NCAA reportedly could release a 68-team tournament bracket even without playing games
Sunday at 5 p.m. is going to be a rough time for many college basketball fans.
That’s when the Selection Sunday show would have aired had the NCAA Tournament not been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Instead, fans are left to speculate which teams would have filled the brackets.
Well, we might end up knowing how the brackets would have looked. Sort of.
NCAA vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports the NCAA is pondering whether to “(put) together a 68-team bracket for the purposes of an official recognition of the 2019-20 men’s Division I basketball season.”
With fans of some schools already proclaiming their team the champion, this would seemingly be of interest to college basketball supporters. However, there would be limitations, given that most conference tournaments were canceled.
“There’s pluses and minuses to any decision,” Gavitt told CBS. “If you put the field together, you could have teams, depending on that conference’s policy, would not be the most obvious choice as the (automatic qualifier). It’s something we’re going to continue to look at.
“This has been so fast, so emotional, we’ll continue to think on it a little bit.”
One stumbling block to the idea: the selection committee wouldn’t gather. The CBS Sports story notes the committee had only sent in early ballots. That meant there were only 13 automatic qualifiers and 31 at-large teams in the mix.
“There actually is a mechanism for that because each conference is required to tell us how they would be given a conference (automatic qualifier) if the conference tournament was not completed,” Gavitt told CBS. “The conferences have to have that. It’s required.”
It seems possible the selection committee could meet via a conference call, so there is a chance basketball fans could see a 68-team bracket after all.
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 4:24 PM with the headline "NCAA reportedly could release a 68-team tournament bracket even without playing games."
