Great West - Misnamed Conference & Deferred Gratification

Texas-Pan American (T-PA) and five independent Division 1 schools have joined the Great West Conference, starting conference play in basketball during the 2009-10 season. Immediately it helps give these independents a chance to get into a strutured season schedule. But the elusive NCAA post-season participation is pretty complicated.

The basketball side of the conference includes Houston Baptist, NJIT, North Dakota, South Dakota, T-PA and Utah Valley. Yes, the Great West apparently includes the New Jersey Institute of Technology ... cartographers please take note.

Because the NCAA has several rules regarding participation in the post-season NCAA tournament, there's varying times by which members could actually participate in the post-season tournament ... and the idea of an automatic bid is years down the path.

"The GWC, in addition to altering the hoops landscape as the 32nd Division I conference, could also significantly impact the shape of the NCAA tournament's bracket in the next decade" according to ESPN.com The NCAA requirements can get pretty confusing so if you're interested, read the article at this link

Isn't an additional conference (the breakup of the WAC I think?) what prompted the play-in game, because the NCAA wanted to maintain 34 at-large bids. I hope they don't tinker with the tournament set-up with this added conference, I have never liked the play-in game to begin with. I say just don't give the "Great West" an automatic-bid, and let them join another conference when they can. There are enough conferences already.

The Big L said:

Isn't an additional conference (the breakup of the WAC I think?) what prompted the play-in game, because the NCAA wanted to maintain 34 at-large bids. I hope they don't tinker with the tournament set-up with this added conference, I have never liked the play-in game to begin with. I say just don't give the "Great West" an automatic-bid, and let them join another conference when they can. There are enough conferences already.

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The WAC splitting into the Mountain West and a smaller version of the WAC was the reason for the play-in game. If they are going to have 1, I think they might as well have 4 play-in games.

However, I think the NCAA needs to look at how many schools are going DI. There are plenty already and most of them will never achieve DI success. It's getting a little ridiculous that all these schools are striving for DI status.