Sources: NCAA presents new basketball tournament models that would expand field by 4 or 8 teams

NCAA tournament expansion appears to be inevitable. The question is how many more teams are added. (C. Morgan Engel/Getty Images)

NAPLES, Fla. — College basketball moved one step closer this week to an expanded NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

NCAA officials on Wednesday presented to Division I conference commissioners at least two models of an expanded field, one with an additional four teams and another with an additional eight teams, commissioners told Yahoo Sports. Officials declined to speak publicly about the models.

The models would expand the 68-team field to 72 or 76 teams, with additional at-large selections as well as at least one additional First Four site. Any expansion would begin, at earliest, in the 2025-26 season. If the men’s event does expand, the women’s tournament is likely to undergo a similar expansion.

Dan Gavitt, NCAA vice president for the men’s basketball championship, unveiled the models in a presentation on Wednesday at the commissioners’ annual summer meeting. In the culmination of months of work, Gavitt outlined possibilities for what commissioners believe to be an inevitable expansion of the men’s event — a movement mostly championed by the power conferences, something Yahoo Sports reported in February.

As a way to avoid eliminating any of the 28 small-conference automatic qualifiers — a time-honored and popular concept with fans — NCAA and conference leaders are targeting the addition of at-large selections as has been done in the past. The last expansion, in 2011, added four new at-large teams and created the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, where two pairings of 16 seeds and two pairings of at-large selections meet in play-in games.

Any new expansion to the field is expected to result in at least one additional First Four site, perhaps in a Western time zone. But expanding the tournament — by even just four teams — is a complex issue.

Officials are planning to retain the current 64-team bracket. With play-in game winners…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-ncaa-presents-new-basketball-tournament-models-that-would-expand-field-by-4-or-8-teams-214628269.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-19 21:46:28

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