Speaking on the Golic & Golic program on the FanDuel Sports Network on Wednesday, Arkansas coach John Calipari suggested a potential radical change for the sport. Only after noting, though, that he doesn’t think the sport’s postseason should change.
If it did, though, he has a preferred model for it. And it isn’t expanding the NCAA Tournament by eight teams, or 12 teams, or doubling the field size, etc.
“The tournament is so good, why would you change it?” Calipari said. “And if you wanted to change it, maybe, the baseball model. The first weekend, someone’s got to win three games, and after that, you move on, you play, and then you move on, you have the Elite Eight, and that’s the one. The baseball model is unbelievable in Omaha.”
Baseball’s model works to prevent teams from being one-and-done. It’s a double-elimination format throughout.
First, teams are grouped in a four-team regional. After a double-elimination round of action, one team emerges victorious. With 16 regions, that leaves 16 teams.
The teams then funnel into the Super Regionals, where the remaining baseball teams play a best-of-three series for the right to advance to the College World Series. In Omaha, then, it turns into an eight-team field with dual four-team, double-elimination brackets.
The final two teams standing then vie for the national title in a best-of-three series. Could basketball employ a similar model?
“Maybe that would be something, but I — adding more teams? Why?” Calipari said. “The ratings have never been higher.”
One thing the Arkansas coach does see happening in the current landscape — expansion or not — is more power coalescing toward the top. It’s not unheard of for the Final Four in basketball to have all No. 1 seeds. And soon it might be even more common.
“Now, to have — the last time four No. 1s did it, it was North Carolina, Kansas, us — I was at Memphis at the time — and there was one other, UCLA,” Calipari said. “But that’s going to be more so with NIL and the transfer (portal). The haves will have way more than the have-nots. But — so maybe the baseball model. But I don’t know why you change anything, but I wouldn’t add more teams.”
It seems a stretch. It’s worth noting that for a team that loses its first game of a regional in baseball, it then has to win four straight games to advance to the Super Regional round. That would be hard to engineer in basketball; it’s simply a lot of games.
In any case, it makes for a fun thought experiment. But as Calipari said, the tournament right now is pretty close to perfect … why mess with it?
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