The Division I Men’s NCAA Basketball Committee has chosen Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart to chair a future selection committee.
The NCAA has announced that Mitch Barnhart, the director of athletics at Kentucky, will serve as the chair for the Division I Men’s NCAA Basketball Committee during the 2020-21 campaign. Barnhart will also assume the role of vice chair for the committee in the upcoming season, when the chair is Kevin White, who is vice president and the director of athletics at Duke, according to the NCAA’s announcement.
Per the NCAA’s Web site, the 10-member Division I Men’s Basketball Committee “is responsible for selecting, seeding and bracketing the field for the NCAA Tournament. School and conference administrators are nominated by their conference, serve five-year terms and represent a cross-section of the Division I membership.”
The NCAA press statement notes that Barnhart, selected as Athletic Director of the Year this past spring by the Sports Business Journal, has held the role of athletics director at Kentucky since 2002. Prior to that, he held the same post at Oregon State for four stanzas. Barnhart has also worked in athletics departments at San Diego State, Oregon, SMU and Tennessee.
According to the NCAA’s announcement, Barnhart, who additionally will join the Division I Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee this season, has guided the Wildcats’ athletics department to tremendous success, with Kentucky’s “six best finishes in the Learfield IMG College Directors’ Cup standings coming in the past seven years.”
As it pertains to men’s basketball, since Barnhart arrived in Lexington, the program has captured the national championship in 2012, reached the Final Four on four occasions, and advanced to the Elite Eight nine times.
“Being asked to serve in this role by my wonderful colleagues on this committee is one of the highest honors I’ve ever received,” Barnhart said in the NCAA’s release. “The 10 of us carry a huge responsibility, not just with the selection, seeding and bracketing of teams each year, which draws the greatest amount of attention, but also as a group charged with working with other constituents to manage the health of the sport of college basketball. It’s an incredible challenge and one we will continue to take very seriously.”
Other members of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee are Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference; Jim Phillips, vice president for athletics and recreation at Northwestern; Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Southland Conference; Bernadette McGlade, commissioner of the Atlantic 10 Conference; Mike O’Brien, vice president and the director of athletics at Toledo; and Chris Reynolds, vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Bradley.
Charles McClelland, commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, and Jamie Pollard, the athletics director at Iowa State, will join the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee on Sept. 1. Meanwhile, current chair Bernard Muir, the athletics director at Stanford, and Janet Cone, the athletics director at UNC Asheville, will rotate off this committee on Sept. 1.