2012 NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament

The 2012 NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament involved 64 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division II college basketball as a culmination of the 2011Ã¢ÂÂ12 basketball season.

The Western Washington Vikings won the tournament to earn the first basketball national championship in school history.

Qualification and tournament format

The champions of 22 of the 23 Division II basketball conferences qualified automatically. An additional 42 teams were selected as at-large participants by the selection committee. The first three rounds of the tournament were organized in regions comprising eight participants in groups of two or three conferences (two in the Central and Midwest regions). The eight regional winners met at the Elite Eight for the final three rounds held at The Bank of Kentucky Center, now known as BB&T Arena, on the campus of Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky, after the final rounds were held in Springfield, Massachusetts for the previous six years.

Automatic qualifiers

The following teams automatically qualified for the tournament as the winners of their conference tournament championships: The newly formed Great American Conference began play for the 2011Ã¢ÂÂ12 season, composed of former members of the Lone Star Conference and Gulf South Conference. The conference champion, Arkansas Tech, was not eligible for an automatic berth, but did receive an at-large No. 3 seed in the South Central Region.