DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — The NCAA tournament has grown by just one spot since the field reached 64 in 1985, and Dayton coach Brian Gregory believes it's time to expand again.

In his mind, increasing to 128 teams would require only one more round of games and wouldn't be a burden on players academically. And that may be the only way to address the dwindling number of bids given to non-BCS schools.

The power conferences were awarded an incredible 30 of the 34 at-large berths this year, leaving Dayton, Butler, Xavier and BYU as the only non-BCS teams making the field without an automatic bid. Just six teams in the RPI top-50 were left out of the tourney, and all of them were non-BCS schools.

"You have to be near-perfect (to get in) unless you win your league tournament. Luckily, we were pretty close to that. We had a lot of positives and neutrals and not a lot of negatives on our resume," Gregory said.

"(But) it encompasses a lot more than just that. You look at those NIT brackets and ... you're talking about some high-quality programs and high-quality teams. You're talking about the back-to-back national champion in Florida, in two consecutive years, not making the tournament. ... The quality throughout the country, as that's expanded, the opportunities to showcase themselves in the NCAA have not expanded with that.

"If you don't think Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, UNLV and Virginia Tech aren't good enough to go into the NCAA tournament and win one or two games, you haven't watched those teams play this year."

Buckeye state shines

Ohio led all states in NCAA bids with five — and Gregory said there's a reason for that.

"Look at the history of Ohio high school basketball, just go down the list of tremendous player after tremendous player," he said.

"There's great high school coaching. And because of the coaching, Ohio players are more ready to contribute at the college level. ... Our AAU programs, with the good and bad that sometimes come with that, are doing it the right way."

Akron, Xavier, Cleveland State and Ohio State joined the Flyers in the NCAA field.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2125 or at dharris@DaytonD

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