Shatel: Bigger NCAAs may help Jays, NU

ST. LOUIS — Somebody asked the other day about Creighton’s RPI. I had no idea. I haven’t looked at an RPI in months. With CU and Husker Hoops this year, it’s been more like RIP.

But college basketball fans in Nebraska might have a reason to check a year from now.

The possibility of the NCAA expanding the Division I men’s basketball tournament from 64 to 96 teams not only seems inevitable, people in college basketball are saying it will happen next season.

The purist in this hoops fan says bad idea.

You water down the tournament. By expanding the bubble, you take the air out of the regular season, especially February. You take away the incentive to play tough non-conference schedules. You take the drama out of Selection Sunday. Might as well call it Seeding Sunday.

A lot of purists agree: More is not always better. Sometimes more is just more.

Too bad for us. There is one simple reason why this will happen. Anyone care to guess? The NCAA and CBS stand to make more money by adding 32 teams and another round of games. Times are tough. CBS still must pay the NCAA $2.1 billion by 2013.

Here’s one simple reason why there will be no uproar: The purists will be muffled by screaming fans whose team got into the dance.

Which is why Creighton and Nebraska fans, once they get over the indignity of it all, should look at this as a good thing.

Think of the Jays playing a representative non-conference schedule, finishing second in the Missouri Valley and easily making the NCAAs. What a concept.

What if the Huskers could go 8-8 in the Big 12, finish eighth in a tough league and make the dance? For a coach on the hot seat, that would be just what the Doc ordered.

You don’t want to reward mediocrity. But too often programs like Creighton and Nebraska get stuck in the quicksand of college hoops.

Mid-majors like CU have limited access to playing BCS-level schools and pumping up their RPIs and often get aced out by middle-of-the-pack teams in the big boy leagues. Like the Jays did last year.

NU, meanwhile, has mismanaged its men’s hoop program the last decade. Why reward that? Good question. But what comes first? Recruiting the players to make the NCAAs? Or making the NCAAs to woo the players? The basement of the Big 12 can often be a treadmill.

An extra 32 might give the Huskers the needed jump-start that March Madness can bring. That’s assuming Doc Sadler can get the Huskers into the top eight again. Unless the Big 12 would get nine teams in.

That’s the question nobody can answer. Would an expanded field be the overdue justice for mid-majors? Or would it mean just more BCS teams in?

“I think it would have to help our cause,’’ said Valley Commissioner Doug Elgin, a former member of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee. “I think you would see the same selection standards for the extra 32 that you do now for 64. In a way, you would be taking the top 66 at-large. Take last year, Creighton and Illinois State get in.

“I like the concept. It creates more opportunity. It’s not a level playing field the way it is now.’’

That doesn’t necessarily make it a more mediocre field. Actually, it could make the NCAA tourney stronger. If CU and NU are making the NCAAs every other year, doesn’t recruiting get better? Don’t they become stronger programs?

How would it work? Elgin said that the top 32 seeds would get first-round byes. The bottom 64 would play in 32 first-round games on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament. Then, on Saturday and Sunday, the winners of the 32 games would play the 32 top seeds.

The round of 32 would take place on the following Tuesday and Wednesday. The Sweet 16 would start, as always, on Thursday and Friday and continue through Sunday.

So you’re not adding a week, you’re cramming in games during the second week.

This will happen, because the NCAA and CBS want it to happen. But it goes down easier with the endorsement of coaches like Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who is in favor of combining the 32-team NIT and NCAA tourney to make this happen.

Coach K wants every conference champion to get an automatic bid to the 96-team dance, to make sure the regular season has some weight. But what if the MEAC gets two teams in because it has different regular-season and conference tournament champions?

What if the Jays or Huskers get aced out in that event?

Two things. One, if you can’t make a 96-team tourney, go back to the gym and don’t say a word.

Second, the way our teams played this year, we’ll cross that 96-team bridge when we come to it.

It could be next year. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Contact the writer:

444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com

« Sports - Main

Share