Every March, college basketball teams jockey for the No. 1 spot in their respective conferences as a way of earning their way to the NCAA Tournament. The process can be maddening to some.

Conference winners get automatic bids into the NCAA Tournament and some teams perform well enough to receive bids into the dance.

For the remaining teams, the process is not so simple.

Some teams are on the proverbial bubble, which is liable to burst with its next lost.The NCAA selection committee decides which region and ranking a team will receive in order to compete against other schools for the title.

The current power rankings for the top four men’s and women’s college basketball teams as generated by the NCAA are as follows. The four men’s teams to earn a No. 1 seed in their respective regions are Duke University, Syracuse University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Kansas. On the women’s side, the top four teams are the University of Connecticut, University of Tennessee, Stanford and the University of Nebraska.

For the 2009-10 season, the No. 1 spot has not been clear on the men’s side. The No. 1 team has lost its spot at least four different times going into Selection Sunday.

As for the women, it’s clear which team has been the clear-cut No. 1 seed all season. The University of Connecticut has amassed a record of 30-straight wins this season and currently has a women’s basketball record 72-game winning streak dating back to Feb. 9, 2008.

According to an article in the Tampa Bay Tribune, the NCAA estimates that more than 35 million Americans participate in office pools.

The reaction to March Madness on campus varies, as some students will participate in pools and brackets, and some could care less.

Some students who really get into it follow a favorite team from start to finish. Others pay no attention to the tournament for personal reasons.

Junior engineering major Anthony Doyle-DiGiacomo, he is among those that have no real interest in the tournament. He feels that college basketball is too commercialized.

“It has gotten to the point where the athletes are being used for their talent,” Doyle-DiGiacomo said. “There is less focus on the love of the game and more on the results.”

For other students, their interest lies at the end of the tournament, when the top four teams play for a chance to appear in the Final Four. Senior Kevin Will said he follows the madness but only toward the end because the same teams keep continually make it to the finals.

“It’s exciting to watch the games towards the end,” Will said. “Usually it’s the same teams that make it to the very end, that’s why I don’t follow the brackets.”

The Sacramento State women’s basketball team had a strong chance to make it to the women’s tournament as an automatic bid from the Big Sky Conference. However, the team fell in the quarterfinals to Montana State University 89-66, dashing the chance to go dancing in the field of 64 for the first time in school history. The men’s team did not qualify for conference tournament play.

However, that does not stop women’s junior guard Sami Field-Polisso from rooting for teams that she liked growing up as a child.

“I am a big Tennessee fan, on the women’s side of the ball,” Field-Polisso said. “I’ve loved them since I was very little.”

Her love of the tournament doesn’t stop at just Tennessee, but that of the men’s team at Duke as well.

“I am a Duke fan as well,” she said. “I want to see them pull it out this year.”

Matt Harrington can be reached at [email protected]