NCAA committee says not much will change with extended tournament format
Making selections for the Final Four Tournament this year in March will not be any easier, according to selection committee chairman Gene Smith, despite the fact that the tournament has been extended to 68 teams.
Smith does not expect the decisions to get any easier with the tournament ballooning to 68 teams and even hinted at the idea that it could become more complicated.
“I still believe there’s going to be that 38th and 39th team that feel they should have been the 36th or 37th [at-large] team,” Smith told the Associated Press. “I do believe, though, in the room we’ll kind of
have one of those moments of, ‘Okay, here we are with trying to solidify who 35, 36, 37 is.’ But it won’t change our process. I think it will be more of a psychological or emotional experience in the first year of going to 68.”
In April the NCAA was expected to announce that the tournament would expand to 96 teams, as they had negotiated new television contracts with Turner Sports and CBS. However, when the companies made it clear that they did not need that many games to make
a profit the NCAA decided on a smaller expansion.
The new format sees four play-in games rather than one. Two games will take place between the four lowest seeds and two games will feature the four lowest at-large qualifiers, eventually ending with the four teams that will join the tournament. The hope
is that it will give more places to teams from mid-major conference. However, Smith seemed reluctant to say that mid-majors would have an advantage.
“I don’t know if it will make it easier,” said Smith. “It’s really hard to speculate what that moment will bring for us. We’ll move through our process. Now, as opposed to stopping, we’ll go to 37 at-large.”
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