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:
“Dan Gavitt also detailed this scenario: the NCAA considered, briefly, holding an NCAA Tournament with 16 teams to be held next Thursday-Monday in Atlanta at State Farm Arena,” Norlander tweeted. “All 16 would be at-larges and if other teams did not want in, they would go down the seed line.”
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.