games by big-ticket teams, shocking upsets, and exciting games. The home team is listed first and the winning team is in bold. Click on the score to see the box score and game recap from whatifsports.com.
The biggest surprise: overall top seed Gonzaga is already gone in the first round, knocked out by UNLV!
Round 1.5 (play-in game)
The 175 winners of the first round games moved on. But that once again left an odd number of teams, so two were randomly selected for a play-in game: Radford at Toledo. And the result:
| Date and time | Result | |
| Wed June 3 8 PM ET | Toledo 70 Radford 72 |
Round 2
Round 2 began on Sunday, June 7th – and it began with an incredible upset, with top team Iowa losing on the road to #315 Central Arkansas. Here are some of the highlight results from the 18 second-round games so far:
| Date and time | Results |
| Sun June 7 Noon ET | Central Arkansas 94 Iowa 86 (OT) |
| Sun June 7 8 PM ET | Louisville 72 Florida State 68 |
| Tues June 9 4 PM ET | Drexel 75 Liberty 67 |
| Thurs June 11 8 PM ET | South Carolina 85 Rhode Island 95 |
Round 2 continues through Friday, June 3rd. These games are happening today:
| Fri June 12 2 PM ET | Sam Houston State 86 Georgia Southern 76 |
| Fri June 12 4 PM ET | American (17-14, NET #197) at Vanderbilt (12-21, NET #142) |
| Fri June 12 8 PM ET | USC (23-9, NET #45) at Utah (17-15, NET #85) |
Follow all the results in real time at the Twitter feed @fixthemadness, and see all the results in one place at my NCAA Cup page.
Enjoy the madness!
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