I wanted to continue on with by spring preview series tonight but thanks to the Final Four blasting on just about every TV in the house, I feel inclined to write another Virginia Tech basketball piece. On Thursday, the NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen broke down the potential expansion options for the NCAA tournament. He showed a 68-team model, an 80-team model, and then the 96-team model. Needless to say, the majority of the press conference was spent on the 96-team model and why it would be good for College Basketball.
The actual technicalities have yet to be worked out but odds are we will see a change implemented next season so the NCAA can renegotiate their TV deal. However, I don’t want to get into specifics in this blog, especially since so many are already on one side of the fence. Since this is going to happen, there’s no need to argue about it anymore.
What I want to state in this piece is how it will affect our beloved Hokies. Tech has failed to make the tournament each of the last three years thanks to a lack of something in each year. With this new expansion, the pressure will be on Head Coach Seth Greenberg to get the Hokies into the tournament from here on out. But, with 31 more teams making the field, a 20 win season and 8 wins in the ACC would make the Hokies a lock every year. Tech could even have a year like Georgia Tech this season. Finish 7-9 or 6-10 in conference play but finish with 19 or 20 wins including five or six against the RPI top 50 and still make the tournament.
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For B-level basketball programs like Virginia Tech, this change will drastically help the program. It will increase revenue, it will give the Hokies some more national exposure, and of course it always helps in recruiting when you can tell a kid that you won a couple games in the NCAA tournament.
Although I’m really at odds with tinkering with a perfect post-season model, the added games will help the one team I truly care about. At the end of the day, I guess that’s really all I care about.
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