How Would March Madness With Every Team Look

Coach K suggested inviting every team to the Biggest Dance Yet

The ACC, led by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, is pushing for the NCAA tournament to allow all Division I teams to compete in March Madness for the upcoming season.

What would that look like?

A near six-fold increase in teams competing in the tournament would create the biggest of Big Dances. Currently six rounds, with a handful of play-in “first four” games, the tournament would need to add at least two more full rounds.

Last season, there were 353 Division I teams, and four more—UC San Diego, Tarleton State, Bellarmine and Dixie State—are scheduled to move to Division I for the upcoming season.

A seven-round tournament would have 128 teams in its bracket. Eight rounds would expand it to 256. So a partial ninth round would be needed. That means basically a fourth weekend would be added to the tournament, with a long slate of mid-week games, similar to the current First Four.

Using last season’s KenPom ratings, here’s how a couple of possible seeding options would look for a 357-team bracket.

1. One-round byes for the top 155 teams: One way to divide up the 357 teams is to give 155 teams a bye for round one (of nine). That would leave 202 teams to compete in 101 midweek first-round games. The winners would then join the teams with byes for the round of 256 that weekend.

Who is included in the top 155? Last season, every ACC team except Boston College would have gotten a first-round bye. So would every SEC team except Vanderbilt, every Big Ten team except Nebraska and the entire Big 12, Big East and Pac 12. Half of the Ivy League gets a bye.

As for the bye bubble: The last three teams to receive a first-round bye were Cal, Wofford and South Alabama. The highest rated teams to miss the bye and play the first game were Western Carolina, Fresno St. and Towson.

Duke, who finished last season at No. 5 in KenPom, would have gotten a first-round bye and faced the winner of No. 252 Louisiana Monroe and 261 Purdue Fort Wayne in the round of 256.

2. Triple byes for the best teams: Like many conference tournaments, the NCAA might want to reward the best teams with multiple byes. The ACC Tournament, for example, gives a double-bye to its top four finishers.

A triple-bye would allow the best teams to report directly to the round of 64. One option is to give that to the top 15 teams.

In order to make the numbers work, the next 10 teams—No’s 16 to 25—would get double byes to the round of 128, and 20 teams—No’s 26 to 45—would get a bye to the round of 256. The remaining 312 teams would play a 156-game round nine.

In that scenario, Duke would get the double-bye and would likely face Alabama, seeded 60th, in its first game.