NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for ESPN UK

ESPNPlayer.com will bring UK and European viewers live and on-demand coverage of every game of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament as the top 68 college teams in US college basketball compete for supremacy in the annual knock-out tournament.

Available on Mac, PC, iPad and through Samsung smart TVs, ESPN Player’s coverage begins on Tuesday 15th March and runs through five rounds to the National Championship game on Monday 4 April as the eyes of the basketball world focus on the knock-out tournament famed for its upsets, excitement and drama.

The build-up to March Madness® began with Championship Week in the first two weeks of March as teams competed to secure one of 31 automatic places in the tournament. The remaining 37 teams were chosen “at large” on Selection Sunday by a committee based on their regular-season performance.

There is a British contingent in this year’s tournament as University of California powerhouse centre and Derby native, Kinglsey Okoroh, will be hoping the Golden Bears make an impact in the South as the fourth highest ranked team. California’s first round game pits them against Hawaii live on ESPN Player (Friday, 18 March, 6pm GMT). Other players in the tournament with British connections include University of Texas Center, Prince Ibeh (born in London) and Stony Brook Univeristy freshman forward Akwasi Yeboah (from Chigwell, England).

Before the tournament begins, basketball fans around the world will predict how it will unfold by filling out their brackets. The notoriously difficult process sees millions of fans log their guesses online into ESPN’s Tournament Challenge bracket game – which received more than 11.5 million entries in 2015, including U.S. President Barack Obama. Fans will also be able to follow the tournament in detail through ESPN’s extensive editorial digital coverage from its US-based team of leading college basketball writers, reporters and experts.