If the Tournament had been 96 teams…

With a full five days between the last Regional Final and the National Semifinals, I did what any decent college basketball fan with too much spare time would do: I crafted a new bracket showing what this year’s Tournament would have looked like had it contained 96 teams. I used the approach most people are pushing for expansion, which is to include all regular-season champions of every conference in addition to postseason tournament champions.* I basically took seeding from the NIT for the added teams although I had to decide where to fit in teams that won their conference titles but would have earned an at-large NIT berth if necessary (namely Siena, Cornell, Murray State).

*Of course, using this method retroactively on this season avoids the huge, “How hard does a regular-season champion try in a postseason conference tournament if it already has its ticket punched?” question. This, to me, is one of the biggest issues with expansion: Do teams that won the regular season in a conference such as the SWAC, which has virtually no hope of an at-large berth, even compete in the conference tournament? What do they have to gain? And isn’t it better for the conference if they lose in the tournament and a second team earns a bid? And does this force the Ivy to have a conference tournament?

	MIDWEST	EAST	SOUTH	WEST
1	Kansas	Kentucky	Duke	Syracuse
2	Ohio State	West Virginia	Villanova	Kansas State
3	Georgetown	New Mexico	Baylor	Pittsburgh
4	Maryland	Wisconsin	Purdue	Vanderbilt
5	Michigan State	Temple	Texas A&M	Butler
6	Tennessee	Marquette	Notre Dame	Xavier
7	Oklahoma State	Clemson	Richmond	BYU
8	UNLV	Texas	California	Gonzaga
9	Northern Iowa	Wake Forest	Louisville	Florida State
10	Georgia Tech	Missouri	Saint Mary’s	Florida
11	San Diego State	Washington	Old Dominion	Minnesota
12	Mississippi State	Virginia Tech	Utah State	UTEP
13	Arizona State	Mississippi	Cornell	Illinois
14	Dayton	Siena	Rhode Island	UAB
15	Cincinnati	Murray State	Memphis	New Mexico State
16	Connecticut	Kent State	South Florida	Wichita State
17	North Carolina	Seton Hall	William & Mary	Northeastern
18	NC State	Nevada	Texas Tech	Tulsa
19	Illinois State	Saint John’s	Houston	Wofford
20	Ohio	Weber State	Sam Houston State	Oakland
21	Montana	Coastal Carolina	Troy	Morgan State
22	Lehigh	Lipscomb*	Jackson State	UC-Santa Barbara
23	Quinnipiac	Stony Brook	Robert Morris	North Texas
24	Arkansas-Pine Bluff	Winthrop	East Tennessee State	Vermont

*Lipscomb and Jacksonville tied for the regular-season title in the Atlantic Sun. Lipscomb had the tiebreaker and thus earned the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, but since Jacksonville advanced further in said tournament before losing, the Dolphins earned the conference’s berth in the NIT. I give that honor back to Lipscomb in my system. Sorry, Artis Gilmore.

Every team in bold gets a first-round bye, and the first-round matchups are: 9-24, 10-23, 11-22, 12-21, 13-20, 14-19, 15-18, 16-17. I tried to avoid early conference matchups as much as possible. I don’t think there’s any spot where teams from the same conference can play in either the first or second round.

The clear early storyline in this Tournament would be the first-round matchup of Final Four teams from last year in UConn and North Carolina. It would be great to see two traditional programs whose teams quit on the season a few weeks ago battle it out for the chance to play Kansas. There’s no doubt Nantz and Kellogg would be calling that pod.

So what does everyone think? Would an Ohio win over Arizona State excite the public? Would making Kentucky play Kent State in its first game heighten early-round enthusiasm? And maybe the biggest questions: Would Bobby Gonzalez and Norm Roberts still have jobs?

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