https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/48704864/ncaa-mens-women-basketball-tournaments-expand-76-teams

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The expansion from 68 teams to 76 teams marks the men's tournament's largest increase since it moved to 64 teams in 1985. It went from 64 to 65 in 2001 and then added three more teams in 2011 to form the First Four.

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Half of the 24 opening-round teams will be the lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers, the other the lowest-seeded at-large teams.

The traditional 64-team first round and ensuing rounds will remain the same in both the men's and women's tournaments.

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TAMUallen said:

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https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/48704864/ncaa-mens-women-basketball-tournaments-expand-76-teams

Quote:

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The expansion from 68 teams to 76 teams marks the men's tournament's largest increase since it moved to 64 teams in 1985. It went from 64 to 65 in 2001 and then added three more teams in 2011 to form the First Four.

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Quote:

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Half of the 24 opening-round teams will be the lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers, the other the lowest-seeded at-large teams.

The traditional 64-team first round and ensuing rounds will remain the same in both the men's and women's tournaments.

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The same except 12 auto-bids compete with 12 major conference teams to even show up in the round 64. If they follow the previous pattern it will be six of each eliminated. But they could have the auto-bids play the major conference teams instead.

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"March Madne$$ i$ the be$t po$t$ea$on in all of $port$, and thi$ new format will continue that legacy by producing even more compelling game$ for fan$ and $tudent-athlete$," said Divi$ion I Men'$ Ba$ketball Committee chair Keith Gill, commi$$ioner of the $un Belt Conference.

"From my point of view, the more team$ we can get into the tournament and make it work logi$tically and mathematically, the better,". "It give$ more kid$ the opportunity to experience that."

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1 vs 19 matchups might not be that fun

Scotts Tot said:

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Perhaps we should call the regular season games "practice" and the tournament can be the real "season".

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Practice. Man, we talkin bout PRACTICE!

ghay

So this means instead of 4 at large teams having to play an extra game it's now 12?

Thats pretty terrible

Better be above that 8/9 line or you might be playing an extra game

Why not just expand to 128 and add an extra full round for every team while we're at it

Honestly at this point, that may be the better idea.

Poor NIT - if nobody cared about it before, they definitely won't now that they're going to have even less good teams.

CC09LawAg said:

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Honestly at this point, that may be the better idea.

Poor NIT - if nobody cared about it before, they definitely won't now that they're going to have even less good teams.

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It would at least be fair instead of having just certain teams playing extra games

Then you'd have the old 1 vs 32 upset

Very smart fans hate everything. News at 11!!!

They should bite the bullet and seed it like a regular tournament for a clean break from the stupid half and half play in. Just make 14-19s play each other to get to the 1-3 seeds. Full court press on the marketing to push propaganda that these are real tournament games and put out full brackets with teams seeded through 19s. It would help get the small conference teams a game of exposure before playing their big matchups, add tournament share money to more low conference teams and patch over the slow crawl toward everyone realizing that small conference teams are not going to be in the same league in terms of professionalization of tye big schools anymore.