A college basketball season is too big to list whole. Division I teams play thousands of games between November and March, many of them non-conference games, and no single table ranks the teams against each other. The section keeps to what a reader can use: the games that involve a team in the AP Top 25, and the polls that decide who is in it.
A schedule built around the Top 25
The schedule page lists every game in which at least one team is in the AP Top 25. For games still to come, the number beside a team is its current ranking, so the list follows the poll: a team's upcoming games appear once it is voted into the Top 25 and drop off if it falls out, unless the opponent is ranked. It also means the page is not a full schedule for an unranked team, whose games show up only when it meets a ranked opponent.
Month pages and game nights
Each month has its own page, such as November 2026, and the month strip at the top jumps between them. The month bar counts the games and the nights in that month, and the Next up tag marks the month that holds the next game still to be played. Inside a month, games are grouped by night. A finished game shows Final and the score, an upcoming one shows its tip-off time in US Eastern on a 24-hour clock, and the arena is listed under each matchup.
A number such as #5 in front of a team is its ranking, which makes a game between two ranked teams easy to find on a night with a dozen games. The three counters at the top of the page, games, teams and game nights, cover the whole season, not just the month you are reading.
The polls, and what they do not decide
The rankings page shows the AP Top 25 and the Coaches Poll in the same layout: rank, team, record, poll points and a Trend column, where ▲ and ▼ show the places gained or lost since the last poll. Teams level on points share a number, so a poll can show two teams at the same rank. After a tie the next number is skipped, as in a race, and the preseason polls list every record as 0-0.
In the AP poll, sportswriters and broadcasters each rank 25 teams; a first-place vote is worth 25 points, second place 24, down to one point for 25th, and the totals set the order. The Coaches Poll is voted by a panel of head coaches instead. Both are votes, which means a team can climb without playing if the teams above it lose, and neither one picks the NCAA tournament field.
The points column shows how close a vote was. One place on one ballot is worth one point, so a gap of a few points between neighbors means they were close in the voters' eyes, while a gap of a hundred points or more means they were not. Compare the two polls as well: a team that is fifth in one and ninth in the other is a team the voters cannot agree about.
From the polls to the 2027 tournament
A selection committee builds the bracket, using a number of factors that include record, strength of schedule and the NET ranking, which weighs results by opponent strength and game location along with efficiency. The 2027 men's tournament is the first with 76 teams, up from 68: 32 conference champions receive automatic bids and 44 teams are chosen at large.
- Selection Sunday is March 14, 2027, when the field and the bracket are announced.
- The 12 Opening Round games are played on March 16 and 17 among the 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams; the 12 winners fill out the 64-team bracket.
- The first and second rounds run from March 18 to 21, and the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight from March 25 to 28.
- The Final Four is on April 3 and the title game on April 5, both at Ford Field in Detroit.
Why there is no simulator here
The regular season does not resolve into one table you can play forward, and the March bracket is chosen by a committee, not computed, so a simulator would be guessing at people. The section reports the schedule, the scores and the polls. For a professional league with a standings table, the NBA simulator plays out the rest of the season, and the methodology page explains how its model decides games.
More on the ranking and the bracket
- How many teams from each conference make March Madness: at-large bids by conference since 2011.
- How often a No. 1 seed wins March Madness: the record of every seed since 1985, and the 76-team change.
- NCAA tournament champions: every men's winner since 1939, by school, conference and seed.
Free, with no account. Schedules, scores and polls come from live sports data feeds and update as games finish and new polls are released.