The way Alan Huss looks at NCAA Tournament expansion, the more the merrier.
The new Creighton coach said Thursday he thinks the move from 68 to 76 teams will have minimal impact on the sport overall and give more teams a chance to experience March Madness, so it's a good thing.
But some of the biggest voices in the game, including UConn women's coach Geno Auriemma, say increasing the number of teams attempts to fix something that wasn't broken and that there
are bigger issues, namely transfer rules, that should be addressed.
“To me, this is strictly a money grab for the Power Four conferences to get teams that finished 6-10 in their conference to get into the tournament,” Auriemma said.
There is no consensus among coaches on the topic of expansion. The National Association of Basketball Coaches, in fact, said it would not take a formal position on growing to 76 teams “in the absence of unanimous sentiment among the coaching community.”
The NCAA touted the greater access to the tournament for all teams. Some 21% of Division I men’s and women’s teams will participate. That’s up from 18%, which was the lowest rate among major team sports, according to the NCAA.
With the new 24-team opening round, which replaces the eight-team First Four, six conference automatic qualifiers — most likely mid-majors — will play at least two games in the tournament. Previously, only two AQs had a chance to play twice.
While mid-majors that advance will bring in more money for their conferences from the NCAA's performance fund, and there might be a few more at-large spots available for what typically are one-bid leagues, access for programs outside the Power Four won't improve much.
Huss speaks from experience. As High Point's coach, his team won the 2024 Big South regular-season title but lost in the conference tournament and was relegated to the College Basketball Invitational. His team swept the regular-season and conference tournament titles the next year and got the Big South's automatic bid.
“It stinks that it's difficult for mid-majors to get at-large bids now,” Huss said. “I don’t know if it’s going to change substantially by adding additional spots. It’s great for everyone to have the opportunity.”
The question, Huss said, is whether more than a few mid-majors have the financial wherewithal to compete for those spots. Players are free to move to a new school every year and are motivated to do so because of the paydays available at bigger schools.
Big Sky Conference Commissioner Tom Wistrcill is optimistic that expansion will serve his one-bid conference well.
“As we continue to grow our basketball profile, additional at-large spots position us for the scenario in which a dominant team during the Big Sky regular season that doesn’t win (the conference tournament) is more likely to find a pathway into March Madness,” he said.
The Mountain West was a multi-bid conference in the men's tournament from 2018-25, including a conference-record six in 2024. Only Utah State made the 2026 tournament, with San Diego State among the last four out.
“The Mountain West has consistently demonstrated the depth and quality of basketball played across our conference,” Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said, “and expansion recognizes that deserving teams exist well beyond a narrow group of leagues.”
Auriemma said expansion would be appropriate if every mid-major that wins its conference regular-season title got an automatic bid. His case in point was Miami (Ohio), which went unbeaten in the regular season and won the Mid-American Conference but had to sweat out Selection Sunday because it lost in the first round of the conference tournament.
“It’s a rigged system and it is a system that is intended for going forward to benefit those schools that supposedly play in leagues that are so difficult that if you have a below .500 record, you should get in,” he said.
Men's coaches Mark Few of Gonzaga, Dan Hurley of UConn and John Calipari of Arkansas told CBS Sports before expansion was finalized that it was unnecessary.
“It’s the dumbing down of the regular season, which is sad,” Few said. “We’re out here trying to generate more interest in the regular season and expansion doesn’t help. That’s where we’ve been struggling. ... The tournament is great as is.”
Hurley added: "It should be a privilege to play in the tournament, not a right, and obviously if it expands too much and you don’t have to have a real good season to make it, that would take away from the tournament. Does it get too big?”
Murray State women's coach Rechelle Turner told The Paducah Sun she wasn’t sure how it will go.
“I think it is yet to be determined, whether they throw more 15-15 Power Four teams in it or if they do give the mid-major more bids because I think there are a ton of mid-majors that deserve to be in the tournament that get overlooked at times," she told the newspaper. "So I think how that benefits us is something we’re going to have to wait and see.”
Calipari is holding out hope that expansion helps the competitive mid-majors and doesn't reward average Power Four teams.
“As someone who has been both David, and won some, and Goliath, and lost some, that’s what makes this tournament special,” he told CBS Sports. "We can’t afford to lose that special piece of our sport.”
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AP freelance writer Jim Fuller in Storrs, Connecticut, contributed to this report.
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AP March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
