Feel like at very least Miami OH should be in play in game.
Off topic rant with play in. Call me crazy but with play in I don’t like how small conf. who won their tournament 4 are forced to play in Dayton against one another. Feel like play in should be last “at large” on the bubble and not for automatic qualifiers. And yes maybe Iowa would be in last 8 at large this year and be in the play in so be it but don’t like how they punish smaller schools who earned their spot in.
Those smaller schools are not being punished. They ARE in the tournament. And they count as tournament games.
People need to stop thinking in terms of 64 teams being the size of the tournament. It’s not. It’s 68 teams. And because 68 doesn’t halve down to 2 (68-34-17 as opposed to 64-32-16-8-4-2), then you need to have an unbalanced round i.e. the First Four, to get back to a number that halves down to 2.
It’s really no different than when there were 48 teams. Back then, 16 teams did not play on Thursday/Friday because 48 didn’t halve down to 2.
There are 2 solutions to getting rid of the “play in game” fallacy:
1. Expand the field to 128.
2. Create
actual play in games that consist solely of at large teams. Label them as play in and not counted as tournament games record-wise.
It is insulting and belittling to the teams who won their conference tournament and are in a First Four game to say they are “not in” the NCAA tournament, and they have to “play in” to a tournament they already qualified for.