Duke Legend Coach K Gives Honest Take on Possible Expansion of March Madness Bracket

Duke legend and Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski says it would be a "big mistake" to expand the NCAA Tournament past 68 teams in the future.

"There are less teams capable right now than ever before," Krzyzewski said around the 2:15 mark of Monday's The Field of 68: After Dark podcast. "There are many have-nots, and it's not their fault."

Krzyzewski continued. "I don't think you mess with something that is gold. It's gold. I think the thing you should mess with is getting a leadership group... they should run it like the NBA, and have a staff, and run it like a business. But I wouldn't mess with gold, right now, and the NCAA Tournament is certainly that."

The last March Madness expansion took place in 2011, when the bracket jumped from 65 to 68 teams. NCAA president Charlie Baker said in February he would like to see the tournament expand again in the future.

On3's Ross Dellenger reported back in December the NCAA was "nearing" an agreement on a 76-team tournament, featuring an "opening round" featuring the First Four alongside eight extra games.

Baker said in February his ideal expansion would involve retaining automatic qualifiers for 32 teams, while expanding the number of at-large bids elsewhere.

He cited the 2023-24 NCAA Tournament, during which Seton Hall and Indiana State were among the First Four Out, as an example of teams with "quality wins and quality schedules" that had been left out of the 68-team field.

"The more you do to create opportunities for the so-called bubble teams each year to get into the tournament, first of all, it puts some other really good teams that probably might belong there," Baker said in February, per CBS Sports' Matt Norlander.

Krzyzewski said part of the reason he's opposed to tournament expansion is because he expects there to be fewer surprise runs from programs like Seton Hall now that players can leverage one strong season into an NIL deal from a larger school.

"There'll be less Cinderella stories, though, because the low-division and many mid-division programs, if they have a great player who's a freshman, there's a great chance they're not going to be there the next year," Krzyzewski said.

If the NCAA does end up making a change to the March Madness format, that news won't come for at least another month. SVP of basketball Dan Gavitt said shortly after Baker's comments in mid-February that talks about a potential expansion would be paused ahead of the 2026 tournament.