Overview
- Following Purdue’s Round of 64 win, Matt Painter said power programs do schedule mid-majors and framed his approach as optimizing for NET and seeding, calling coaches who ignore NET "absolute bozos."
- Miami (Ohio) coach Travis Steele and High Point’s Flynn Clayman maintain current analytics and the Quad system leave top mid-majors with few quality nonconference options.
- FOIA documents reported by Extra Points showed Miami (Ohio) sought games with Power programs such as Pitt, Wisconsin and Marquette but failed to secure them.
- Recent results, including No. 12 seed High Point’s upset of No. 5 Wisconsin and Miami (Ohio)’s First Four win, fueled fresh attention on mid-major competitiveness.
- Coaches like Gonzaga’s Mark Few and Arkansas’s John Calipari cited structural constraints and argued sustained success is the surest path to better games, and no changes to metrics or scheduling rules have been announced.