Committee will take look at NCAA Tournament process

College basketball coaches usually have their say about the NCAA Tournament selection and bracketing process in the immediate aftermath of the 68-team announcement, and it often isn’t complementary.

So a group of 13 coaches, including Kentucky’s John Calipari, Maryland’s Mark Turgeon and West Virginia’s Bob Huggins, will join a handful of administrators and consultants to form an ad hoc committee to provide a coaching perspective to the process.

Calipari was particularly upset after the Wildcats beat Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament championship game in March and were given a No. 4 seed and the Aggies a No. 3 in the NCAA Tournament.

“Did we not play a basketball game today?” Calipari said the night of the selection. “If this is what happens, why are we playing that game?”

Jim Haney, executive director of the Kansas City-based National Association of Basketball Coaches and former SEC Commissioner Mike Slive are the committee’s co-chairs. The group is expected to meet several times in the next few weeks and make recommendations to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee — the selection committee — this summer.

“The men’s basketball championship is one of the greatest events in sports and we are hopeful that recommendations from our ad hoc group will help enhance it even more,” Haney said.

This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Committee will take look at NCAA Tournament process."