“Well, we swung the bats well today,” USC coach Andy Stankiewicz said. “I think that was kind of the tale here from our standpoint.”

Adrian Lopez, who played at Maranatha High before finishing at Ganesha High, hit a two-run homer and Andrew Lamb, a JSerra High product, added a three-run homer in the first inning to give the Trojans a 5-0 lead.

Lopez had an RBI double in the second inning and scored on a single by Augie Lopez, a Loyola High product, to extend USC’s lead to 7-0.

Walter Urbon, also a Loyola High product, hit a grand slam as part of a five-run fourth inning. USC added four runs in the fifth on three doubles to make it 16-0.

Lamar scored five runs in the bottom of the fifth. USC scored two runs in the sixth on a Kevin Takeuchi double and Isaac Cadena’s single. Cadena played at El Dorado High before going to Ohio State and TCU.

Adrian Lopez’s sacrifice fly in the seventh was USC’s 19th run of the game. The 19 runs marked USC’s highest-scoring postseason game since 1998 and were a season high for the Trojans.

Urbon finished 5 for 5 with five RBIs, while Adrian Lopez and Lamb each drove in four runs.

USC will play the loser of Saturday night’s game between Texas A&M and Texas State on Sunday at 1 p.m. PT/3 p.m. CT. The winner of that game will advance to the regional final.

Adrian Lopez gave the Trojans a lead with a home run in the bottom of the eighth inning on Friday night, but Texas State’s Chase Mora answered with a two-run homer in the top of the ninth, leading the Bobcats to a 5-4 victory in an NCAA regional opener at Blue Bell Park.

USC (43-16) had chances throughout the game, but wasted most of them, stranding runners in scoring position in each of the first seven innings. USC stranded 13 runners overall, going 1 for 14 with runners in scoring position.

The Trojans, who reached the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, have lost four of their last five games.

USC will face Lamar University (34-26), which blew a five-run lead in its 7-5 loss to host Texas A&M (40-14), in an elimination game on Saturday at 1 p.m. PT. The Trojans will need to win four games Saturday-Monday to win the four-team regional and advance to a best-of-three super regional.

USC right-hander Grant Govel, a Palos Verdes High product who was an All-Big Ten first-team selection this season, allowed three runs on four hits with two walks while striking out six in 5⅔ innings.

Mora’s sacrifice fly to right field gave the Bobcats a 1-0 lead in the second inning, but the Trojans scored an unearned run in the second and third innings to take the lead. Former Cypress High standout Abbrie Covarrubias hit a solo home run to left in the fourth to extend the USC lead to 3-1.

Texas State’s Brady Boles tied the score at 3-3 with a two-run home run to left in the top of the fifth.

“That’s not a death sentence,” Trojans junior Kevin Takeuchi told reporters. “We just go out there, take it one pitch at a time, try and get on base and pass it to the next guy.”

That’s the mindset that could be the key to rebounding from a 7-5 Big Ten Tournament semifinal loss to UCLA as the Trojans pursue their 22nd College World Series appearance.

USC is one of four Big Ten teams to qualify for the 64-team NCAA Tournament, earning an at-large bid after posting a 43-15 record and finishing tied for third with Oregon at 20-10 in the conference standings.

This is the Trojans’ first 40-win season since 2005 and the program’s highest win total since 2001.

They’ll start in Texas with the College Station Regional, where they’re slated to play Texas State (36-24) on Friday at 6 p.m.

No. 12 national seed Texas A&M (39-14) and Lamar University (34-25) of Beaumont, Texas, will also play in the double-elimination regional. Only one team will advance to the best-of-three super regionals, which will be held at a site to be determined. The eight super regional winners then advance to the CWS in Omaha, Neb.

USC’s Mason Edwards (8-0), Andrew Johnson, Chase Herrell and Ben Cushnie combined for a shutout of Michigan State in the Big Ten quarterfinals, with Edwards recording six strikeouts while allowing just two hits in four innings of work before a 90-minute rain delay.

Johnson and Herrell each threw two scoreless innings and Cushnie finished off the ninth inning to preserve USC’s 10th shutout of the season.

Edwards, a junior with a 1.43 ERA, was named the Big Ten Pitcher of the Year and ranks fourth in Trojans history with 160 strikeouts on the season. The Palisades Charter High product and Johnson (6-2) and Grant Govel (10-2) lead a rotation backed by a deep bullpen. Govel joined Edwards on the All-Big Ten first team.

“It’s always good to go and pick whoever pitcher you have in the bullpen and be like, ‘Yeah, this guy can get us out of it and go long into the game,’” Edwards said.

USC led UCLA (51-6), which earned the No. 1 national seed, in the ninth inning of the conference semifinals before Mulivai Levu hit a walk-off, three-run home run to get the Bruins the win and move on to win the entire tournament.

Takeuchi owns the second-best batting average on the USC team (.305) behind Jack Basseer, an All-Big Ten second-teamer who is slashing .356/.446/.678 on the season.

Texas State is one of nine schools that will comprise a new-look Pac-12 Conference next year, but this season, they were fourth-place finishers in the Sun Belt Conference in the regular season.

The Bobcats are making their seventh appearance in the NCAA Tournament. They earned an at-large bid to the College Station Regional after a 7-4 loss to Louisiana, which is No. 33 in the RPI rankings, in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament semifinals.

Second-team all-conference outfielder Rashawn Galloway leads the team with a .324 batting average and a .594 slugging percentage. Texas State lacks pitching depth, however, and none of its three starters own an ERA lower than 4.01.

NCAA College Station Regional

Who: USC (43-15) vs. Texas State (36-24)

When: Friday, 6 p.m. PDT

Where: Blue Bell Park, College Station, Texas

TV: ESPNU

OMAHA, Neb. — UCLA was rewarded on Monday for its dominant wire-to-wire run through the regular season with the No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.

The 64-team tournament opens Friday with 16 double-elimination regionals. Winners advance to eight best-of-three super regionals. Those winners move on to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 12.

“The committee believed this year’s championship field was deep and very balanced from top to bottom,” said NCAA selection committee chairman Michael Alford, the athletic director at Florida State. “Throughout the process, we remained focused on applying the selection principles pretty consistently across all conferences and regions and I hope that is noticed. Every decision was based on a full body of work, not just single metrics.”

UCLA (51-6), which swept the Big Ten Conference regular-season and tournament titles, was No. 1 by Baseball America in each of its weekly rankings since the preseason and has the most wins entering regionals since Tennessee came in with 53 in 2022.

The Bruins’ ace, Logan Reddeman, and closer, Ethan Hawk, are among the best in the nation and lead a staff that has a 3.31 ERA. Shortstop Roch Cholowsky is widely projected to be the No. 1 pick in the Major League Baseball amateur draft and he, Will Gasparino and Big Ten Tournament MVP Mulivai Levu have combined for 57 homers.

Georgia Tech (48-9), which swept the Atlantic Coast Conference championships, features the nation’s most prodigious offense. The Yellow Jackets lead Division I in scoring (10.8 runs per game), batting average (.358) and slugging (.636). Jarren Advincula is batting .431 to rank second nationally and Vahn Lackey is sixth at .410.

The national seeds following UCLA and Georgia Tech are Georgia (46-12), Auburn (38-19), North Carolina (45-11-1), Texas (40-13), Alabama (37-19) and Florida (39-19). Top-eight national seeds, if they win their regional, are assured of hosting a super regional.

Seeds Nos. 9 through 16: Southern Mississippi (44-15), Florida State (38-17), Oregon (40-16), Texas A&M (39-14), Nebraska (42-15), Mississippi State (40-17), Kansas (42-16) and West Virginia (39-14).

UCLA will host St. Mary’s, Cal Poly (SLO) and Virginia Tech in its regional. The Bruins face St. Mary’s (34-25) in the regional opener on Friday at noon (ESPNU). Cal Poly (36-22) and Virginia Tech (30-24) will square off at 5 p.m. in the other first-round game at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

USC, which lost to UCLA in a Big Ten Tournament semifinal on Saturday, is headed to the Texas A&M regional, which also includes Texas State and Lamar University. USC (43-15) faces Texas State (36-24) on Friday at 6 p.m. PT. Texas A&M and Lamar (34-25) play the regional opener at 1 p.m. PT.

The SEC had the most teams selected, with 12. The ACC has nine teams in the field, followed by the Big 12 with six, Sun Belt with five and Big Ten with four.

The last four teams to get at-large bids, in alphabetical order, were Liberty (41-19), Kentucky (31-21), Texas State and Troy (32-29).

The first four teams left out were Mercer (44-15), Michigan (34-24), Pittsburgh (33-24) and TCU (33-21).

LSU (30-28), the 2025 national champion, became the seventh program to win the title and not make a regional the following year since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1999.

Been there, done that

Texas is in the tournament for a record 65th time and Miami for a 51st. Florida State is a regional host for a record 38th time.

Florida has the longest active streak with 18 straight appearances. Other notable consecutive streaks include Oklahoma State (13), Southern Mississippi (10), Arkansas (9) and East Carolina, North Carolina and Oregon State (8).

Vanderbilt (33-25) is missing regionals after making 19 straight appearances.

First timer

WAC champion Tarleton State is the only first-time participant. The Texans began their transition to Division I in 2021 and weren’t eligible for the tournament when they won the WAC in 2024. Their most recent postseason appearance was in the 2018 Division II tournament.

Losing, but winning

South Dakota State takes a 24-31 record into its second regional, and first since 2013, after winning the four-team Summit League Tournament as the No. 4 seed.

Holy Cross is 25-28 after winning the Patriot League Tournament and has its first back-to-back regional appearances since 1962-63.

Horizon League champion Milwaukee is 25-31 entering its first regional in 16 years.

Mulivai Levu followed up his late-night heroics Friday with a two-out, walk-off, three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning Saturday. One night earlier, the junior from Ocean View High in Huntington Beach delivered a walk-off sacrifice fly to propel the Bruins past Purdue.

“I was trying to hunt a fastball over the plate, and it ended up being middle-in,” Levu said. “I kind of got a little jammed on it, but found the barrel at the same time. I was just hunting the fastball the whole at-bat.”

Time and again, UCLA manager John Savage has been impressed by his first baseman in high-leverage moments.

“A lot of times, it feels like he’s almost swinging a paddle,” Savage said. “Like, it’s a flat paddle. He’s so flat, he’s in the zone a long time, that’s what I mean by that. It’s a flat swing. It’s almost like the bat’s flat, but it’s not, obviously. It’s just a real special swing, he has special hand-eye coordination, and he’s got power from foul pole to foul pole.”

Top-seeded UCLA (50-6) will play in the Big Ten championship game at noon PT Sunday in Omaha, against second-seeded Nebraska or third-seeded Oregon, which are playing their semifinal game Saturday night. To no one’s surprise, Nebraska fans have packed Charles Schwab Field, as their Cornhuskers attempt to win their third consecutive Big Ten Tournament.

Saturday’s victory marked UCLA’s ninth come-from-behind victory of the season when trailing after six innings. The club took a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh inning when leadoff batter Dean West blasted a two-run homer, his sixth long ball of the season.

Down to its final three outs and trailing 4-3, fourth-seeded USC (43-15) mounted a comeback of its own in the top of the ninth inning, loading the bases with nobody out. Isaac Cadena hit a sharp ground ball to first, which Levu fielded and threw to second base. UCLA was able to get only one out on the fielder’s choice, as Adrian Lopez came around to score and tie the game at 4.

The next hitter, Jack Basseer, delivered a clutch sacrifice fly to center field, scoring the game’s go-ahead run.

The crosstown rivals played just one regular-season series, with UCLA outscoring USC 31-16 in a three-game sweep in early April at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

USC starting pitcher Grant Govel held UCLA’s potent offense to just two runs over 4⅔ innings, allowing six hits and no walks and striking out one.

Govel even gritted through a nasty stinger on a comebacker in the bottom of the fourth inning. UCLA’s Will Gasparino drilled a screaming line drive – with an exit velocity of 112 mph – into Govel’s back. The battle-tested sophomore was unfazed, keeping UCLA’s top-ranked offense in check.

Behind Govel, USC led for the majority of the game. An RBI single from designated hitter Augie Lopez put USC up 1-0 in the top of the first inning. Lopez tacked on another run for the Trojans in the top of third with another RBI single, then came around to score on a sacrifice fly from Cadena for a 3-0 lead.

USC chased UCLA starter Michael Barnett in the fifth inning, its three runs coming off eight hits and one walk.

As it has been known to do, UCLA chipped away at the lead. Levu remained hot, banging home an RBI single in the bottom of the third, cutting the deficit by a run. The Bruins got another run back in the bottom of the fourth, thanks to a hit from designated hitter Dominic Cadiz.

Projected No. 1 overall MLB draft pick Roch Cholowsky had a quiet day, going 0 for 5. The Bruins shortstop is just 1 for 9 through two Big Ten Tournament games. He’ll hope to leave his mark on the Big Ten title game Sunday.

“You’ve got to move in and out on Cholowsky,” USC manager Andy Stankiewicz said. “We’ve competed against him for a number of years now. So, you can’t get caught in the same rhythm with him, the same pitching plan. You’ve just got to move it around. I think our pitchers did a decent job today of coming in and going back away, and that’s how you’ve got to face him. He’s awfully good.”

The Trojans and their ace withstood a lengthy rain delay to defeat Michigan State, 7-0, and advance in the Big Ten Tournament on Friday in Omaha, Nebraska.

Fourth-seeded USC (43-14) will face top-seeded UCLA (49-6), which rallied to beat fifth-seeded Purdue, 4-3, on Friday night, in a Saturday semifinal scheduled for noon PT.

Edwards dominated the 12th-seeded Spartans (24-32) for four innings before a downpour caused the game to be postponed for more than an hour and a half.

The Trojans opened the scoring in the bottom of the first inning with Kevin Takeuchi driving in Augie Lopez, who had drawn a two-out walk, with a double to left-center. Isaac Cadena followed with a triple to left-center for a 2-0 lead.

USC added two more runs in the third inning with a bases-loaded, one-out single to left by Jack Besseer.

Edwards, meanwhile, hadn’t let a single Spartan advance past second base. The Big Ten Pitcher of the Year came into the game with an 8-0 record. In 84⅓ innings pitched, Edwards posted conference bests of 154 strikeouts and a 1.49 ERA.

The left-hander finished with six strikeouts – mowing down the Michigan State side in the second – with two hits and two walks.

Undaunted USC emerged from the delay with a three-run fifth inning to boost its lead on a two-run double by Abbrie Covarrubias and an RBI triple from Dean Carpentier.

Andrew Johnson and Chase Herrell took over for Edwards with two scoreless innings apiece. Ben Cuhsnie threw a perfect ninth for USC’s NCAA-best 10th shutout of the season.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES — As momentum builds behind the Big Ten’s idea of doubling the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, one critical question remains: Who wants to televise it?

Fox has indicated it likes the 24-team idea, but embedded within that equation is the critical calculation of how much that network, or any broadcast partner, would pay for a new set of games involving second-tier teams that might not garner the same TV ratings as some of the biggest programs in the sport.

“The answer is ‘less,’ but not nothing,’” said Ed Desser, a former NBA executive and media rights expert who co-authored a paper about the value of college football on TV with former ESPN executive John Kosner. “There will be perceived value. It becomes a question of, on the margin, can you create good, meaningful games that enhance the value of the playoff? Or are you just kind of making people wait longer for the entree, for the game they really want?”

The CFP deal that starts this season with ESPN is worth $7.8 billion over six seasons. That network would have first dibs on the first two games added to any package. The rest are up for grabs.

“I want to see whoever is committed to making it work,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said this week when asked which TV partner he would like to see jump in. “I think it’s about whoever has the commitment to scheduling it right and who’s going to bring the right resources.”

Figuring the size of the playoff is a puzzle that continues to confound the sport. On one side is the Southeastern Conference, which has held steady to the idea of not expanding past 16 teams though Commissioner Greg Sankey teased that some might come around to 24 at meetings next week.

On the other is the Big Ten, which now also has backing from the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences for a move to 24.

The SEC’s idea would more or less keep the overall schedule where it is, including preserving the conference championship games that Petitti estimated to be worth a combined $200 million to the four power conferences.

Sankey has said the league has contracts for its title game and it has to honor those contracts; Petitti didn’t seem as tied to the title games, saying he thought the Big Ten could “undo our championship games” as soon as the 2027 season if needed. The conferences are already working on a plan in which the Power 4 would pool their non-playoff teams to feed a new system for a further diluted bowl system, The Athletic reported last week.

A 24-team playoff would eliminate automatic qualifiers and render conference title games virtually meaningless. According to many in the Big Ten, they would give all programs what they crave – more access to the playoff, and a reason for fans and boosters to keep bankrolling all those player salaries.

“I think if we went to 24 teams, there might be 24 teams that could win the national championship,” said Illinois coach Bret Bielema, who is on the board of the American Football Coaches Association that also recently voiced support for the expanded field. “I don’t know if that was true 10 years ago.”

There is still the issue of paying for it.

While popular, college football only captures a fraction of the viewers as the NFL.

The 30.1 million who tuned into last season’s college final between Indiana and Miami would have ranked fifth on the NFL’s list of most-watched regular-season offerings. The Super Bowl drew more than 125 million viewers.

For the weeks when the CFP goes against NFL regular-season games – first-round contests the past two years have taken place opposite NFL games on Saturdays – the NFL games have drawn between 2.5 times and 5 times the viewers. Part of this is because the NFL games are over-the-air on Fox and the college games were on cable (TNT/TBS/TruTv).

There is also the issue of how much networks or streamers will have to spend.

The NFL’s recent move into streaming and adding new broadcast windows – for example, Christmas Day and the days before and after Thanksgiving – has led to thoughts that the league will press for sooner renegotiations of its own deals that currently have an opt-out clause in 2029.

While the league controls all of its games, college football’s rights are spread out among the individual conferences and the CFP.

“We don’t feel that the current Balkanized state of college football lends itself to maximizing (revenue) across the board,” Kosner said. “Nor do I think that just doubling the CFP at this stage is going to be such a revenue motherlode that it’s going to make a difference.”

Pettiti views filling the gaps from the lost title-game revenue differently. He sees an influx of on-campus games, which generate $6 million or more in ticket sales and other receipts, as part of the equation.

The SEC, once seemingly in the majority in seeking a move to 16 teams, is now in the minority. Sankey said the league will have to do its own research to see how a bigger expansion would impact the college football calendar, the title games and, of course, the financial bottom line.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the commissioners to help make it happen,” Kosner said. “I would kind of be surprised if, within two years, it hasn’t happened. But I’d also be surprised if it winds up being the sort of business boom that they might hope that it would be.”

“When I was in baseball, we never had to convince people that keeping more people in the race is better for everybody,” Petitti, who helped shepherd in playoff expansion when he was with Major League Baseball from 2008-20, said Tuesday. “But I feel like, in this space, we’re being asked to do that.”

Petitti met with reporters on the second day of the league’s spring meetings. He spelled out the reasoning behind the push for a 24-team playoff and projected a sense of unanimity among his coaches and athletic directors in favor of doubling the tournament from its current 12-team format.

He once again said there was no real love in his league for what the SEC prefers – a move to 16 teams that, under one scenario, would put every playoff team in action on the first week.

“I don’t understand the motivation to play a championship game without a bye,” he said.

But, Petitti asked, if leagues got rid of the title games, then in a 16-team format that adds only two games to the playoffs, “what’s the economics” to make up what he estimates is $200 million in revenue the Power Four conferences would lose?

Over the past few weeks, both the Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences have said they would prefer a move to 24 teams.

In what might have been the week’s biggest eye-opener, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” that at his own league meetings in Florida next week, he expects “a lot of our coaches, a lot of our athletic directors and probably some others (will) think 24 is the right direction.”

That would mark a seismic shift from where the SEC has been for the past year.

Sensing the gulf between the SEC and his own league – the two conferences that must agree to a change – Petitti said the Big Ten shifted away from a model with multiple automatic qualifiers to one that would place 23 at-large teams selected by the committee into the new bracket, with one slot reserved for a Group of 6 program.

Games in the first two rounds would be played on campus.

Petitti said the system created enough “tiers” – with eight first-round byes, eight more first-round home games and the last eight spots going to teams simply looking for a playoff berth – to generate interest in regular-season games across the country, and down to the wire.

“I don’t get why we can’t have a Minnesota-Iowa game have a big impact every so often – or every year, actually,” Petitti said.

Because the leagues haven’t been able to agree, the upcoming season’s playoff will be a 12-team affair. The deadline to decide about 2027 is Dec. 1.

Such a big expansion would involve a huge amount of logistical maneuvering, most important of which would be figuring out what to do with conference title games and selling the 12 new playoff games to TV partners.

All of that would be worth the work, Petitti insisted.

“I don’t understand the basic premise that more games that have an impact or keep you in the hunt isn’t the right thing to do,” he said.

Leslie became the second player in league history, joining Sue Bird, to be honored with a statue by her franchise. The three-time WNBA MVP and eight-time All-Star remains the Sparks’ leader in points, rebounds, blocked shots and a host of other categories.

“To be cemented in Los Angeles, the city that raised me, I couldn’t be more proud to be a role model forever!” Leslie said in a statement. “God has blessed me and I have truly given my all to this sport and our community. I am thankful to my coaches, teammates, incredible fans, and, most importantly, my family and friends. As the saying goes, ‘The wolf is only as strong as the pack,’ and I’ve been fortunate to have an amazing pack supporting me every step of the way.”

Leslie, who helped the Sparks win their first two WNBA championships in 2001 and 2002, played all 12 of her seasons with the franchise and was a 12-time All-WNBA selection, two-time Finals MVP, two-time Defensive Player of the Year and three-time All-Star Game MVP. She ranks No. 13 in league history in career points (6,263), No. 6 in rebounds (3,307) and No. 3 in blocked shots (822).

Leslie, who starred at USC and Inglewood’s Morningside High, also won four gold medals with the U.S. Olympic team.

“I’ve known Lisa for nearly three decades and believe that she is beyond deserving of this incredible honor. She was the driving force behind bringing back-to-back championships to the Los Angeles Sparks franchise in 2000 and 2001,” Magic Johnson said. “Lisa’s hard work and commitment has made her one of the best to ever play the game. Lisa’s legacy isn’t just measured by championships and accolades, though; it’s defined by the doors she opened and the standard she set for generations to come.”

The first WNBA player to dunk in a game, Leslie’s No. 9 jersey was retired by the team in 2010. She will join Kobe Bryant, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Wayne Gretzky, Pat Riley, Oscar De La Hoya, Chick Hearn, Jerry West, Luc Robitaille, Bob Miller, Elgin Baylor, Dustin Brown and Gigi Bryant as sports figures with statues at the arena.

The ceremony to unveil the statue will take place on Sept. 20 prior to the Sparks’ game against Portland.

The NCAA announced Thursday that it will expand its two March Madness tournaments by eight teams each next season, a long-expected move that will drop more games into the first week of the highly popular and lucrative showcase without substantially changing its overall form.

The new, 76-team brackets will jam eight extra games – for a total of 12 involving 24 teams – into the front half of the first week of the men’s and the women’s tournaments. It will turn what’s now known as the First Four into a bigger affair that will now be called the “March Madness Opening Round.”

The 12 winners will move into the main 64-team bracket that will begin, as usual, on Thursday for the men and Friday for the women.

It is the first expansion of the tournaments in 15 years, when they were bumped from 64 to 68 teams each. The expansion from 68 teams to 76 marks the men’s tournament’s largest increase since it moved from 53 to 64 teams in 1985. It went from 64 to 65 in 2001 and then added three more teams in 2011 to form the First Four.

The NCAA said it will distribute more than $131 million in new revenue to schools that make the tournament. That money will come via expanded TV advertising opportunities for alcohol, the likes of which were previously restricted. It said the value of the rights agreement will increase $50 million each year on average over the course of the six years.

Most of the eight new slots are expected to go to teams from the power conferences that were already commanding the lion’s share of entries in the bracket. Two years ago, the SEC placed a record 14 teams in the men’s bracket. Last season, the Big Ten had nine.

Keith Gill, the chairman of the Division I men’s basketball committee, called the expansion “a nice way to create some access but make sure we have the bracket we all love when we start Thursday at noon.”

The move is a product of the times, which includes massive expansion – the Atlantic Coast Conference, for instance, has grown from nine to 17 teams since 1996 – and the reality that mid-major schools with top-notch players will often see them plucked away by programs with bigger budgets and the ability to pay them through revenue sharing.

Cinderella? There will still be room for those stirring runs in the tournaments, though not a single mid-major advanced past the first weekend of either tournament the last two seasons.

This is hardly a concern of the decision-makers anymore, who will point to TV ratings that traditionally spell out fans’ preference for the likes of Duke and North Carolina over St. Peter’s and San Diego State, especially once the Sweet 16 starts.

What matters more to the biggest schools is that their teams have a chance to compete in what remains the best postseason in college sports and that they aren’t iced out by lower conference champions who earn automatic bids.

“You’ve got some really, really good teams who are going to end up in that 9, 10, 11 (seed) category that I think should be moved into the” 64-team bracket, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said last year in discussing how he favored expansion.

Also, the money. The new beer and wine money will add to what the NCAA can distribute in “units” that are earned for placing teams in the bracket and then for every round those teams advance.

Last year, that amounted to about $350,000 per unit for the men’s tournament. The Big Ten made nearly $70 million from both tournaments, won by conference members Michigan (men) and UCLA (women).

Leaders in the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC have all acknowledged that smaller programs help make March Madness what it is, all the while steadily expanding their own power in NCAA decision-making. That brings with it the tacit threat of fracturing the single thing the NCAA does best – the basketball tournament.

This move might forestall that. What it isn’t expected to do is drastically change the TV deal beyond the advertising.

The current deal for the men’s tournament is worth $8.8 billion and runs through 2032. Adding a few extra games between mid-level Power Four teams on Tuesday and Wednesday won’t change that much.

One of reason this took as long as it did was the NCAA negotiations with CBS and TNT, which themselves have been in negotiations over their own ownership.

The more drastic option of expanding the tournament to 96 teams or beyond would involve adding an extra week to a tournament that has thrived in part because of the symmetry of a six-round bracket that gets whittled down over three weeks.

That basic shell began in 1985, with only slight tweaks along the way.

Movement toward expanding the tournament has been ongoing for more than three years, as the College Football Playoff expanded and college athletics contended with conference realignment and the growth of the four biggest conferences. In January 2023, the NCAA Division I board of directors approved a transformation committee’s recommendation to expand all sports’ championship events to include 25% of teams. The men’s basketball committee began discussing expanding the field that summer.

The NCAA presented expansion plans to Division I conference commissioners in the summer of 2024, including options to increase the fields to 72 or 76 teams. NCAA president Charlie Baker publicly endorsed the move in the spring of 2025 and reiterated his support on multiple occasions – pointing to access as the biggest reason for expansion.

“From my point of view, the more teams we can get into the tournament and make it work logistically and mathematically, the better,” Baker said in February. “It gives more kids the opportunity to experience that.”

Although potential expansion for the 2026 NCAA Tournament was tabled last summer, momentum among decision-makers and conference commissioners was clearly headed in the direction of expansion.

The various committees that needed to approve the decisions – the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees, the Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committees, the Division I Finance Committee, the Division I board of directors and the NCAA board of governors – officially voted to expand on Thursday.

HOW IT WORKS

The lowest-seeded 12 automatic qualifiers as seeded by the selection committees will play in half of the opening round games and the other six games will match the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams.

Teams will continue to be paired to face the opponent nearest to them on the committees’ overall seed lists. For example, seed 75 might play seed 76 in one opening round game, while the lowest-seeded at-large team might face the second-to-lowest-seeded at-large team.

Exceptions could be made, for example, to avoid a regular-season rematch or for geographic purposes.

The opening round men’s games will be the Tuesday and Wednesday after Selection Sunday in a location to be announced later (reportedly west of the Eastern time zone to help with logistics) and in Dayton, Ohio, which has been the traditional home of the First Four. There will be three games each day at each site.

Among at-large teams, two games will match No. 11 seeds and four will match No. 12s. Among the automatic qualifiers, two games will match No. 15s and four will match No. 16s.

The details are the same for the women’s tournament except that opening round games will be held the Wednesday and Thursday after Selection Sunday on the campuses of 12 of the top 16 seeds selected to host the first and second rounds.