Good Morning, Illini Nation: Underwood on NCAA tournament expansion

Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team and college basketball at large:

The NCAA tournament might expand. Maybe to 72 teams. No more than 76 (at least for now). The idea was broached — again — late last month to conference commissioners by the NCAA. The 64-team main bracket would remain, and any expansion would include more play-in games for teams seeded 10th through 12th.

Power conferences wanting more representation in the NCAA tournament (looking at you, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey) don't actually need expansion to get that. The demise of the Pac-12 flips what was once an automatic berth into another at-large bid. The other at-large bids the Pac-12 once got are also up for grabs, and they'll probably go to power conference teams. Perhaps to the Pac-12 defectors now in the Big Ten and Big 12.

Still, Illinois coach Brad Underwood anticipates expansion is coming. Considers it more a question of when and not if.

"I'll probably stay pretty neutral on it until I study what they go to," Underwood said. "I'm kind of a traditionalist in some sense. I like the format. More play-in games, I don't know what that does. You start running into some timing issues. Playing the last day on Sunday (in conference tournaments), with play-in games do you play on Monday, play on Tuesday? How do teams get there? I think all those things have to be figured out. It's a little more complex than just saying we're going to add some teams. With what they've done with the (College Football Playoff), I would expect there to probably be some sort of expansion coming if I had to guess."