Every team in college basketball plays in a conference - the regular season consists of each team playing other teams in their conference.

Conference size and structure vary (mostly between 8 and 16 teams) - you need to look at an individual conference to see how it works.

All teams generally also play a number of games during their season against non conference opponents.

In NCAA Div I there are 32 conferences - the 64 team "post season" consists of the 32 conference winners, plus one other team from each conference invited by a committee to play post season. This may be the conference runner up, but may also be a lower team if they have performed well over the season (there is a complex ranking system that helps sort this out).

Hence the Div I post season is 64 teams who are all seeded, play through knockout rounds down to the "sweet sixteen", the "elite eight", then "final four" and finally the championship game.

Div II only has 23 conferences, so post season is not as large but a similar system.

Check out this link for conference information and team maps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_basketball

every team plans a schedule - that is conference games plus other games that can be organized between the unis.

the name unis can pick and choose their non conference games - mid majors then have to hope the names will accept.

there are about 18 conferences - everyone represents an area (and size of college) and they play home and away series.

that maybe 18 games - so a team can go 16w - 2L "in conference play"

and play another 10 games and go 6w-4l in "non conference games" to be 22w-6L "overall"

then there is "ranking" or seeding - that is dobe via select media and other coaches - most votes gets no.1 seeding etc - that is done every monday.

a team can finish their home and away 'conference" big east, big 10, acc, pac 12 etc in first position and "win" the regular season title.
then they play finals and another winner can evolve from that and win the conference "play offs".

the smaller / mid major conferences only the title winner gets in ncaa tourney - or a wild card may get in - i.e. st marys

but the bigger conferences may get 6 or 8 teams in the ncaa tourney based on the teams schedule strength (i.e may be 8w-8L but against tough teams)

where as a mid major may play lower ranked teams go 10w - 0 L and not get in.

villanova was a classic - very average w-L but repeatedly beat top 5 teams after Christmas and made it.

the ncaa tourney involves every conference broken into 4 areas - so you can have 4 no 1 tourney seeds going in - then it is knock out

sorry may out on my "about 18 conferences" ... lot more than that

just google ncaa.com

Thanks for the responses. Very helpful. Didn't realise that non conference games are just scheduled by the teams themselves.

does each state have a conference or does is it cross state

It crosses states. Eg Big Ten consists of teams in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Minneseota.
Non-conference games can be key to whether you make it or not as the committee who decides which teams are in the tournament look at strength of schedule.
Schools can also opt out of their conference and move as is the case with the Big East next season.

Flinders80, neither did I. Good thread!

CR, only the team that wins the conference is guaranteed to make the tournament, that is why some of the better conferences have more than 2 teams (such as the ACC and Big 10)

^Yep, agreed, soz I have mislead on that ...

The whole conference thing becomes a moving feast over time anyway as teams move between conferences for various reasons and conferences come and go.

Exactly what drives all the movement is a whole study in itself !