While most that support mid-major basketball think it to be a bad idea, and that includes myself, the Southern Conference announced its support for the expansion of the NCAA Tournament from a 68-team field to 76 teams Tuesday morning by commissioner Michael Cross. Most of us have several questions, and it’s hard to know exactly where to start. Let’s start by looking at the SoCon’s general, unprecedented success over the past decade-plus.
SoCon POV: A Decade-Plus Like No Other
With the evolving landscape of the NIL/transfer portal era, it has been difficult for many mid-major conferences to keep up. The SoCon has not been immune to that either, as the last two seasons have seen the league go 0-34 against power-five programs, with those types of games becoming fewer and fewer during the regular-season non-conference.
The current era for the SoCon has been among its best in its 105-year history. Excluding the COVID-19 shortened 2020-21 season, the most notable thing about the SoCon upon first glance is that its league regular-season or tournament champion from 2014-25 has won 27 or more games over an 11-season span.
The league has produced a pair of NCAA Tournament wins, two nationally-ranked programs within the same season, an NIT Champion, multiple wins over reigning national champions and Final Four programs, wins over power-five and nationally-ranked programs, and two of the four 30-win teams the league has ever produced.
In fact, only in the past couple of seasons has the league seen its NCAA Tournament representative fall as low as a 15-seed in the Big Dance. Wofford competed as a No. 15 seed last season after winning the SoCon Tournament as a No. 6 seed, despite the SoCon having a solid No. 13 ranking in KenPom.
The Terriers were somewhat competitive before falling to Tennessee, 77-62, while Furman was a No. 15 this past season, falling 82-71 to national runner-up Connecticut. This was the closest a SoCon team has played in a game against a No. 15 seed since Davidson dropped a 70-62 decision to No. 2 Ohio State in the 2006 NCAA Tournament. Wofford playing as a No. 15 seed in the tournament marked the first time a SoCon team had that low of a seed in the NCAA Tournament since the No. 15 Terriers faced No. 2 Michigan in the 2014 NCAA Tournament.
The league did dip to No. 20 in the 2022-23 season, however, Furman’s NCAA Tournament win over Virginia helped off-set that a little.
SoCon’s Past 13 Tournament Champions KenPom Ranking at Season’s End
2013-14—Wofford (KenPom Rank=192)
2014-15—Wofford (KenPom Rank=96)
2015-16—Chattanooga (KenPom Rank=109)
2016-17—East Tennessee State (KenPom Rank=67)
2017-18—UNC Greensboro (KenPom Rank=82)
2018-19—Wofford (KenPom Rank=18)
2019-20—East Tennessee State (KenPom Rank=56)
2020-21—UNC Greensboro (KenPom Rank=108)
2021-22—Chattanooga (KenPom Rank=67)
2022-23—Furman (KenPom Rank=92)
2023-24—Samford (KenPom Rank=81)
2024-25—Wofford (KenPom Rank=114)
2025-26—Furman (KenPom Rank=184)
All the accomplishments mentioned above are just a sampling of the league’s success over the past 12 seasons or so, and sustaining that in this current era is hard enough, let alone having to now navigate how the league’s current message is received by the NCAA and other stakeholders, as mid-majors struggle to keep their positioning in the NCAA postseason amid expansion rumors.
With that said, there are also some concerning phrases in the principles listed below like the insinuation that the automatic bid process of the league might somehow be altered with an expansion? Read for yourself and see if that is how it sounds to you.
The Release and What it says:
Most hold fast to the theory that expanding the NCAA Tournament would ultimately include more marginal bigger programs, and thus, force more mid-majors to the front of the dance line, or the “First Four” if you catch my drift. Most view that as not part of the real tournament itself, and technically speaking, they’re right. The event in Dayton is kind of viewed as a part of the tournament designed to placate perceived bubble mid-majors while simultaneously advocating for more borderline power conference teams to be included in the main field.
For the SoCon to endorse such a view when no other mid-major conference has yet to publicly do so is a little eye-popping, and at the same confusing all in one. Why would the SoCon endorse such a perceived threat to dilution of the product that makes everything Madness in March?
In a release laid out on the SoCon’s website, there are three principles in which the league advocates using below when it comes to March Madness Expansion. I have copied and pasted those three principles from the league’s website below.
PRINCIPLE #1 – SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE ACCESS
The NCAA transformation committee established that approximately 25% of teams should participate in postseason championships. Just under 23% of 282 schools participated in March Madness when the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Today, 18.6% of Division I schools participate. Critically, expansion must preserve automatic qualification for all conferences.
PRINCIPLE #2 – COMPETITIVE INTEGRITY
The First Four in Dayton features two games between the four lowest-ranked automatic qualifiers, and two with the four lowest ranked at-large teams. The primary purpose of March Madness is to crown a champion. Opening round participation should be based on merit, not the method of qualification, with the lowest NET teams playing in these games. Teams with a statistically better chance of reaching the Final Four should play fewer games. March Madness formats should utilize complete bracket integrity. If this is not achievable, the bracket should have all teams on a seed line playing the same number of games to reach the Final Four.
PRINCIPLE #3 – TRANSPARENCY
Schools spending millions of dollars annually on their basketball programs shouldn’t have to speculate about the math informing selection metrics. The NET is the committee’s foundational resource to rank teams, establish quadrants, and determine the cut line in the Wins Above Bubble (WAB) metric. Unfortunately, NET calculations remain unknown. Describing its formulas as “too complicated”; concerns coaches will “game the system”; and describing the NET as “only one tool” in an attempt to minimize its importance are not defensible rationales for withholding selection formulas. Metric transparency is crucial for trust and better decision-making by coaches and administrators across Division I. Disclosing NET and other selection metric formulas, while also revising the quadrants and WAB cutlines to align with a bigger tournament field, should be part of expansion.
I have listed several reasons which I think are valid as to why the principles above should not be endorsed, primarily because they limit a league that has proven it can compete at the highest of levels.
Further Limiting League and Individual Player Exposure
There are so many issues and dangers in naively believing the NCAA cares about what mid-majors actually do for the sport. It’s surprising that the SoCon announced such advocacy [for expanding the NCAA Tournament] when its been a league that has avoided having to play in a “First Four” game since the tournament was increased from 64 to 68 teams in 2011.
In the past decade alone, the SoCon has seen two of its teams–Furman and Wofford–produce memorable opening-round wins over power conference programs in the NCAA Tournament, with No. 7 seeded Wofford took down No. 10 Seton Hall (W, 84-68) in the 2019 edition of March Madness, while it was just three years ago that No. 13 seeded Furman produced that memorable JP Pegues buzzer-beating win over No. 4 Virginia (W, 68-67) in Orlando.
Even this past March with the league floundering at No. 23 in KenPom’s metric for power rankings among 31 conferences, the SoCon’s representative, which was No. 15 Furman, was competitive with No. 2 and eventual national runner-up UConn, dropping what was an 82-71 contest in Philadelphia. That was a stage that allowed point guard Alex Wilkins to further maximize his potential into the seven-figure category with his ability as a high-major player on display for all to see.
His 21-point effort against the Huskies allowed the league’s most talented freshman since Stephen Curry (2006-07) to capitalize on it in the transfer portal/NIL era we live in, as he will more than double the NIL money he was receiving at Furman in his new destination at the University of Kentucky. If he played in a First Four game on a random Tuesday night, I am not sure what he is doing now is even a reality.
Why you ask? Primarily due to the fact that many high majors won’t play well-established mid-majors anymore. In fact, UConn was Furman’s only regular-season or postseason matchup against a team from a power conference. Those opportunities are dwindling in the SoCon and for other mid-majors throughout the country. Endorsing a tournament expansion to essentially a play-in round of eight games for mid-major teams would even lessen those opportunities even more.
Trying to understand why the league would make such a public statement endorsing expansion is perhaps the hardest thing to rationalize about the entire ordeal. I know that is the same sentiment felt by my fellow colleagues and writers at Mid-Major Madness, as we fail to fully be able to understand the SoCon’s philosophy and the reasoning behind their stance on this. It feels like one of our beloved conferences has betrayed the order. I hope I am wrong.
It could be the SoCon sees this as a financial benefit to its now 11 member institutions (Tennessee Tech will become an official member on July 2, 2026), with more opportunities to get wins if a team or teams are involved in “First Four” matchups.
Endorsing the NET Makes Zero Sense Under Its Current Skewed Evaluation of Teams
There are so many reasons that even the principles don’t make much sense. The fact that anyone from the SoCon office or involved with the league should mention the NET ranking seems almost blasphemous. For those of us in the “if you know you know camp” should reference just one aspect of how flawed the NET system is, no one should ever look past the 2018-19 season, which is the same season that Wofford won 30 games, went unbeaten in league play, and easily handled Seton Hall in its opening round matchup.
The NET favors power conference teams, and it only benefits power conference teams to play each other during the regular-season, which by default, automatically ensures the least amount of mid-major games are scheduled for each league, which automatically plummets mid-major conference’s overall power ranking, as well as its ability to improve its own strength of schedule, which come late February and in various NCAA Bubble Tournament discussions about the odd 30-win team, has its schedule automatically held against it by people like Jay Bilas.
In 2018-19, not only was that Wofford team among the best in Southern Conference history, it was also one of the best mid-major teams in this current era of mid-major basketball. Wofford’s dominance was even more historic when you consider the strength of the top four in the league from that season–Wofford, UNC Greensboro, Furman and East Tennessee State–with three of those as strong as any of those programs had ever produced in terms of strength.
The only exception to that rule was ETSU, which was ranked in the top 10 nationally in the early 1990s, and a year later, the Bucs proved just how strong they were by keeping a core of veterans around for another year, as the Bucs capped the 2019-20 season with a 30-4 record and won the SoCon Tournament title just before COVID-19 canceled the NCAA Tournament.
And yet, as strong as the SoCon was seven years ago, and in particular its top four teams according to whatever metric you looked at, it somehow it didn’t produce a second at-large bid. In that season, the league literally had wins over previous Final Four participants and a reigning national champion, in Loyola Chicago and Villanova, as Furman defeated both en route to a 12-0 start and the program’s first-ever Top 25 ranking, while Wofford also ended the regular-season ranked No. 20 in the AP Top 25 and also had a 20-point win on the road at a power-five opponent, defeating South Carolina (W, 81-61) on the road, as the Terriers headed into the NCAA Tournament winners of 20-straight games.
The opening round, 84-68, win over Seton Hall was Wofford’s 21st-straight win and a win that would ultimately help the Terriers become the first team in reach 30 wins in the SoCon since 1950-51. Wofford was just the third of only four in the history of the conference!
My reasons for the disagreement largely stem from a 2018-19 season, when the SoCon became the highest ranked conference to not receive two bids to the NCAA Tournament. Never before in SoCon has never before received two bids in its history. As the league seemed closer to securing a second bid for 2018-19, a release like the one the league office issued yesterday suggests that window of opportunity has now firmly closed.
I hope I am proven wrong. I hope Cross and the SoCon will be more transparent with us mid-major fans/journalists regarding why a public endorsement was necessary at this time, and what it all means. It’s one of the things I have come to greatly appreciate about Commissioner Cross: his openness to dialogue and public discourse. If he can explain what all this means a little better to make us feel better, then this release would probably hit a little differently than it initially has.
