Now we all know why SEC commissioner Greg Sankey needs to cease “freely giving” NCAA bids to computerized qualifiers from smaller conferences.
These have-me-nots have the gall to maintain eliminating his deep-pocketed league’s most ballyhooed packages.
The development began Thursday evening when a former Division II guard sank a barrage of 3s to gasoline 14th-seeded Oakland’s gorgeous upset of eight-time nationwide champion Kentucky. Sankey’s nightmare deepened lower than 24 hours later when Yale capturing guard John Poulakidas delivered a profession recreation on the most important potential stage to assist the Ivy League runner-ups take down SEC event champion Auburn.
These humbling losses weren’t the one surprising season-ending setbacks suffered by SEC groups the previous two days. All however three of the SEC’s eight NCAA event groups did not survive the spherical of 64 as Oregon uncovered sixth-seeded South Carolina, Michigan State demolished eighth-seeded Mississippi State and Colorado edged seventh-seeded Florida.
The SEC’s poor displaying is a welcome second of schadenfreude for anybody who opposes Sankey’s lobbying to smash the NCAA event. One author referred to as the SEC’s comeuppance “the greatest evidence for karma” that he’s ever seen. One other joked that Sankey “opened his large mouth earlier than the event and the SEC instantly became the Mountain West.” Even the Ivy League social media workers bought in on the trolling.
Jabs like that mirror the rising concern throughout faculty basketball that the facility conferences intend to additional tilt the NCAA event of their favor by creating extra bids for themselves and fewer entry for others. There may be actual concern that underdogs who give the NCAA event its appeal will get squeezed out of the bracket, that the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights will likely be unhorsed, the Princeton Tigers will likely be declawed and the Saint Peter’s Peacocks will likely be defeathered.
The powerbroker pushing hardest for that is Sankey, who first inspired colleagues to take a “contemporary look” at increasing the NCAA event in August 2022 after which co-chaired an NCAA committee that formally beneficial it six months later. Although he by no means mentioned he envisioned an NCAA event with solely power-conference groups, he additionally didn’t cover the truth that his need for a bigger discipline wasn’t about wanting extra mid-majors included.
Citing the necessity to create a bracket that features each reasonable title contender, Sankey pointed to a 23-win Texas A&M team omitted of the 2022 males’s event and to a UCLA crew that superior from the First 4 to the Closing 4 the earlier 12 months. Conveniently omitted from Sankey’s speaking factors have been deep runs from VCU, Wichita State and different mid-majors who narrowly made the NCAA event through at-large bids.
Earlier this month, in an interview with ESPN.com’s Pete Thamel, Sankey spoke much more candidly about how he envisions overhauling the NCAA event as soon as the SEC and Massive 12 increase to 16 groups and the ACC and Massive Ten go to 18. Sankey advised Thamel, “We’re freely giving extremely aggressive alternatives for computerized qualifiers [from smaller leagues], and I believe that stress goes to rise as we have now extra aggressive basketball leagues on the prime finish due to enlargement.”
That’s thinly veiled company communicate for the SEC wants extra NCAA event groups in order that it may earn more money. And that Sankey is prepared to create extra entry for the SEC and different energy conferences on the expense of the tiny colleges that make the NCAA event an annual can’t-miss spectacle.
Nowhere else in American sports activities is there higher proof that on any given day, any given crew can slay an enormous. Nowhere else in American sports activities does a crew of future actual property brokers and insurance coverage salesmen topple a crew of future NBA gamers.
Between Sankey’s feedback and shock modifications to the format of the NIT final October, there’s palpable nervousness that this might be one of many final years that the NCAA event bracket seems how we’ve come to understand it. Gamers and coaches at websites throughout the nation have been requested how they count on the event to alter shifting ahead.
Longtime Oakland coach Greg Kampe mentioned Wednesday that he’s not in favor of increasing the NCAA event, however he’d tolerate it “If that is the one means we’ll keep in it.”
“What I am saying is do not preserve us out,” Kampe added. “ we’re what makes this event, the little man.”
To Samford coach Bucky McMillan, who’s 4 years faraway from teaching highschool basketball in Birmingham, American TV viewers usually “establish with underdogs” as a result of they themselves are underdogs.
“Most individuals are that crew,” McMillan mentioned. “The extra groups that we will have on this event which might be these mid-majors, Cinderellas, I believe the higher.”
When Sankey alludes to excluding small-conference groups from the NCAA event, others are fast to bristle as a result of it places the very way forward for the occasion at stake. You half count on him to advocate for double-elimination for the SEC and single-elimination for everybody else.
Even an SEC coach who misplaced on Friday appears to sympathize with the smaller conferences.
“This reveals you ways particular March is,” mentioned Auburn coach Bruce Pearl, the previous coach at mid-major Milwaukee. “Look, I used to be on the opposite facet. I used to be a 12. I used to be a 13. I understand how a lot this implies to these mid-major packages which might be preventing all 12 months lengthy to play in video games like this.”
