The 2020
NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament
The NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament (officially styled by the NCAA as a "Championship" instead of a "Tournament") is an annual championship tournament for colleges and universities that are members of NCAA Division II, a grouping of ...
was to be the annual
single-elimination tournament
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...
to determine the national champion of men's
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
Division II college basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...
in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. With a field of sixty-four teams, it was supposed to begin on March 16 and conclude with the
championship game
In sport, a championship is a Competition#Sports, competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match sy ...
on April 5.
As with the prior year's format, the eight regional winners would have met in the Elite Eight for the quarterfinal, semifinal, and championship rounds. The quarterfinal and semifinal rounds were scheduled to take place again at the
Ford Center in
Evansville, Indiana
Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...
, while the championship final was due to take place at
State Farm Arena
State Farm Arena (formerly Philips Arena) is a multi-purpose arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. The arena serves as the home venue for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Atlanta Hawks. It also served as home to the National Hockey Leag ...
in
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
so as to coincide with the Division I Final Four.
After the announcement of the tournament field on March 8, the entire tournament was cancelled on March 12 due to the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
.
Qualification
A total of sixty-four bids were available for the tournament: 21 automatic bids (awarded to the champions of the twenty-one Division II conferences) and 41 at-large bids.
The bids are allocated evenly among the eight NCAA-designated regions (Atlantic, Central, East, Midwest, South, South Central, Southeast, and West), each of which contains either two or three of the twenty-three Division II conferences that sponsor men's basketball (after the
Heartland Conference
The Heartland Conference was a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)'s Division II level, which was founded in 1999. The majority of members were in Texas, with additional members in A ...
disbanded in 2019, the South Region now features only two conferences). Each region consists of two or three automatic qualifiers (the teams who won their respective conference tournaments) and either five or six at-large bids, awarded regardless of conference affiliation.
Regionals
Atlantic
* – Denotes overtime period
Central
* – Denotes overtime period
East
* – Denotes overtime period
Midwest
South
Southeast
* – Denotes overtime period
South Central
West
See also
*
2020 NCAA Division II women's basketball tournament
*
2020 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament
The 2020 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament was a planned single-elimination tournament of 68 teams to determine the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's college basketball national champion for the 2019– ...
*
2020 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament
The 2020 NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament was a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division III college basketball in the United States. Featuring sixty-four teams, it began on March 6, 202 ...
*
2020 NAIA Division I men's basketball tournament
*
2020 NAIA Division II men's basketball tournament
References
2019 Division II Men's Basketball Official Bracketref>
{{NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament navbox
Tournament
A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:
# One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...
NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament
NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament, 2020
2020 in sports in Indiana
2020 in sports in Georgia (U.S. state)