I heard from some fellow parents that there will be an Ivy League tournament for the top four league spots starting next season with an NCAA tourney spot up for grabs to go along with the NCAA tourney spot for the regular season league winner. I can't find confirmation of this anywhere though. Heard anything?
Each conference gets 1 automatic bid or AQ (automatic qualification), not 2. The conference can decide how to allocate the AQ - to a tournament champ or the regular season champ, but not both. One team earns the AQ, and any others would compete for at-large bids with every other team in the Division not earning an AQ. Unless there is some huge tournament expansion coming, that's how it works now.
Expansion is coming. 80 plus teams closer to 90 probably. It is just a matter of time. 55 at large bids or so. Ivy may be thinking they will get another.
This will just open up more spots for the Power 5. The NCAA is afraid of the Power 5 conferences and wants to do everything they can to keep them happy. Adding more at large bids will get more Power 5 schools into the NCAA tournaments
NCAA tournament expansion opens up more spots for everyone, not just Power 5. Especially if leagues get 2 auto bids instead of just one. Each year there are some weaker leagues whose best teams miss out on their conference tournament auto bid and therefore don’t get to go to the NCAAs. Army comes to mind this past year.
this is true and sort of not true. It does open up more berths to the tournament, but I’ve heard nothing along the lines of them guaranteeing small mid/low major conferences 2 bids, but rather just 20-30 more at large bids. As others pointed out it’s to allegedly create “more opportunities,” but it’s much more likely to just create additional spots for the next best teams, which are largely P5 (though in women’s soccer it could benefit the ivies, WCC, a10, and some others on random years). Unlikely it would have benefited army this past year, hard to make a legitimate case for them as they were RPI 139, 3rd best RPI in their league, even though they won the regular season crown. There has been some argument that conference tournaments should not decide AQ’s, but, then there’s no reason to play them. It does disproportionately hurt small major conference regular season champions if they can’t win the tournament…but that’s why you play the game… errr match
It is up to each conference to decide how it will determine its NCAA Tournament automatic qualifier. In theory, a conference could have a conference tournament but still have its pre-tournament #1 team be its automatic qualifier. I do not see what the benefit would be to the Ivy League of having a conference tournament, in relation to the NCAA Tournament. I think the League would improve its stature by compressing its conference schedule in the later part of the season and opening up more time in the earlier part of the season for playing strong non-conference opponents. On the other hand, I know that one of the Power 5 conferences did a player survey quite a while ago, to see how they felt about their conference tournament. The players felt the tournament was one of the best parts of the season.
It won’t help the Power 5’s that much unless they change the requirement of being at least .500 to get in. There aren’t many Power 5’s above .500 that didn’t make it. Might help the next tiers though like the Big East and Ivy.
PAC-12 had four teams over .500 that didn't make it (five qualified). Maybe not so many are from the other Power 5's.
ACC had 1 team above .500 not make it but it was Syracuse and had a weak non conference schedule. Big 12 had 4 teams not make it. only 3 qualified Big ten had 3 not make it. 5 qualified SEC had 2 not make it. 9 qualified
So about 14 Power 5 schools that didn’t make it but were .500 or better. If they took them all (some are not clearly not good enough), you’d still have at least 12 spots. Would imagine the next tier of schools would get 1-2 more each.