This is so dumb
College Sports (Basketball)
I say this because if you win your conference tournament and get an automatic bid you should be playing in the actual tournament and not playing your way into the tournament. If it is less exciting games so be it, most of those games are less exciting anyway.
GrayGhost77
- Centennial, CO
I wish the best KenPom team from each conference got an autobid. The conference tourneys are as much a crapshoot as the NCAAT.
But I also wish we could take the 16 best KenPom/Torvik teams and have 7-game series to determine the winner, so you probably shouldn't ask me
The ESPN article says "The expansion would lead to an additional eight men's games, meaning the Tuesday and Wednesday of the NCAA tournament would feature 24 of the 76 men's teams. That number now includes eight teams who would have qualified for the traditional bracket that would square off against the eight at-large additions."
I read this to mean the play-in games will be: two 16v16 games (four teams), and ten games between bubble teams (twenty teams).
I was initially against when the field was expanded to 68, but I can't imagine it now without the first 4 games. I'm fine with more of those.
Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
Really not interested in seeing more sub .500 conference-record teams from major conferences get in. I’d rather see the low- or mid- major teams that dominated their conference play that just somehow lost their conference tournament get in finally. That’s the best way to expand this thing.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
To be clear I think this is the equivalent of painting a Facebook ad onto the Sistine Chapel ceiling and I would literally send people to jail for it if I could, HOWEVER putting more auto qualifiers into play-in games will actually make the 16 and 15 seeds quite a bit stronger and more likely to beat 1's and 2's, all else being equal.
You'll have one of the 2's playing a team that would have been a 13 seed pre-2011.
Expansion = Add more zeroes to the bottom line for the wealthy bastages. Yay!
I fully expect Illinois to be on the top 10 from now until eternity so this really won't matter to me. but it does kinda suck
there is a small plus side. since I go to Vegas every year for March madness, I wouldn't mind being and to go to a game in Vegas.
there is a small plus side. since I go to Vegas every year for March madness, I wouldn't mind being and to go to a game in Vegas.
will they be that good?
And a first team out (Cincinnati) would still have an efficiency rank equal/better than the last four bye teams. I'll never get used to ignoring efficiency for selection.
I'll also never get used to people whining about the last at-large teams' resumes without also whining about the resumes of the worst auto-bid teams. We're just used to the latter.
Last edited:
the better question....how would we even be able to tell?
128 is the right number. 4 regions, 32 teams. It only adds one more game. I joke, but I'm sure my grandkids will love May Madness with 256 teams in 30 years.
Thoughts on getting rid of the NIT tournament and going to 96 teams. Top 8 seeds get a bye. Stop calling it the play in games (derogatory anyway) and make it the field of 96. In the BIG tournament teams get byes and I assume other conferences do the same. Why not with the NCAA Tournament? I don’t watch the NIT, guessing others don’t. Obviously fewer games but surely more would watch than the NIT.
IlliniwekKDR
- Colorado Springs, CO
Hey NCAA
Yay let's reward Indiana for playing nobodies in non-conference again
I think the NCAA ideally wants to figure out a way to eliminate the non-competitive 16th seed teams from low major conferences and replace them with better teams.
Here’s how I would do it: If the 24 worst teams had to play their way in to the tourney, then the top 52 (seeds 1 thru 13) should be locked in whether they are auto qualifiers or at larges.
So the 1st round would like.
#24/#1 for the #14
#23/#2 for the #14
#22/#3 for the #14
#21/#4 for the #14
#20/#5 for the #15
#19/#6 for the #15
#18/#7 for the #15
#17/#8 for the #15
#16/#9 for the #16
#15/#10 for the #16
#14/#11 for the #16
#13/#12 for the #16
If the NCAA did it this way it’d make the tourney way stronger by the time you got to the Round of 64.
For this past season based on Kenpom the bottom 12 seeded teams were all auto bids:
Prairie View- #281 (16)
Lehigh-#292 (16)
LIU #216 (16)
Howard #196 (16)
Tenn St #191 (15)
UMBC #187 (16)
Queens #186 (15)
Furman #184 (15)
Siena #180 (16)
Penn #156 (14)
Idaho #155 (15)
Kennesaw St-#149 (14)
And the best 12 Kenpom teams not selected that had at least winning records:
Auburn
Oklahoma
Cincinnati
Indiana
New Mexico
San Diego State
Seton Hall
West Virginia
Tulsa
Grand Canyon
Boise State
Virginia Tech
So imagine instead of the upper 12 teams being the (14-16 seeds), you had the bottom 12 teams in those spots instead.
FeelYourPaign
- So Cal
I think the evidence of how many fans want this will be in the pools. How many pools will ignore those first 12 games and ask you to pick only the 64? I predict that 99 % of pools will ignore the play ins and pools will continue to start on Thursday.