Why WVU AD Wren Baker Views NCAA Tournament Expansion as ‘Compromise’

The NCAA has officially expanded its premiere college basketball tournament from 64 to 76 teams, and WVU director of Athletics Wren Baker offered his thoughts on the news during a press conference on Tuesday.

One of Baker’s primary concerns is mid-major programs keeping their automatic qualifications for winning their respective conference tournaments.

“As somebody who’s worked at virtually every level of college athletics, I would not be in favor of pulling AQs away from the mid-major leagues,” Baker said. “I think that’s part of what makes the tournament special, because everybody that goes to the conference tournament goes with the hope that they can, um, catch lightning in a bottle, be Cinderella and, and play in the big dance.”

Baker called the updated field a “compromise” between those wanting representation from mi-major programs and those who want more high-level competition in the tournament.

“I think this was a compromise. Let’s expand the field. Everybody keeps their AQs. It’s undetermined who those additional at-larges will go to, but you guys have probably seen the studies. The vast majority of them end up going to power conference teams,” Baker said. “And so I think the expansion was done in an effort to try to appease all sides of that equation, and let’s just see how it works and how, how it’s evaluated.”

Overall, Baker emphasized the desire for more opportunities to play in a postseason tournament, and expanding March Madness allows for that.

“Generally, I’m in favor of opportunities for young people. And so, you add more teams, you give more young people opportunities,” Baker said.

Editor’s note: WVU basketball is in the midst of the program’s first three-year drought without an NCAA Tournament appearance since failing to get in from 1999-2004. It’s worth noting the 2005 Mountaineers broke that drought and then reached the Elite Eight.

Find more coverage of WVU basketball at WV Sports Now.

For a related story, Andy Katz included West Virginia inside his recent NCAA Tournament projection.