1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
UCLA Bruins men's basketball
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The UCLA Bruins mens basketball program represents the University of California, Los Angeles in mens college basketball. Established in 1919, UCLA has won a record 11 NCAA Mens Division I Basketball Championships, UCLA teams coached by John Wooden won 10 national titles in 12 seasons, from 1964 to 1975, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973. UCLA went undefeated a record four times, in 1964,1967,1972, Coach Jim Harrick led the team to another NCAA title in 1995. Former coach Ben Howland led UCLA to three consecutive Final Four appearances from 2006 to 2008, UCLA won 13 consecutive regular season conference titles between 1967 and 1979, an NCAA record they currently share with Kansas, whose streak is currently active. On March 30,2013, Steve Alford was named the schools 13th head mens basketball coach, UCLA mens basketball has set several NCAA records. 11 NCAA titles 7 consecutive NCAA titles 12 NCAA title game appearances*10 consecutive Final Four appearances 25 Final Four wins*38 game NCAA Tournament winning streak 134 weeks ranked No, cozens coached the basketball team for two seasons, finishing with an overall record of 21–4. Caddy Works was the coach of the Bruins from 1921 to 1939. Works was a lawyer by profession and coached the only during the evenings. According to UCLA player and future Olympian Frank Lubin, Works was more of a coach with little basketball knowledge. Wilbur Johns was the UCLA basketball head coach from 1939 to 1948, from 1948 to 1975, John Wooden, nicknamed the Wizard of Westwood, served as head coach at UCLA. He won ten NCAA national championships in a 12-year period, seven of those in a row, within this period, his teams won a mens basketball-record 88 consecutive games. Prior to Woodens arrival, UCLA had only won two championship seasons in the previous 18 years. By 1962, with the no longer in place, Wooden had returned the Bruins to the top of their conference. This time, however, they would take the next step, a narrow loss, due largely to a controversial foul call, in the semifinal of the 1962 NCAA Tournament convinced Wooden that his Bruins were ready to contend for national championships. The result was a increase in scoring, giving UCLA a powerhouse team that went undefeated on its way to the schools first basketball national championship. Woodens team repeated as champions the following season before the 1966 squad fell briefly. UCLA was ineligible to play in the NCAA tournament that year, in January 1968, UCLA took its 47-game winning streak to the Astrodome in Houston, where Lew Alcindor squared off against Elvin Hayes in the Game of the Century before a national television audience. Houston upset UCLA 71-69 as Hayes scored 39 points, in a post-game interview, Wooden said, We have to start over
3.
Bob Knight
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Robert Montgomery Bob Knight is a retired American basketball coach. Knight is best known as the coach of the Indiana Hoosiers from 1971 to 2000. He also coached at Texas Tech and at Army, while at Indiana, Knight led his teams to three NCAA championships, one National Invitation Tournament championship, and 11 Big Ten Conference championships. He received National Coach of the Year honors four times and Big Ten Coach of the Year honors eight times. In 1984, he coached the USA mens Olympic team to a gold medal, Knight was one of college basketballs most successful and innovative coaches, having perfected and popularized the motion offense. He has also praised for running clean programs and graduating most of his players. Knight remains the object of near fanatical devotion from his former players, in 2008, Knight joined ESPN as a mens college basketball studio analyst during Championship Week and for coverage of the NCAA Tournament. He continued covering college basketball for ESPN through the 2014-15 season, Knight was born in Massillon, Ohio, and grew up in Orrville, Ohio. Knight began his career as a player at Orrville High School and he continued under Basketball Hall of Fame coach Fred Taylor at Ohio State in 1958. The Buckeyes lost to the Cincinnati Bearcats in each of the next two NCAA Championship games, of which Knight was also a part. Due in part to the power of those Ohio State teams, playing time was usually scarce for Knight. In the 1961 NCAA Championship game, Knight came off the bench with 1,41 on the clock and Cincinnati leading Ohio State, 61-59. In the words of then-Ohio State assistant coach Frank Truitt, Knight got the ball in the front court. Then crossed over like he worked on it all his life and drove right in and laid it up. That tied the game for us, and Knight ran clear across the floor like a 100-yard dash sprinter and ran right at me and said, See there, coach, to which Truitt replied, Sit down, you hot dog. Youre lucky youre even on the floor, Knight graduated with a degree in history and government in 1962. After graduation in 1962, Knight coached junior varsity basketball at Cuyahoga Falls High School in Ohio for one year, in six seasons at West Point, Knight won 102 games, with his first as a head coach coming against Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One of his players was Mike Krzyzewski, who served as his assistant before becoming a Hall of Fame head coach at Duke
4.
NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament
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The tournament was created in 1939 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and was the idea of Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen. Played mostly during March, it has one of the most famous annual sporting events in the United States. The tournament teams include champions from 32 Division I conferences, and 36 teams which are awarded at-large berths, the 68 teams are divided into four regions and organized into a single-elimination bracket, which pre-determines, when a team wins a game, which team it will face next. Each team is seeded, or ranked, within its region from 1 to 32, after an initial four games between eight lower-ranked teams, the tournament occurs during the course of three weekends, at pre-selected neutral sites across the United States. The Final Four is usually played during the first weekend of April and these four teams, one from each region, compete in a pre-selected location for the national championship. The tournament has been at least partially televised since 1969, currently, the games are broadcast by CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV under the trade-name NCAA March Madness. Since 2011, all games are available for viewing nationwide and internationally, such as in the Philippines, as television coverage has grown, so too has the tournaments popularity. Currently, millions of Americans fill out a bracket, attempting to predict the outcome of all 67 games of the tournament. With 11 national titles, UCLA has the record for the most NCAA Mens Division I Basketball Championships, the University of Kentucky is second, with eight national titles. The University of North Carolina is in place, with six titles, while Duke University. The University of Connecticut is sixth with four national titles, the University of Kansas and University of Louisville are tied with three championships. During that time Villanova, Michigan, UNLV, Duke, Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland, Syracuse, the NCAA has changed the tournament format several times since its inception, most often representing an increase of the number of teams. This section describes the tournament as it has operated since 2011, for changes during the course of its history, and to see how the tournament operated during past years, go to Format history, below. A total of 68 teams qualify for the tournament played during March, thirty-two teams earn automatic bids as their respective conference champions. Of the 32 Division I all-sports conferences, all 32 currently hold championship tournaments to determine which team receives the automatic qualification. The Ivy League was the last Division I conference that did not conduct a tournament, through the 2015–16 season, if two or more Ivies shared a regular-season championship, a one-game playoff was used to decide the tournament participant. Since 2017, the league conducts their own postseason tournament, the committee also determines where all sixty-eight teams are seeded and placed in the bracket. The tournament is divided into four regions and each region has at least sixteen teams, the committee is charged with making each of the four regions as close as possible in overall quality of teams from wherever they come from
5.
Ohio State Buckeyes men's basketball
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The Ohio State mens basketball team represents The Ohio State University in NCAA Division I college basketball competition. The Buckeyes are a member of the Big Ten Conference, the Buckeyes won their only National Championship in 1960 and have made a total of 27 NCAA Tournament appearances. The Buckeyes share a rivalry with the Michigan Wolverines, in which OSU has an 93–71 series lead. The Ohio State University is one of two teams to make an NCAA tournament appearance every decade since the 1930s. The Buckeyes play their games at Value City Arena in The Jerome Schottenstein Center which opened in 1998. The official capacity of the center is 19,200, Ohio State ranks 18th in the nation in average home attendance. Thad Matta was named the coach of Ohio State in 2004 to replace coach Jim OBrien after being involved in supposed NCAA violations which cost Ohio State over 113 wins between 1998 and 2002. The first basketball team at The Ohio State University was formed in 1898, sparing success followed the Buckeyes throughout their time as an independent school. In the year 1912, some thirteen years after forming their first basketball team, the Buckeyes joined the Big Nine Conference, the Olsen era is also highlighted by appearing in the final game for the first ever NCAA Championship Tournament in 1939 where the Buckeyes lost to Oregon 33–46. The Buckeyes would make three more Final Four appearances under Olsen, along with winning five Big Ten championships, following Harold Olsen as head coach Tippy Dye and Floyd Stahl made their stints with the Buckeyes. While not seeing the amount of success as Olsen did, Dye. Of all other Buckeye coaches, it was Fred Taylor who would give Ohio State basketball its greatest claim to fame, with the hiring of Taylor in 1958, not much was expected following an 11–11 season during the 1958–1959 season. However, in 1960, the second coach, Taylor. The 1960 championship season is the only NCAA Tournament championship that the Buckeyes have compiled since that date, Taylors Buckeyes continued their dominance by being the runner-up the following two seasons, and making a total of five tournament appearances during Taylors 18 seasons tenure. With the departure of his team, Taylor began to see teams accustomed to Ohio State basketball of the past. Taylors last season at Ohio State in 1976 saw the Buckeyes going 6–20, Taylor also achieved seven conference titles and an impressive overall winning percentage of over 65%. Past the Taylor era, Ohio State saw Eldon Miller, Gary Williams, between 1976 and 1997 the Buckeyes made the NCAA Bracket only eight times, while being crowned conference champions only twice. In 1997, Jim OBrien was hired to head coach Randy Ayers
6.
National Collegiate Athletic Association
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The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a non-profit association which regulates athletes of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations, and individuals. It also organizes the programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The organization is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2014, the NCAA generated almost a billion dollars in revenue. 80 to 90% of this revenue was due to the Division I Mens Basketball Tournament and this revenue is then distributed back into various organizations and institutions across the United States. In August 1973, the current three-division setup of Division I, Division II, under NCAA rules, Division I and Division II schools can offer scholarships to athletes for playing a sport. Division III schools may not offer any athletic scholarships, generally, larger schools compete in Division I and smaller schools in II and III. Division I football was divided into I-A and I-AA in 1978. Subsequently, the term Division I-AAA was briefly added to delineate Division I schools which do not field a football program at all, in 2006, Divisions I-A and I-AA were respectively renamed the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision. Inter-collegiate sports began in the US in 1852 when crews from Harvard University, as other sports emerged, notably football and basketball, many of these same concepts and standards were adopted. Football, in particular, began to emerge as a marquee sport, the IAAUS was officially established on March 31,1906, and took its present name, the NCAA, in 1910. For several years, the NCAA was a group and rules-making body, but in 1921, the first NCAA national championship was conducted. Gradually, more rules committees were formed and more championships were created, a series of crises brought the NCAA to a crossroads after World War II. The Sanity Code – adopted to establish guidelines for recruiting and financial aid – failed to curb abuses, postseason football games were multiplying with little control, and member schools were increasingly concerned about how the new medium of television would affect football attendance. The complexity of problems and the growth in membership and championships demonstrated the need for full-time professional leadership. Walter Byers, previously an executive assistant, was named executive director in 1951. Byers wasted no time placing his stamp on the Association, as college athletics grew, the scope of the nations athletics programs diverged, forcing the NCAA to create a structure that recognized varying levels of emphasis. In 1973, the Associations membership was divided into three legislative and competitive divisions – I, II, and III, five years later in 1978, Division I members voted to create subdivisions I-A and I-AA in football. Until the 1980s, the association did not offer womens athletics, instead, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, with nearly 1000 member schools, governed womens collegiate sports in the United States
