NCAA Reportedly Considered a 16-Team Tournament Before Outright Canceling the NCAA Tournament

The NCAA didn't give up on its beloved basketball tournament without a fight, and that included kicking around some wild alternatives.

NCAA vice president of men’s basketball Dan Gavitt told the Associated Press that he proposed an idea to the men’s basketball selection committee that would condense the tournament to 16 at-large teams with 15 games played across one weekend in Atlanta.

As it became apparent the NCAA basketball tournaments could not be held over three weeks because of concerns about the coronavirus, organizers scrambled to devise a plan for a 16-team event to salvage the postseason in one long weekend.

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The idea was to have the selection committee choose the top 16 teams in the country, regardless of conference, to participate. The first three rounds would have been played Thursday-Saturday, with a championship game Monday night. Gavitt said he believes eight or nine of the 32 Division I conferences could have been represented.

“Far from ideal. Far from perfect,” Gavitt said. “Imperfect as it may be, that was one of the only reasonable options we thought we could at least maintain some level of our tournaments.”

In this scenario, Ohio State would have been squarely on the bubble. Most bracket projections had the Buckeyes as the top No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, or the overall No. 17 team in the field. Assuming all teams ahead accepted an invitation, this would have left Ohio State as the first team out.

But it never got that far.

The selection committee hesitated immediately due to the lack of inclusivity and the NCAA ultimately realized that even a shortened tournament would put people at risk. They didn't see postponing the tournament as a realistic option either with logistical concerns as well as concerns with the length of a delay, with players potentially moving on and having post-graduation commitments already secured.

“We had the reality that if you start a tournament six weeks from now a bunch of our students our seniors and will have moved on," Emmert told the AP. "And when you looked at the projections of where the virus was going to be in six weeks it looks worse, not better.”

But now that he's thrown it out there, the idea of a condensed, 16-team March Madness does have us salivating a bit.