NCAA President Charlie Baker remains hopeful that the NCAA Tournament could expand for the 2026-27 season, he announced at a Big East Media Roundtable on Monday afternoon. Baker declined to place a percentage chance on expansion, but said he hopes “we could find a way to get there” by next year. The 2025-26 Tournament will remain unaffected.
Speaking to an assembly of conference representatives, Baker reiterated his support for expansion. “I really see expansion as an opportunity to give a bunch of worthy schools,” he said. “When you’re giving 32 automatic qualifiers every year in a field of 68, almost by definition it means you’re gonna leave a bunch of teams out of the Tournament who are probably among the 65 best. You raise the size of the Tournament a little bit, you can pretty much guarantee that won’t be an issue going forward.”
Baker cited recent snubs from the Big East, including the 2023-24 St. John’s team that finished 20-13 and nearly toppled eventual national champion UConn in the conference Tournament. “I was bummed St John’s didn’t make the Tournament a couple years ago because they were the only team that gave Connecticut a run for their money,” he said. “They had a couple of terrible losses early, and their net rating was just outside the perimeter. And I think if they did (qualify), then that would be fun.”
Baker also bemoaned the exclusion of NIT finalists Indiana State (MVC) and Seton Hall (Big East) from the 2024 Tournament: “It bothered me.”
The projected expansion would raise the number of teams in the field from 64 to 76. It would slash the First Four play-in tournament and introduce a new “opening round” of 24 competitors, a mix of the lowest ranked at-large and automatic qualifiers. The 12 winners would advance to the Round of 64. “The opening round is now the First Round,” Baker said of the possible new model. “We don’t have a play-in anymore.”
Baker has previously stated that any decision on expansion must be made by the middle of August, roughly seven months before Tournament play. Across three seasons of expansion discourse, his primary obstacle has remained logistics. “It’s a lot of people you got to move around in a very short period of time without much notice,” he said. “Because the due date, with respect to all this, is the night of the day before.”
Any decision made would impact both the men’s and women’s Tournaments.
