2011 NCAA Vault Features More Games, Classic Bracket

With the 2011 NCAA Tournament tipping off this week, basketball fans are able to dive into classic games on NCAA.com along with the live streams of every game in this year’s tournament. Just in time for March Madness, Thought Equity Motion and NCAA Digital, powered by Turner Sports, launched the 2011 NCAA Vault, complete with a host of new search features and a Classic 68 Bracket that allows fans to vote on which game advances to the greatest in tournament history.

“Our favorite enhancement to the 2011 NCAA Vault is even richer search functionality,” says Kevin Schaff, CEO/founder of Thought Equity Motion. “You can search by game, across highlights, or within games, fully leveraging the smart content metadata that’s applied to each game in our platform.”

The latest edition of the NCAA Vault, which lives on NCAA.com, has been expanded with hundreds of new games, dating back to the 1970s, and offers additional search and social features. Fans can now search across the entire library as well as within games and can share their favorite moments through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and other social communities.

Changes to the NCAA Vault, which is a partnership between NCAA Digital and Thought Equity Motion, are truly a team effort.

“Thought Equity Motion’s API streams richly tagged NCAA video to Turner Sports, and Turner has the ability to add more content to the NCAA Vault and control the site’s frontend experience,” Schaff explains. “Turner can also use its tools to integrate more classic NCAA content on NCAA.com. Turner created the Classic 68 Bracket, but the video is being pulled from our platform.”

That Classic 68 Bracket, designed to showcase the early moments of today’s iconic players, allows fans to select the greatest game by voting to advance games through a simulated historical bracket. With video of key moments from each of the 68 games chosen to start the classic tournament, fans play the Selection Committee as they choose which games advance to the key rounds. In addition to being able to watch clips and vote to advance the bracket, the feature includes links to watch the complete games within the NCAA Vault.