HOUSTON — An NCAA committee could soon announce a recommendation on potential expansion of the NCAA tournament field, but UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley says he believes the tournament is fine with 68 teams.
Hurley, who will attempt to lead the Huskies to their fifth national title since 1999 in the national championship game against San Diego State on Monday night, said the NCAA tournament is flawed but expansion is not the answer.
“For me, I think it’s great the way it is,” Hurley said at his pregame news conference at NRG Stadium on Sunday. “I feel like devaluing the regular season, I think, potentially hurts the regular season and what it means. I think the pressure to have to win games and being rewarded for winning big nonconference games and then taking care of enough business in the league … I think it’s a privilege to play in this tournament, not a right.”
But it’s not perfect. Hurley, who coached Rhode Island before accepting the UConn job in 2018, said the formula for selecting teams sometimes rewards teams with brand names over deserving mid-major schools.
“I do think, though, that there are probably mid-major programs, a lot of times, that are more deserving than like a 10th-place team in a power conference that has figured out how to just game the numbers, so I’ll say that. I see that on Selection Sunday sometimes. And I cringe at that.”
On Saturday, new NCAA president Charlie Baker told reporters at the Final Four that a recommendation of possible expansion from the NCAA committee studying the issue could come as early as this summer.
On ESPN Radio’s “Keyshawn, JWill & Max” on Friday, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said that “he wouldn’t go to 90 [teams]” but he is in favor of more teams earning bids.
Miami coach Jim Larranaga, who led the program to its first Final Four this year, said recently that he also would back expansion.
“I think there is so much parity in college basketball, we need to expand the NCAA tournament to another round,” Larranaga told ESPN Radio last month. “It needs to be 96 teams invited. You look at what Fairleigh Dickinson did, you look at what FAU has done … These are teams that maybe nobody heard about going into the tournament. Last year, it was Saint Peters.
“The NCAA, we have 360 Division I teams and only 68 make the dance. The whole mission is to give the student-athlete a great experience. Well, there is no greater experience for a college basketball player than to compete in March Madness and yet we only have 68 teams out of 363. That’s 18%. Let’s increase it. Let’s go to 96.”
Hurley disagrees, however, with the coach he faced on Saturday in the Final Four.
“I don’t think expanding [the NCAA tournament] is a good idea,” he said. “And we only got five teams [in the NCAA tournament] in the Big East, so it’s not like we got nine.”