NCAA expands to 68, not 96, at least for now. All current #16 seeds, and 3 of 4 current #15s, go to playin games. Low-majors screwed. Again.
NCAA expands to 68, not 96, at least for now. All current #16 seeds, and 3 of 4 current #15s, go to playin games. Low-majors screwed. Again.
I dunno, atleast now the play-in game is less humiliating, since there are more than one, its just like an earlier tournament round.
Thank goodness. I actually kinda like this. The play-in game is the only chance some of these schools to win an NCAA game. Why not have more of that?
Because it’s not really “an NCAA game,” except on paper. Although David does have a point that perhaps it’ll seem a little like more of a real NCAA round now. The problem is, the games still aren’t compelling enough to get most people to actually watch. This year, the play-in round would’ve been something like North Texas vs. Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Robert Morris vs. Winthrop, UC-Santa Barbara vs. Vermont and Lehigh vs. East Tennessee State — all playing for the right to take on #1 seeds on 2 or 3 days’ rest. The general public reaction is going to be: who cares??? And without public interest, they still won’t feel like “real” NCAA games.
In any case, I still don’t understand why it’s necessary to insult eight conference champions, and decrease their chances of getting a real NCAA win (see: Hampton over Iowa State 2001; Hampton probably would’ve been in a play-in game) in order to get four mediocre at-large teams like Virginia Tech into the field.
Meanwhile, roughly speaking, the current #14s will now be #15s, and the current #13s will now be #14s… and the #13 line will be filled with teams that otherwise wouldn’t have made the tournament, but are still probably better than the current crop of #13s. This is bad news for the individual low-major teams in question, who will face tougher opponents than they otherwise would have (e.g., Ohio would’ve been playing a #2 instead of a #3, Murray State would’ve been playing a #3 instead of a #4, etc.), but it’s also bad news for the #2, #3 and #4 seeds, who will face tougher competition in the first round than in the past. It’s hard to know if this means more upsets in the aggregate, or perhaps fewer upsets but more near-upsets. But it certainly changes the first-round dynamic quite a bit. There’s now a huge, huge difference between the #16 seed line and the #15 seed line, and really nothing except a #16 winning should any longer be considered a truly earth-shattering, mind-blowing, Hampton-like upset.