MADISON – The NCAA Tournament appears to be on the precipice of expanding.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that the NCAA has “initiated the final steps” to expand the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments from 68 to 76 teams ahead of the 2026-27 season.
Expanding March Madness beyond the existing 68-team format has been a point of discussion for a while, including when Wisconsin men’s basketball was in Portland for the first round of the 2026 tournament.
Wisconsin coach Greg Gard expressed his support for expansion in his March 18 press conference while saying there are “a lot of different roads you can run down with that.”
“I don’t know, is it the 78, is it the 94?” Gard said ahead of the Badgers’ March 19 loss to High Point in the first round. “The numbers, you can mix them any way you want. I’m not a believer that it’s going to dilute things, as I’ve seen some arguments.”
Gard’s case for expansion seemed to hinge on the opportunities available for college basketball players. More teams and more games theoretically would mean more opportunities to play in the tournament.
“I just feel the opportunities and experiences that you can create for the student-athletes – I know we lose sight of that at times – is still important and we should keep those things in mind,” Gard said.
Wisconsin players also received the same question, and now-former UW guard John Blackwell shared his own idea of implementing a series in later rounds instead of a single game determining who advances.
“The thing I would look at is the series, especially going into like the Sweet 16, three-game series, something like that,” Blackwell said before his last game as a Badger. “Honestly, I love the way it’s structured now. I don’t think any changes should be made.”
Austin Rapp – one of Wisconsin’s six players from the 2025-26 team who is returning for 2026-27 – liked Blackwell’s idea.
“I think the series would be cool,” Rapp said. “Once you get to the Sweet 16, yeah, Elite Eight or something like that, have a three-game series.”
When a reporter mentioned Blackwell’s idea to Gard, he said it was “well thought out.”
“We’re the only sport – correct me if I’m wrong – where we don’t play a series, right?” Gard said. “Major League Baseball plays a series. The NBA plays a series. The NFL doesn’t, but they’ve expanded their playoffs.”
Wisconsin, of course, has seen its share of quick postseason exits in recent history. The Badgers fell in the first round of the 2026 tournament, second round of the 2025 tournament and first round of the 2024 tournament. Their last Sweet 16 appearance was in 2017.
“You can have a really, really good year and a bad 10 minutes, and you go home,” Gard said before a bad final minute sent the fifth-seeded Badgers home early. “Everybody talks about the bad 10 minutes.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What Wisconsin coach Greg Gard has said about expanding March Madness
Reporting by John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
