Opening Round or Play-In Game
The reason the game is not officially referred to as a "play-in" is because the two teams are officially in the tournament before the game is played. As recently as 1991, the NCAA has conducted play-in games (usually between champions of what were considered to be the weakest conferences) prior to the announcement of the brackets; the losers were not considered to have been in the tournament. Note that the losers of the current opening round game are still credited with a tournament appearance for purposes of sharing in the NCAA basketball contract revenues, while the winners receives a share for being in the round of 64. Consequently, in 2001, Northwestern State technically became the first No. 16 seeded team to have a win in the men's NCAA tournament by virtue of the team's opening round victory.
Read more about this topic: NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Opening Round Game
Famous quotes containing the words opening and/or game:
“His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way, and blinking in the odd bilboquet fashion peculiar to eyelids in his abnormal position. Even more extraordinary than the variety and velocity of the movements he made in imitation of animal hind legs was the effortlessness of his stance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Lyke as a huntsman after weary chace,
Seeing the game from him escapt away,
Sits downe to rest him in some shady place,”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)