The big question those in favor of NCAA tourney expansion cannot answer
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Advocates cite more opportunities and examples of worthy teams omitted.
- Bracketology and Quad 1 data highlight power‑conference mediocrities on the bubble.
- Recent seasons show many borderline teams among the 68-team fields.
To a degree that remains baffling, the most powerful people in college sports seem determined to tamper with the one thing the NCAA currently does that is a complete success.
Speaking last month, NCAA President Charlie Baker reiterated his support for expanding the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments from their present size of 68 teams.
“I said all along that I think there are some very good reasons to expand the tournament,” Baker told ESPN.com. “So, I would like to see it expand.”
According to ESPN.com, Baker sited the failure of Indiana State and Seton Hall to make the 2024 NCAA Tournament as examples of deserving teams omitted from a 68-team field.
Baker also said that, in speaking to college athletes, they value postseason tournaments for the opportunity to compete against players and teams they do not normally have a chance to play against.
“So, from my point of view, the more teams we can get into the tournament and make it work logistically and mathematically, the better,” Baker said. “It gives more kids the opportunity to experience that.”
To my ears, that sounds an awful lot like diluting the achievement of making the NCAA tourney in favor of turning an at-large bid into more of a “participation trophy.”
The question that Baker, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and others who favor NCAA Tournament expansion can’t really answer is this: Are there really deserving teams being routinely left out of the current 68-team March Madness fields?
One need only look at the projected bubble for the 2026 NCAA tourney to get a resounding answer.
According to the most recent (at the time of writing) Bracketology from ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi, the projected last four teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament are Santa Clara, Auburn, Indiana and New Mexico.
Santa Clara, at 24-7 with wins over Xavier, Minnesota and Saint Mary’s, would be a worthy NCAA tourney team. Skeptics would note that coach Herb Sendek’s Broncos are 1-5 in Quad 1 games (those deemed the most difficult to win by the NCAA NET Rankings).
New Mexico, 22-7, has a 98-71 blowout win over Santa Clara and a 2-5 mark in Quad 1 games.
However, Indiana is 17-12, 8-10 in the Big Ten. The Hoosiers have lost four straight and are 1-10 in Quad 1 games.
Auburn, meanwhile, is 15-14, 6-10 in the SEC and has lost seven of its past eight games (although one of those defeats, a 96-92 loss to Alabama, came against a foe which was playing a “ringer”).
The teams Lunardi projects as the first four out of the 2026 NCAA Tournament do not exactly scream “excellence.”
San Diego State is 19-9 overall, 13-5 in the Mountain West Conference and 2-6 in Quad 1 games.
Ohio State is 18-11, 10-8 in the Big Ten and 2-10 in Quad 1 contests.
California is 20-9, 8-8 in the ACC and 4-4 in Quad 1 games.
VCU is 22-7, 13-3 in the Atlantic 10 and the winner of 11 of its past 12 games. The Rams are also 0-5 in Quad 1 games.
Not only are there not deserving teams being regularly omitted from men’s NCAA basketball tournaments, it is more common that there are not enough meritorious teams to fill the current 68-team fields.
In the 2024-25 season, the first four teams omitted from the NCAA tourney were West Virginia (19-13), Indiana (19-13), Ohio State (17-15) and Boise State (24-10).
Among the last four teams into the field were North Carolina (which was 1-12 vs. Quad 1 opponents) and Xavier (1-9 in Quad 1 games).
For 2023-2024, the first four teams out of the NCAA Tournament were Oklahoma (20-12), Seton Hall (20-12), Indiana State (28-6) and Pittsburgh (22-11).
In 2022-2023, the first four teams omitted from the NCAA tourney were Oklahoma State (18-15), Rutgers (19-14), North Carolina (20-13) and Clemson (23-10).
Of the 12 combined teams from among the first four out in the previous three NCAA Tournaments, only Indiana State in 2024 had a strong claim for inclusion.
Alas, the driving impetus behind NCAA tourney expansion is not to provide access for deserving teams from “smaller” leagues — such as the Sycamores out of the Missouri Valley Conference. It is to create more March Madness access for power-conference mediocrities.
That dynamic is on display in the discourse that surrounds the possibility that presently-unbeaten Miami (Ohio) at 29-0 might lose in the Mid-American Conference Tournament and need an at-large bid for NCAA Tournament inclusion.
According to the Pomeroy Ratings, the Red Hawks have played the 285th-strongest schedule in the country. In the NET Rankings, Miami has not played in a single Quad 1 game and is 1-0 in Quad 2 contests.
The argument against Miami as an at-large contender is the Red Hawks, based on their metrics, are not one of the 68 “best” teams. Yet I would argue that a team that has won the first 29 games of its regular season is one of the 68 most “deserving” teams.
Regardless of where one comes down on Miami, the fact that the projected 2026 NCAA Tournament bubble is overflowing with so much major-conference mediocrity should provide the rationale for an emphatic “no” to the whole idea of March Madness expansion.
