Huggins wants to, basically, destroy the NCAA basketball tournament



  • Pretty sad, and I respect the guy as a coach. He said that he wants a majors only NCAA basketball tournament. That would kill Cinderalla and the storylines, taking away all of the intrique from the tournament. I am not onboard.



  • I wonder why he wants that? Seems pretty antithetical to the most intriguing principle – that any team making the field of 68 could win the Natl Championship.

    Of course, if conference realignment continues to its logical conclusion, we’ll have 4 super conferences with 16 teams each… and that will effectively lead to Huggins’ grand vision.



  • Huggins is just hoping to disguise his abject fear of losing to a Cinderella in the first round.



  • @bskeet He said that he wants a majors-only tournament. Even if we go to four super conferences we would still have the low to mid-majors, schools such as Belmont and Howard, Wichita State etc. Those schools need to be involved not just for the money, but for the very tradition of the tournament. A majors-only tournament, no thank you.

    Even the CFB playoff is fixing to expand, wanting to allow more into the game. Huggins is saying, “let’s downsize.” I’m not for expanding the tournament, but don’t want alot of 15 win 15 loss so-called major teams getting a nod over a team like, say, Drake from last year.



  • I’m convinced we’d have won several more championships if his idea had been the norm but I agree it’s a bad idea.



  • @wissox We probably would have yeah, it’s all about matchups, energy and seedings… But Huggins is saying, let’s stack the deck.

    Had VCU not been in the Elite 8 that year, we might have won a National Championship - but VCU deserved to be there. And what about Butler, two years straight going to the Final Four?



  • @Marco not to mention that Brad Stevens got to be Celtics coach through his performance at Butler. Self took Tulsa to Elite 8 before getting on at Illinois, etc. This would change the landscape of how coaches build resumes dramatically, making it much less organic.

    Not a fan at all. Seems selfish and myopic.



  • @wissox said in Huggins wants to, basically, destroy the NCAA basketball tournament:

    I’m convinced we’d have won several more championships if his idea had been the norm but I agree it’s a bad idea.

    Yes. The one that really comes to mind is Northern Iowa… That KU team was a very, very good and just got blitzed by an insane shooting effort.

    By the way, maybe we should remind Huggy that there’s already the Champion’s classic every year. Just add another game for the winners and we’ll have solution. I wonder how he’d like the 25% chance of a title that would give KU every year.


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