Towson Tigers, other mid-majors show why it’s time for 96 teams in the NCAA Tournament

First things first: teams like Wright State and Texas A&M Corpus Christi are essential to the “Madness” part of March. And I’m not trying to eliminate them from the NCAA Tournament. Far from it.

Both teams finished fourth in their respective conference regular season standings. Both got hot late to win their conference tournaments. And because the tournament is now a field of 68 instead of 64, both now face a play-in game in the First Four.

If I had my way, they’d be part of a more inclusive tournament experience. And so would teams like the Towson Tigers.

For every team that gets hot at conference tourney time, there’s also a team like Towson who deserves a tourney bid.

Coach Pat Skerry’s group went from only winning four games a season ago to capturing the CAA regular season title in 2021-2022, only to be denied a shot at the Big Dance because of one bad day against Delaware in a CAA semifinal. 

The Tigers’ consolation prize is an NIT berth and a trip to face Wake Forest on Wednesday night.

But they and other regular season champs deserve more. And the squads like Corpus Christi and Wright State deserve to feel a part of the “full experience” that doesn’t come from a Tuesday or Wednesday night spent in Dayton.

There’s an obvious solution here. It’s one that purists have railed against for years, but whose time probably arrived when another Baltimore area school proved even No. 1 seeds can lose first-round games four years ago.

It’s time for the tournament to expand to 96 teams. But with two caveats:

• Every team who wins a conference regular season or tournament title gets in.
• To keep regular season conference champions from treating the conference tournament like a preseason event, every team that wins both gets seeded no worse than No. 8 and receives a first-round bye.

Most arguments against a field of 96 schools cite underperforming major conference squads rather than deserving mid-majors. 

And sure, it’s true some of those would make a 96-team field that would in the process bring an overdue end to the NIT.

Based on a look at the current NIT bracket, Oklahoma with a 7-11 Big XII record would be in easily. Same for Vanderbilt, which went 7-11 in the SEC. I get it. Theoretically, all but four current NIT squads would make the field — with four of Belmont, Missouri State, St. Bonaventure, Virginia, Santa Clara and Oregon to miss out if regular season conference champs received automatic bids.

That’s not so sexy. I get it. 

But throwing major conference teams a bone is the only way you’re really going to make progress on the mid-major front that adds magic to this time of year.

And that bone would be more than worth it considering the other benefits of an expanded field.

A 96-team field that includes battle-tested regular season conference champions would expand the part of the tournament that already works best, the days when there’s four games going on at once and you can whip around your remote to the game with the most drama.

You’d have 32 games on Thursday and Friday to whittle the field to 64, then 32 more on Saturday and Sunday to bring it down to 32. 

And it’s very likely those 64 games would have even more drama, upsets and chaos we love than currently occurs this upcoming weekend, for two reasons.

The first is that you’re adding teams to the middle of the field, not the bottom.

According to RPI rankings, Princeton is the worst team to make the NIT with its No. 100 ranking. That’s better than eight teams in the current 68-team NCAA bracket.

Secondly, the schools that currently receive 16 seeds would be playing far more winnable first-round games, and the teams that typically receive 1 seeds would be facing far more losable openers.

Despite UMBC’s 2018 heroics, the prospect of Wright State or Corpus Christi winning a play-in game and then knocking off Arizona or Kansas remains very unlikely.

But in a 96-team field, those schools would be seeded 24th in a region and draw the likes of a No. 9 seed like Creighton or Marquette, then face another similarly winnable game against a No. 8 seed.

The top seeds in each region would see their advantage diminish to where they’d open with the winner of a No. 16-No. 17 game, against a team that would be closer to the equivalent of a No. 14 seed in the current format.

And one last thing. The purist argument that the 96-team field wouldn’t be selective enough just doesn’t add up the way it did when the 64-team format was introduced in 1985.

There are nearly 360 Division I NCAA basketball teams now. In a two-bid-per-conference format, at least 40 of those each year would get automatic berths. The remaining 50 or so at-large bids would be given to only 16% of eligible remaining teams.

Even more broadly, taking 96 teams from 358 is a rate of fewer than 27% of teams. In terms of postseasons, that’s considerably more selective than any North American major pro sport.

And the talent base is wider than ever with the growth of the sport beyond U.S. borders. Not all elite foreign players come to play in college. But many do. It might be credible to say the top end of college basketball is not as elite as previous eras because of the one-and-done rule. Even so, the overall talent pool is stronger.

It’s time for change, and a 96-team tournament that allows more access for major conference and mid-major conference squads alike would be a good change. And if the NCAA can be progressive enough to see it, the Towson Tigers are just one of a dozen or so deserving mid-major squads who would benefit.