College Basketball: How to bring back BracketBusters in the non-conference

Who would be the Participants?

The goal would be to create a tournament with evenly matched mid-major teams, with the reward being able to get up to three quality wins. Having these wins would be crucial for at-large consideration at the end of the season.

This tournament would invite the high-quality smaller schools like Saint Mary’s, New Mexico State, VCU and other consistently solid programs. Other programs like Wichita State, who went to the AAC this spring, and Gonzaga, will always get invites to the top tournaments due to the profile of their programs, so they will not be involved with this event.

There should be eight teams available to have quality games that ESPN can show without worrying about media entanglements with other groups.

Here’s a potential example of what a tournament would look like if it could pick eight good teams (Remember that teams would only want to have one participant per conference to avoid a third game during conference play. Also, teams with intriguing prospects and storylines will also get the nod.):

In a purely hypothetical situation, let’s look at how the tournament might follow through if it existed this season.