The countdown to March Madness is on. The beloved annual tradition that is the NCAA Tournament will begin in just a few weeks.

Texas men's basketball's NCAA Tournament chances took a brutal shot after a loss to South Carolina, the last place team in the SEC.

The first games for the men's tournament will be played on Tuesday, March 18. On the women's side, the first slate of games comes on Wednesday, March 19. These games will be the "First Four" qualifiers that determine the 16-seed for each bracket. The NIT will be played concurrently and thus will also begin on March 18.

Teams with Lock status have at least a 95% chance to make the tournament, according to the BPI forecast. (Yes, this means that 5% of the time, a team marked as a lock will miss the tourney. We set the threshold there as a nod to the traditional standard for significance testing.)

No matter how the rest of the season or the SEC Tournament pans out for the Auburn Tigers, they will be heading to the NCAA Tournament, likely as a No. 1 seed. Bruce Pearl’s group has held down the No.

Madness is just around the corner, and fans are eagerly anticipating the NCAA Tournament bracket reveal so that they can find out which men’s and women’s college basketball teams will compete for the national championship title.

The NCAA has recently discussed the possibility of expanding March Madness from its current format of 68 teams to a 72 or 76-team field in the coming years. The goal is to add more play-in games before the field of 64 tournament officially starts on the Thursday following Selection Sunday.