The NAIA basketball tournament? Throw 32 teams in the same building and see which is the last one standing at the end of a weeklong frenzy.(WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH ... BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW (EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW TO ASK))

Madness. If it's March, what else are we going to be talking about?

But this isn't NCAA hoops. This is the NAIA's version. And even if you don't recognize the names of the teams, it's pure college basketball Bacchanalia. Early-round games tip off just after breakfast, then it's wall-to-wall ball--sometimes until the wee hours of tomorrow. The merry-go-round rolls again a few hours later.

It's like a frenzied talent show. One act on stage with the next warming up in an auxiliary gym.

"Ten minutes between games, and you better be ready," says C.M. Newton, a Naismith Hall of Fame member who brought his Transylvania (Ky.) College team to the NAIA tournament in 1963 before he moved on to Alabama and Vanderbilt.

That was then, and this is, well, pretty much the same tournament.

Today's National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics schools are mostly small and often affiliated with religions. They're in places as large as Houston (Houston Baptist) and as small as Pippa Passes, Ky. (Alice Lloyd College).

From March 15-21, the best of the NAIA's Division I will play at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, continuing college basketball's longest-running tournament. The event was launched in 1937 with the help of James Naismith--one year before the inaugural NIT and two years before the NCAA Tournament's debut.