A mini-version of NCAA Tournament was considered before it was canceled
It wasn’t necessarily all-or-nothing for the NCAA Tournament this year.
NCAA Vice President of basketball Dan Gavitt told reporters the NCAA at one point pondered holding a 16-team tournament instead of the usual 68. All 15 games would have been played over one long weekend in Atlanta.
In the end, the NCAA canceled the tournament because of the coronavirus pandemic, but a slimmed-down version would have been interesting.
The games would have been played next Thursday to Monday at State Farm Arena, instead of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which was to have been host to the Final Four. State Farm Arena has a capacity of 21,000.
With the conference championships canceled, this would have been an invitation-only event.
Matt Norlander of CBS Sports tweeted the details:
“Far from ideal. Far from perfect,” Gavitt told the Associated Press. “Imperfect as it may be, that was one of the only reasonable options we thought we could at least maintain some level of our tournaments.”
Gavitt also told Norlander that the NCAA has not ruled out releasing a 68-team NCAA Tournament bracket even thought the games won’t be played.
This story was originally published March 13, 2020 at 2:51 PM with the headline "A mini-version of NCAA Tournament was considered before it was canceled."
