Sources: The NCAA has initiated the final steps to expand the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments to 76 teams. The expansion is on track to be formalized in the upcoming weeks, with mid-May as the target. The 76-team tournaments begin next year. https://t.co/2ZGUjZR0uJ
The following concepts have been discussed to curb tanking, per @ShamsCharania:
- First-round picks can be protected only top-4 or top-14+
- Lottery odds freeze at trade deadline or later
- Teams can’t pick top-4 in consecutive years and/or after back-to-back bottom-3 finishes
- Teams can't pick top-4 the year after making conference finals
- Lottery odds based on 2-year records
- Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
- Flattened odds for lottery teams