By JAMES MADDEN
With ongoing discussions about potential NCAA Tournament expansion happening in the near future, George Washington head coach Chris Caputo voiced his support for the idea of tournament expansion following the Colonials’s win over UMBC Wednesday night.
Caputo mentioned that many multi-team events in college basketball will not allow some of the top mid-major teams to participate against high-major teams, particularly his team, who is the top-ranked Atlantic 10 team according to KenPom.
“It’s just so challenging in this landscape. The fix is in. The NET,” Caputo said. “We all know what it is. You can’t manipulate it.”
With the current metrics used in the tournament’s selection process, Caputo feels that many teams like George Washington are at a systemic disadvantage on Selection Sunday.
“I’m for expansion, because I don’t think they’re gonna go away from this metric,” he said. “If they’re freezing you out of the opportunities, it’s the only way to get more teams from a league like ours, which has traditionally been a multi-bid league. I don’t see how you couldn’t be for expansion, when they basically moved the goalposts on what it would take to get in these for teams outside of the power leagues. They just freeze you out.”
He also talked about his time as an assistant coach at George Mason when he coached under Jim Larranaga. Caputo mentioned the run in his first season with the Patriots, in which George Mason reached the Final Four, something he said isn’t possible for a program like that in today’s era of college basketball.
With ongoing discourse about future tournament expansion, the NCAA has yet to finalize or announce any framework for what that process would look like.
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