NCAA Unveils 68-team plan for men's basketball tournament

Upon some reflection today about this plan, I'm tentatively eager to see in practice -- but I came up with a couple hypothetical (and admittedly wordy) scenarios that could prove problematic.

The 2010 tournament (and one of the last teams out) makes up my example. Let's say two of your last at-larges in the field are Virginia Tech and UTEP, and the winner gets a 12 seed opposite No. 5 Butler in the West Regional. Would, say, Fran Dunphy and East No. 5 seed Temple have an unfair advantage over Butler because the Owls can scout their opponent, 12th-seeded Cornell? Would the advantage go to Butler because it would have extra rest -- or would it be a disadvantage to play a 12 seed with the momentum of having already won a game?

(Remember, the issue of byes backfired in the Big East tourney when some higher seeded teams, having had an extra two days rest, were knocked out in their openers. I can see Boeheim, for example, absolutely losing his mind if his Orange were to be a 5 seed.)

-- And, the Principles and Procedures give the selection committee the freedom to move a team up and down a seed line to balance the bracket (avoiding regular-season rematches, etc.). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be an 11 seed that gets bumped down to a First Four game between two potential 12s.

 

This doesn't help much, if at all. All it does is push a few at-large qualifiers down to a 16/17 seed in order to make room for the No. 7-8 team from a major conference.

The conferences that got one and only one team will still get one and only one team. It just means eight of those teams will have to fight it out for the honor of getting banished by a No. 1 seed two days later.

This is exactly what the NCAA big boys want. They despise the SWACs, MEACs, ECACs, Southlands and Summit Conferences of the world and wish they would just go form their own I-AA division. More space for a 16-15 North Carolina team with its fans and alums.

 

Like I said, I'm confused. Your scenario makes sense.

The renaming of the rounds is clearly meant to pave the way for a future 96 or 128, however. Took 'em longer than I thought.

 

64 teams was perfect.
65 teams was idiotic.
68 teams is equally ridiculous.

Does this in any way make the tournament better? No. Does this make for must-see TV? No.

Leave it to the NCAA.

 

Wrong.

Only four of the one-only conferences are involved in these games. They go from one play-in game to two. The other two play-in games involve at-large teams.

This also doesn't help the NCAA avoid the accusations of subtle racism that it got in the first few years of the play-in game, when it seemed like the SWAC and/or MEAC were represented every year. It's going to be extremely difficult to keep those guys out of the play-in games now that there's two of them.

 

There you go, trying to make sense of all this. 1 should play 64, but that's not the way the NCAA does math.

 

I think this is a good idea. It keeps the great Thursday/Friday excitement in tact and adds a bit of value to Tuesday/Wednesday. People will now actually watch the play-in round.

And it will be all NCAA all week. The conference tournaments start Tue/Wed with the Big East, end on Sunday with the selection. Monday is bracket day. Tue-Sun is hoops.

Awesome.

 

I don't think there's any racism involved. Those are the two weakest conferences in the country. Sure, you get a rare event like Coppin State beating South Carolina and Hampton having a couple of good teams. But those conferences get the worst of the leftovers. I covered a MEAC team for four years. I've seen it.

 

64 was and will always be the perfect number for that tournament. They can tinker with the format all they want, but all this cynical and greed-driven expansion has done is water it down and make it worse. The last thing that tourney needed was more sacrificial patsies or underachievers that finished 7th in their conference squeezing in.

 

I am sure the NCAA is doing it all for the student-athletes.

 

MEAC and SWAC have been in the play-in plenty of times, but never against each other, probably for the very reason mentioned.

 

What exactly makes you think people will watch the play-in game now, anymore so than before?