Although the Lions have not yet played an official game, Li Chenglong has basically sat in the main position, and he squeezes Andre Jackson to the bench every time he trains in the team.

Lee Cheng Long gradually adapted to the changes brought to him by the magical equipment during the training of the Lions, but the ability water bottle can only be used in official competitions, and so far Li Chenglong has not been able to feel it concretely.

With the middle of November just around the corner, the NCAA basketball tournament will begin after the Lions played two warm-up games against New York University nearby.

Lee Chenglong's performance in the two warm-up matches was average, and he has not yet fully adapted.

NCAA is the abbreviation of the American Collegiate Athletic Association, and in fact, the NCAA tournament is like the North American University Games, which is held once a year.

Since it is a sports meeting, there are naturally many sports, and there are a total of 23 official events in the NCAA competition, of which the most concerned are football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey, and major universities in the United States also invest the most in these four sports.

Rugby has always been the number one sport in the United States, and the NCAA football game is naturally the most watched game in the NCAA each season, followed by basketball, baseball, and ice hockey.

In the major NCAA competitions, the major colleges and universities in North America are divided into three levels of leagues, and the NCAA basically refers to the first-level league games, and the low-level league games have received little attention.

The NCAA currently has a total of 31 Division I leagues, each league has about 10 teams, and the Ivy League is one of the Division I leagues, which is composed of Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Brown University, Cornell University and Dartmouth College.

The Ivy League was first established as a sports league, and it is really said that the ancestors were once broad, the Ivy League has always been the strongest league in American football in the early NCAA, Yale University in the Ivy League almost dominated NCAA football before World War I, and more than half of the football championships in the first fifty years of the NCAA were taken away by Yale University, and Princeton University, which is also an Ivy League, then rose to become Yale's opponent in football. Both universities took home more than half of the championships in the first 100 years of NCAA football, and the two teams are still the schools with the most and second most titles in NCAA football.

However, the Ivy League has since declined in sports, and the eight colleges and universities in the Ivy League are all world-class universities, and the Ivy League has gradually become synonymous with the world's top universities.

In terms of NCAA basketball alone, the Ivy League has never been too strong, no school in the league has ever won an NCAA basketball championship, and the best result is only to reach the national semifinals.

For NCAA basketball, many people have heard of the name "March Madness", but March Madness is a national championship, that is, 64 teams compete for the national championship in a single-game elimination system, and half of the teams go home in each round, truly go or go home.

Of the 64 teams participating in the NCAA National Basketball Championship, 31 are national champions of 31 Division I leagues, and the remaining 33 are selected by a so-called NCAA selection committee based on the performance of each team and a series of data calculations.

The schedule leading up to March Madness is for teams to qualify for the National Championship.

The NCAA season is held from around November 10 to January 10 for non-conference games, January 10 to the end of February for intra-conference games, from the end of February to early March for intra-conference tournaments, and from early March to early April for national tournaments, which is March Madness.

In the case of the Columbia Lions of the Ivy League, from November 10 to January 10, Columbia will choose to play against some teams outside the Ivy League, and the results of these teams will be an important criterion for the selection committee to select the remaining 33 participating teams.

From January 10 to the end of February, the Columbia Lions will play a two-legged home and away game against the other seven teams in the Ivy League, equivalent to the NBA's regular season.

The league tournaments held from late February to early March are the equivalent of the NBA playoffs, but all teams in the minor leagues can participate regardless of whether they are first or last in the regular season, but the higher the ranking, the more favorable the schedule, the fewer games they can participate in, and the final winner can go directly to the national championship.

But the Ivy League is the most special league in NCAA basketball, they don't play intra-league tournaments, that is, they don't play the playoffs, and the team that ranks first in the regular season directly represents the Ivy League in the national championship.

For those powerful leagues, such as the Big Ten League, the Big 12 League, the Great East League, and the Pacific 12 League, they can compete in the National Championship with as many as five or six teams or more each year, while in the weaker leagues, only the champion team can participate in the National Championship.

The Ivy League is one of the weak leagues, and only the champion team can compete in the national championship every year.

Speaking of which, the sports decline of the Ivy League is actually caused by their persistence in tradition, the schools in the Ivy League have always not set up sports scholarships, and if you want to enter the Ivy League schools, the grades must reach a predetermined grade point, simply put, the Ivy League does not accept sports students, you must be admitted hard, and there is no sports scholarship specifically for sports students.

In the early years, all universities in the United States were of this standard, so the Ivy League could rely on money to suppress others in hardware facilities (all the elite schools in the United States are very rich), but later, as the NCAA became more and more concerned, other universities began to lower the score line to accept sports students, and opened special sports scholarships for those sports students, they have attracted a large number of sports talents to join, but the Ivy League continues to maintain tradition, which makes the Ivy League gradually degenerate into ' The 'Academic League', one of the best in the world in terms of educational performance, has been beaten year after year in sports performance.

In stark contrast to the Ivy League, Stanford University is also a world-famous university but is located on the West Coast of the United States, and does not belong to the Ivy League (Ivy League schools are all in the eastern United States), they will accept students with sports specialties and open sports scholarships, plus Stanford University's world-famous school halo has attracted a lot of sports talents, so Stanford has been very competitive in NCAA competitions, and Stanford is now the school with the second largest number of championships in NCAA competitionsStanford is not bad at the popular sport, basketball and football can reach the national competition every year, and baseball has completed an unprecedented four consecutive championships in previous years.

In fact, as long as the Ivy League also sets up sports scholarships and lowers the standards to recruit students with sports specialties, it will be able to change within a few years by relying on the fame of the world's famous schools, at least it will no longer be the object of long-term beating.

In fact, starting next year, the Harvard Basketball Department will open a sports poverty grant, which is actually an alternative sports scholarship, but the standard for obtaining a low family income is required, so it is just an increase in a sports poverty grant and has not lowered the admission standard, Harvard has become the basketball hegemon of the Ivy League in a few years, and it is no longer a round of teams to represent the Ivy League in the national championship.

For the current Columbia Lions, playing the regular season is the most important thing, if you play well and get the first place in the regular season, you can directly participate in the national championship, and the non-league games from November 10 to January 10 can basically be used for training, only those strong leagues have several strong teams, they need to play non-league games seriously to get the selection of the selection committee.

In Columbia's basketball club, Joe Jones was talking to assistant coach Ryan Brown, "Ryan, have you negotiated all the teams to be invited?" ”

"Most of it was negotiated, but the asking price at Memphis was so high that we might have to change teams," Brown said. ”

"Then let's switch to a weak team."

"If that's the case, there are basically no two strong teams in the team we invited, only the University of Connecticut is the favorite team, and at most there are second-rate teams like Stanford University."

"Non-league matches are not important games for us in the first place, and we can't get an invitation through non-league games at all."

In NCAA's non-league games, winning the hot strong team can get a lot of extra points, winning a weak team but not much bonus points for themselves, so those hot strong teams prefer to blow up each other, and the weak team wants to invite them to play has to take money, and many times it costs a lot of money, because the popular strong team and the weak team play, and if they win, they don't get much, but they lose a lot of money.

Jones went on to ask: "How's Bruce doing lately?" ”

"That kid really seems to have found a way to play all of a sudden, and although his body is still too thin, he can play with his brain, and it's hard for a player like Andre Jackson who only uses his muscles to hit the basket to bully him anymore."

"Looks like we can get out of the damn bottom three this year."

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Not every school in the United States will offer physical education classes, for example, Harvard, a famous school in the Ivy League, does not have physical education classes, but in the United States, sports have formed a culture, and sports classes are not offered because there is no need for school supervision, students will spontaneously form many sports clubs or associations, and students' sports activities will not be reduced at all, and NCAA is a form of American sports culture.

As mid-November approaches, Columbia University basketball enthusiasts are also paying attention to the Lions, who will soon begin their NCAA basketball journey in the 06/07 season.

(To be continued)