College basketball is different from the “normal” basketball you are used to in the Netherlands: both in organization and in atmosphere. You don’t play for a club team, but for the team of a university. In America, the leagues and the (financial) stakes in college basketball are so big that an enormous amount of money is spent on it. For virtually every American youth basketball player, the goal is to play for a good college basketball team.
On average, a team consists of 20 boys or girls, and you train together every day. With your team you compete against other universities in the competition (conference). The ultimate goal? To win the conference! Then the team qualifies for the national tournament, in which the best 64 teams in America compete! The NCAA national basketball tournament is also known as “March Madness.”
A typical game in college basketball is played in 2 halves of 20 minutes. So this is different from the rules in the NBA!
The biggest difference of all is the atmosphere during games in and around the stadiums. Teammates and fans make a lot of noise, encourage each other and often shout encouraging texts at each other. So don’t be surprised if during a game thousands of students are cheering, the games are on TV and mega amounts of sponsorship money are raised during these kinds of games: the energy level is very high!
