{"id":494779,"date":"2026-04-29T11:23:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T09:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=494779"},"modified":"2026-04-29T11:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T09:23:48","slug":"ncaa-basketball-tournaments-set-to-expand-to-76-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/ncaa-basketball-tournaments-set-to-expand-to-76-teams\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA basketball tournaments set to expand to 76 teams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"1275\" data-end=\"1471\">The <strong data-start=\"1279\" data-end=\"1287\">NCAA<\/strong> is moving toward expanding its men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball tournaments to 76 teams. According to ESPN, the process is in its final stages and could be formalized in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1473\" data-end=\"1672\">The expansion would begin next season and add eight at-large bids to the men\u2019s tournament. The current First Four would become a larger opening stage, with 24 teams playing 12 games across two sites.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1674\" data-end=\"1885\">The traditional 64-team bracket would still begin on Thursday, but more at-large teams would have to play before that point. The push is mainly driven by power conferences rather than a major financial windfall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NCAA has reportedly initiated the final steps to expand both men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball tournaments to 76 teams, with an announcement possible in mid-May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":393626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[401],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-494779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2024\/06\/NCAA.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494779"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=494779"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=494779"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=494779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}