Fifteen years after its last expansion, the NCAA Tournament is once again set for a broader field.
On Thursday, May 7, the NCAA formally ratified a proposal to expand both the men’s and women’s tournaments from 68 to 76 teams — or, approximately one-fifth of all Division I programs.
Coaches expressed mixed sentiment on the expansion, which comes as NCAA and collegiate sports leaders also grapple with widening the 12-team College Football Playoff.
“I’m in favor of three weeks,” Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said to a group of reporters. “It’s really hard to win six games in three weeks. I’m all in favor of the smaller teams having a chance to be in this tournament, I really am.
“As long as we stay in a three-week period, I think that’s all we got and I think it’s the best sporting event going because we’re going to allow more and more teams to be a part of it, obviously, and it’s going to impact the country in every state. I don’t have a problem with that at all, but the fact is, it’s hard to win six games. But there may be somebody to come through there and win seven or eight games, whatever it takes to get to the championship.”
The men’s tournament will maintain “March Madness Opening Round” games in Dayton, Ohio, on the Tuesday and Wednesday following Selection Sunday; the city will play host to six games across those two days. An additional location, which the NCAA has not divulged, will host the other six games.
Six of those opening-round matchups will feature the 12 lowest-placed conference championship automatic qualifiers while the other games will pit the 12 lowest-seeded at-large bid recipients.
Not every coach is quick to embrace the move to expand the field.
“I think for me, they can call us mid-major, we’re low-mid-major in the Big South, whatever gives us the best opportunity to win a game is what I’m for,” UNC Asheville coach Mike Morrell told USA TODAY Sports. “Without really knowing what that looks like, then I think my opinion could be skewed a little bit. When I was at the University of Texas (as an assistant coach), we were a 10-seed and a 6-seed. I think if you were to ask me 10 years ago, I would have said expand that thing and get as many of those high-major guys as we can.
“I understand that’s the reason, but I just think it really … I don’t know that dilutes is the right word but it negates some regular-season importance because you’re allowing so many of these quote unquote big boys in. How many teams are going to get in now with losing records in their league? I’ve got to imagine it’s going to be a much higher percentage.”
Tom Crean has coached in 20 career NCAA Tournament games across stops at Marquette, Indiana and Georgia. He remains close to the sport as an analyst for radio and TV.
His only shock about Thursday’s news? That it took 15 years to materialize.
Crean rightly expects a tougher road for the final teams earning their way into the field — at-large and as lower mid-major conference champs.
“It was inevitable from the moment that it was floated out there years back and I’m surprised it took this long to come to fruition,” Crean told USA TODAY Sports. “I believe you will see more teams that would have been 14s or 15s have to play their way in, and you’ll see some brand name and Power conference teams end up as 12s or maybe even 13s.
“An occasional outlier, lower-mid or mid-major will jump in, but it’s not really set up for that with the metrics and the money allocations.”
On the heels of a 2025-26 basketball season that saw Miami (Ohio) barely earn an at-large selection despite 31 wins before Selection Sunday because of a soft nonconference schedule that ranked as low as No. 360, Crean expects more scheduling woes in that ecosystem.
“If people thought scheduling was hard before for lows and mids,” said Crean, a 2003 Final Four to his credit, “it’s going to get even tougher.”
After guiding Asheville into the 2023 NCAA Tournament and earning a No. 15 seed, only to be “shipped to Sacramento for a road game against UCLA,” Morrell battles the conflicting emotions of wanting a pathway for his Bulldogs to win versus preserving the scarcity of an invitation.
“If it allows more of a chance for us to a win a game and increase revenue for our league, at Asheville, we do actually have an NCAA Tournament win in our history from a play-in game but you still get a unit, you still get a share,” Morrell said. “As a lover of college basketball, I don’t love (expansion). I think there’s a real honor to playing in that tournament. A real earned right to playing in that tournament, and I don’t want to see it diluted by more teams in there.”
Army coach Kevin Kuwik has 10 previous NCAA Tournament appearances as an assistant coach but is still seeking to engineer the Black Knights’ first entrance into the Big Dance.
“As a fan of the tournament, I'm probably kind of a purist so this doesn't really excite me,” Kuwik told USA TODAY Sports. “But as a coach, it ultimately comes down to this is the dream we have, this is what we have to do to get there, so let's get to work.
“Control what you can control.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What some college basketball coaches say about March Madness 76 teams expansion
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