Saturday, March 17, 2007
Expand the NCAA tourney?
Been hearing an interesting NCAA Basketball tourney theory bandied about this week. We'll give you the quick run down, dear reader, out of sympathy for DonE, friend of the Clarion, and loyal fan of Syracuse University basketball. Theory is the NCAA tournament field should expand. The Clarion is not so sure it is ready for NCAA expansion. And it would definitely demolish what’s left of the NIT. (Once the premier college basketball tournament.)
Here is how expansion would work. The field goes to 96, all the current conference champions that get in, still do. The play-in game (lame, lame, lame in the status quo) goes away. The borderline squads, this year, Syracuse, Kansas State, Drexel, Missouri State, et al all get in. This is important because as learned commentators all over the place have been saying; this is one of those years where anybody in the top 50, can beat anybody else in the top 50, on any given night. Not for the first time, a couple of teams that fit that description were left out. Plus, a 96 team tournament, as opposed to 128, offers the perfect opportunity to separate some of the wheat from the chaff. Teams 33 through 96, play a seventh game. Teams 1-32 get a bye, anybody with an eight seed or better. So this year DonE’s Syracuse squad gets a shot, and we don’t have to waste our time with snooze fests like Kansas beating Niagra by 75 points, ditto for Long Beach State-Tennessse, Carolina-Eastern Kentucky, Florida-Jackson State. Instead for Kansas, North Carolina, Florida their first game is meaningful and the Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s, the North Texas's still get to play in the big dance.
Food for thought.
Here is how expansion would work. The field goes to 96, all the current conference champions that get in, still do. The play-in game (lame, lame, lame in the status quo) goes away. The borderline squads, this year, Syracuse, Kansas State, Drexel, Missouri State, et al all get in. This is important because as learned commentators all over the place have been saying; this is one of those years where anybody in the top 50, can beat anybody else in the top 50, on any given night. Not for the first time, a couple of teams that fit that description were left out. Plus, a 96 team tournament, as opposed to 128, offers the perfect opportunity to separate some of the wheat from the chaff. Teams 33 through 96, play a seventh game. Teams 1-32 get a bye, anybody with an eight seed or better. So this year DonE’s Syracuse squad gets a shot, and we don’t have to waste our time with snooze fests like Kansas beating Niagra by 75 points, ditto for Long Beach State-Tennessse, Carolina-Eastern Kentucky, Florida-Jackson State. Instead for Kansas, North Carolina, Florida their first game is meaningful and the Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s, the North Texas's still get to play in the big dance.
Food for thought.
Labels: college basketball, sports
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