{"id":3082,"date":"2025-07-17T15:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3082\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T15:16:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T15:16:12","slug":"no-decision-has-been-made-on-ncaa-basketball-tournament-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3082\/","title":{"rendered":"No decision has been made on NCAA basketball tournament expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Drake coach Ben McCollum on college basketball coaching carousel<\/p>\n

Drake men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum responded to a question about the college basketball coaching carousel during a press conference on Wednesday, March 19, 2025<\/p>\n

After days and weeks of intense speculation, the NCAA men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball tournaments<\/a> won\u2019t be expanding \u2014 at least not quite yet.<\/p>\n

In a statement released on July 10, NCAA<\/a> senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said that no decision has been made on tournament expansion after it was \u201cdiscussed at length\u201d this week during meetings for the NCAA Division I men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball committees.<\/p>\n

Gavitt added that expanding the fields to 72 or 76 teams, or sticking with the current 68-team model, remain \u201cviable outcomes\u201d in advance of either the 2026 or 2027 tournaments.<\/p>\n

REQUIRED READING: College sports bill introduced by bipartisan group of House members<\/a><\/p>\n

The NCAA men\u2019s basketball tournament last expanded in 2011, when the advent of the First Four stretched the field from 65 to 68 teams. The move had an immediate impact, with VCU advancing all the way to the Final Four after it had been one of the last teams selected for the tournament. The NCAA women\u2019s tournament remained at 64 teams until 2022, when it also made the jump to 68 teams.<\/p>\n

Whether it goes to 72 or 76 teams \u2014 ESPN reported last month<\/a> that the latter is the more likely option \u2014 it would be the largest increase in tournament teams since 1985, when it went from a 53-team event to a 64-team one.<\/p>\n

The discussion around tournament expansion has intensified this year. While speaking with reporters at a Big 12 meeting in May, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the NCAA had been having “good conversation” with its media partners about the possibility of increasing the number of teams in the field.<\/p>\n

“Our goal here is to try to sort of get to either yes or no sometime in the next few months because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this,\u201d Baker said at the time<\/a>. \u201cIf we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated.”<\/p>\n

Baker told Yahoo Sports in June<\/a> that a decision on expansion would need to be made by the middle of August, seven months before the 2026 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are set to tip off.<\/p>\n

Though tournament expansion has support from many administrators and coaches \u2014 and stands to increase the value of the NCAA’s media-rights deal for the events \u2014 it has been a topic of widespread and intense criticism from fans.<\/p>\n

Dan Gavitt statement on NCAA tournament expansion<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Gavitt\u2019s statement in full:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCAA Division I Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Basketball Committees met this week, with the men\u2019s meeting taking place in Savannah and the women\u2019s meeting in Philadelphia. The topic of expanding the field for each championship was discussed at length but no decision or recommendation was made. The still viable outcomes include the tournaments remaining at 68 teams or expanding the fields to either 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2026 or 2027 championships.\u201d<\/p>\n

REQUIRED READING: College basketball too-early Top 25 rankings after transfer portal, NBA draft<\/a><\/p>\n

NCAA tournament expansion history<\/p>\n

Though it has been nearly 40 years since there was significant NCAA men’s basketball tournament expansion, the event has grown considerably over the course of its existence.<\/p>\n

What began as an eight-team competition in 1939 doubled to 16 teams in 1951. By 1975, it had doubled again, all the way up to 32 teams. It increased to 40 in 1979 \u2014 the year that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird famously faced off in Michigan State’s win over Indiana State in the national championship game \u2014 and again grew by eight teams in 1980, up to 48. After getting to 53 teams, it became a 64-team tournament in 1985 and remained at that number until 2001, when the formation of the Mountain West created the need for one more automatic bid.<\/p>\n

The final round of expansion came in 2011, when three more at-large bids were added to the tournament, making it a 68-team event that included the First Four, a group of four play-in games.<\/p>\n

Here’s a look at the history of NCAA tournament expansion:<\/p>\n

1951: expands from eight to 16 teams1953: grows from 16 to 22 teams1975: expands to 32 teams1979: grows from 32 to 40 teams1980: expands from 40 to 48 teams1983: goes from 48 to 52 teams1985: expands to 64 teams2001: adds one team, expanding to 652011: First Four implemented, growing field to 68<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drake coach Ben McCollum on college basketball coaching carousel Drake men’s basketball coach Ben McCollum responded to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[4136,461,49,48,4135,4142,551,547,543,550,4138,1161,3049,2561,1424,1212,525,530,1482,4140,532,531,44,1333,1345,1463,1334,82,865,1462,696,1484,1457,4139,4137,4144,4134,4141,4143],"class_list":["post-3082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaab","tag-baker","tag-basketball","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charlie","tag-charlie-baker","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-collegebasketball","tag-commonwealth","tag-espn","tag-espn-inc","tag-inc","tag-mens","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","tag-ncaa-womens-basketball-tournament","tag-ncaab","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-news","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-point","tag-positive","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-the","tag-to","tag-to-the-point","tag-tournament","tag-university","tag-virginia","tag-virginia-commonwealth-university","tag-womens","tag-womens-college-basketball","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}