How the belt works

A lineal championship works like a boxing title: to become the champion, you have to beat the champion. The College Basketball Belt is one title, passed from team to team, game by game, for more than seventy-five years.

The rules

1. Where it starts. Our game-by-game record begins with the 1949–50 season, so the belt starts with the reigning national champion: Kentucky, who beat Oklahoma A&M 46–36 in the 1949 NCAA final.
2. Beat the holder, take the belt. Every game counts: regular season, conference tournaments, the NCAA tournament, the NIT and the other postseason events. Home, away or neutral.
3. Division I only. Both teams have to be in Division I that season (the major-college level before 1973). A holder that loses to a non-Division I team keeps the belt, and those games aren't title defenses.
4. No ties. Basketball plays overtime until someone wins, so every belt game has a winner.
5. If a holder leaves Division I, the belt goes back to the most recent earlier holder that is still playing, the same rule the College Football Belt uses. It hasn't happened yet.

Sources

Results come from CollegeBasketballData.com and are updated automatically every few hours during the season. Spot a missing or wrong game? Email hello@collegebasketballbelt.com.