NCAA announces 'First Four' in 68-team format

Tom Crean wasn’t shy about his opinions in late April on expanding the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. In fact, when the NCAA announced it would be expanding to 68 teams, Crean wanted more.

“I myself would have loved to see it go to 96,” Crean said to ESPN. “Anything that adds more pageantry is great, but it’s such an outstanding event that so many people look forward to, this isn’t a bad answer.”

The new 68-team tournament will add a little more of what Crean was looking for to the former 65-team format. The addition of four teams will start next March.

Now there will be an opening weekend, called the “First Four,” in which eight teams will play. Two games will be against the lowest seeds, teams 65 to 68. The remaining games played will be the last four schools to qualify with at-large bids.

This model, which will feature a weekend of play-in games instead of the traditional one, was essentially a compromise to ensure a fair amount of teams will still be represented at every level in the first round.

“You’re not going to come up with the perfect model,” NCAA Selection Committee Chair Dan Guerrero said. “You’re not going to come up with a model that is going to appease every constituency out there. But we felt that this model provided the
opportunity to do something special for the tournament.”

March Madness has evolved over the years, with the most recent change in 2001, when the field was expanded to allow 65 teams into the dance, with 34 at-large teams making the field. The new format will allow 31 automatic bids and now 37 at-large bids.
However, not all are pleased with the expansion changes.

One such person is Navy men’s basketball coach Billy Lange. Lange disapproves mainly because it adds another step into the qualifying format, making it even more difficult for smaller schools to qualify for the dance.

“If we’re talking about expansion, you want the entire NCAA tournament to feel like an event,” Lange said. “If we’re playing Tuesday, we (in essence) have one more ‘conference tournament’ game before we get into the big show.”

But the committee’s decision could have been more difficult for smaller schools such as Navy, as the committee pondered making the lowest eight at-large or overall seeds teams have a play-in game, but later voted against it.

“In the end, we selected a format that we felt allows us to break new ground,” Guerrero said. “We are excited about the concept of the First Four, and we are really pleased with where we wound up and think that it would add value to the tournament as we move forward.”