NCAA Basketball

Understanding The Brand New, Batty, Befuddling 68-Team NCAA Tournament

In a single-elimination tournament, the ideal number of competitors is a multiple of four. When the NCAA expanded the bracket-friendly 64 team NCAA basketball championship to one more team in 2001 (as opposed to eliminating an at-large bid), the solution was to have the two lowest-seeded schools play for a chance to square off as the last 16th seeded team into the tournament and earning a first round dance partner of one of the top four teams in the land.

As you may have seen earlier this spring, the NCAA announced that it would expand the field by three additional schools, filling out the bracket with 68 teams starting with the 2011 tournament. While not nearly as extreme as a rumored explosion to 96 teams, the added teams would come from the at-large pool, not as a product of new conference seeds (as had been the reason back in ’01). Even though the bracket creep was minor, there still remained several questions for the NCAA, and the biggest of all would be how those three teams would be built into the now lopsided bracket.

The easiest situation would be to expand the current play-in game model that has pitted teams 64 and 65 since 2001, replicating it across the other three regions so that each 1 seed squares off against one of those bottom teams. Of course, the challenge here is that the play-in game has never been kind to smaller conferences who’s champions get shackled with one of those seeds, not to mention the fact that no 16 has ever beat a 1 seed. Why expand the tournament to watch eight small schools who rarely get a chance to play on the national stage be eliminated by the end of Friday?

Yesterday, the suspense was quelled, as the NCAA unveiled its plans for how they plan to slot the selections come March: a new round that would involve the last four at-large teams playing for two of the last four spots, while the other two up for grabs would be in the “play-in” style. The games – to be known as the “First Four” – would take place early in the same week as the round of 64, which would still take place in the middle Thursday and Friday of the month of March. While the two play-ins would face a 1 seed, the “First Four” game winners would earn middle of the road slots at 12 or 11, although the exact seeds are still to be determined.

The positive here would be a modicum of credibility for the selection committee, which never has had to reveal the order of at-large teams and the last teams in or out of the tournament (say what you will about the BCS, but at least the numbers are there for us to see when the teams get selected). However, only half of the new seeds will be selected in this manner, so one extra low-seeded conference will be hitting the showers before the tournament even begins.

The reactions have been mixed. As Pat Forde noted, it was the best solution at hand to ensure some parity; however, Forde’s bigger concern was the fact that the tourney expanded at all:

[The NCAA] scared us with the specter of 96, then delivered 68. It let us fear a banishment of eight small-conference champions to a four-game play-in round of no intrinsic value, then delivered a hybrid format combining both at-large teams and small-school automatic qualifiers.

So it hasn’t been all bad.

Then again, it hasn’t been all good. Keep that in mind — the NCAA was willing to mess with perfection, and that’s still a mistake. But if it is going to force-feed us more Big Dance, it at least is making it semi-tasty.

Here’s a case study to help understand the change, in the context of what we saw last March. The expansion means that there are now 37 at-large bids and 31 conference champions who will fill out the field, and all three new schools would come from the at-large pool. The play-in game last year featured Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Lehigh, and had the format for this year existed, two more of the 16 seeds (East Tennessee State, Robert Morris, Winthrop) also would have faced off for one of the opening rounds. In addition to those two playoffs, someone from the last few at-large teams considered “out” from the last tournament, the last teams out included Utah State, Florida, Illinois, Seton Hall, William & Mary and Arizona State. Two games would have pitted four of these schools for the last two spots (and a hat tip to Bracketology 101 for the data in this scenario).

No matter how it worked out, the new format was always going to give the fans more basketball. At least part of it will involve teams worth watching and potentially even with the Cinderella ability to make a run – although don’t expect that to happen any time soon. It’ll take three wins against increasingly competitive squads within five days for one of these squads to get to the Sweet 16, not to mention additional travel from the host site of the First Four (2011′s will be in Dayton).

Hey, at least there’s more games to gamble on (you know, if gambling was legal).