Teams like Indiana - eternally on the wrong side of the bubble - will finally get a shot. This expansion is custom made for the power 4 conferences to gobble up more bids.
The SEC would have had 2 more teams, presumably, in the tournament had it happened this year : Oklahoma and Auburn.
You would have had San Diego State and Indiana also getting in. Then Seton Hall, New Mexico, Virginia Tech (fringe case?) and Stanford, to round out the field? Cinci probably would have been the first one OUT at this point, but we are no longer talking about the quality of teams getting in it, nor those just with a pulse .... Cincinnati, of course, had fired coach Wes Miller leading into Selection Sunday. So ... The butterfly effect of a 76-team field is drastic, so I'm going assume all things equal here, and say Cinci would've been the first one OUT.
The additional bids mean 21 percent of all Div. 1 teams will be included in the postseason.
Personal thoughts :
64 teams was sublimely perfect, and they continue to screw with the dynamics and tweak it into squeezing the most money they can from it. They would do better making it truly mean something special and have kept it at 64 teams. Having 350+ Division one schools wanting a shot to be the next Cinderella ..... made it inevitable they had to expand, and I doubt they will be done at 76. But that's the way of things in the world.
Finishing .500 or better is no longer a yardstick to making the tournament. You can now get in with a losing record in conference and ostensibly, it makes the regular season less imperative to do well from beginning to end.
Kansas has been in every NCAAT since what, 1989 (sanctions/stripped) ? That's the longest streak? Welp, there's another meaningless stat/record now.
As far as the tweaking of having the 16 seeds decided by play in games to play a 1 seed, and 2 of the 15 seeds determined this way seems logical, there still won't be much of any difference as a #1 or #2 seed to play who comes out of the play in games.
The fact that they're doing that with the 12 seeds, and 2 of the 11 seeds, I think it's does inject better quality in those matchups, but it all seems to come at the expense of cinderellas .... there's the irony, the biggest and most exciting aspect of the tournament, who is the Cinderellla for this year? Well ... it looks to me like they're going to be fewer moving forward, just like this past season.
TL
NR version :44 at large bids
32 automatic bids
76 teams means more at large bids for power 4 conferences, those that would have been on the bubble like Indiana, now get in. The bubble/bar sis set even lower now.
We have a new "opening round" now ( No more "First Four" games ... )
2 sites to play games on tuesday / wed. - 3 games in Dayton each day, another site TBD ( somewhere out west is the idea) 3 games on each day, and that is where they will play the other 3 games for a total of 6 games.
4 games to determine the 16 seeds
2 games to determine 2 of the 15 seeds
4 games to determine the 12 seeds
2 games to determine 2 of the 11 seeded teams
Please add your thoughts.
Try to stay on topic, friends, because I don't post threads often, but when I do, I prefer to post them on the Rafters .... and they don't get hijacked.
Go Big Blue !
Last edited:
