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College Basketball

NCAA Tournament selection committee sets minimum game requirement for 2022

Andrew Olson

By Andrew Olson

Published:

This year’s NCAA Tournament is set to look like March Madness pre-2020 if things go according to plan.

In a Wednesday article, Matt Norlander of CBS Sports offered a detailed look at the plans for March Madness 2022 after speaking to NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt.

Unlike 2021’s Indiana tournament format, the 2022 tourney is planning for a 68-team field played out across 3 weeks at 14 sites, starting with the First Four in Dayton and Final Four in New Orleans.

In another return to pre-2020 days, the selection committee has set a minimum of 25 games played to make the Big Dance. Teams under 25 games would need to get a waiver. The committee decided against a blanket waiver, which would have lowered the minimum.

“But there is an individual institution waiver process,” Gavitt told CBS Sports. “So if a team [with a] situation out of its control can’t reach that number of 25 games, there’s a waiver process in place that the committees can review and grant an exception waiver for championship eligibility.”

The waiver window is Feb. 14-25. Right now, it looks like waivers won’t be needed. Norlander includes a tweet from Ken Pomeroy showing that cancellations have calmed down after a spike in mid-December and early January.

The 2022 Tournament is scheduled to run from March 13-April 4.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.

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