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Remember April 5? It doesn't seem so long ago. Let's go back: Duke had just capped off a brilliant national championship run by surviving Butler's defense, a heavy thrust of Indianapolis-area momentum and Gordon Hayward's "Oh my God that's going in OH MAN OH MAN" rim-out in the final seconds of an utterly thrilling title game. Two of that game's stars -- Hayward and Duke forward Kyle Singler -- faced looming NBA draft decisions. The NCAA seemed destined to expand the tournament to 96 teams. Oregon was desperately trying to find its newest coach. Jon Scheyer was pranking his friends.
We've come a long way in 50 days.
Thanks to the NBA's new early draft deadline -- more on that in a bit -- the NCAA offseason's intrigue is now more front-loaded than ever. Major draft decisions, coaching carousel rotations and recruiting intrigue are now all packed into one tiny spring window, leaving us with less to discuss in the dog days of college hoops' brutal offseason. But we'll worry about that later. For now, let's recap the major storylines of the offseason's first 50 days. Here's an updated rundown of hoops news and newsmakers since Duke cut down the Lucas Oil Stadium nets on April 5. Buckle up:
The NCAA tournament didn't expand? The NCAA tournament didn't expand! OK, so the NCAA tournament did expand. But compared to the alternative, the NCAA men's basketball committee's April 22 recommendation -- later ratified by the NCAA board of directors -- to expand the tournament from 65 to 68 teams hardly feels like expansion at all. Consider where we were on April 1. NCAA senior vice president of basketball and business strategies Greg Shaheen was front and center in Lucas Oil Stadium, meandering for thousands of words on why the 96-team format wasn't such a bad thing, why it wouldn't affect student-athletes' classroom time (it would), and why expansion wasn't going to destroy the tournament but was just another inevitable step in the great competition's oft-expanded history. It did not go well. The half-baked reasoning, not to mention Shaheen's filibuster on the subject, managed to rankle even the most apathetic of onlookers. It appeared the NCAA was concerned with one thing only: The naked pursuit of another TV contract, one that required 96 teams to be financially maximal.
Not so much, actually. In one of the more refreshing and surprising sports decisions in recent memory, the NCAA abandoned that plan (for now, anyway), expanding the tournament to 68 teams and still landing that all-important new TV deal. This one splits the NCAA tournament across two networks -- CBS and Turner Sports, mainly -- and will provide the NCAA with a way to show every single NCAA tournament game live, a luxury previously enjoyed only by those willing to buy an added DirecTV package. The contract is worth hundreds of millions more per year than the NCAA's old deal. This is the best news of all: The NCAA got its famed TV deal without having to expand to 96 teams. It could happen in the future, sure. NCAA officials won't rule anything out. But removing that financial incentive gives the NCAA much less reason to push for larger expansion in the future.
