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Looks like the NBA Bubble has made an impression on the NCAA: it’s going to schedule eight events in Orlando in the early part of the season, including the Champions Classic.
That’s kicked off the season for a few years now and always has Duke, Michigan State, Kansas and Kentucky.
Orlando and Disney will also host the Jimmy V Classic, Preseason NIT, Orlando Invitational, Myrtle Beach Invitational, Charleston Classic, Wooden Legacy, and Diamond Head Classic.
The Spartans will be there twice, once for the Champions Classic and then again for the Orlando Invational.
We’d say look at it as a test run. The NCAA, via various people, has expressed intrigue about the bubble model and we’d assume they’re going to take notes and consider how they could do this in March.
The question then becomes: how big can the bubble be? The traditional model of spreading things out across the country can’t work right now and the NBA only had 22 teams.
The NCAA is reportedly considering just a 32-team tournament, likely for exactly this reason, though the ACC coaches are pushing for an open tournament for this one occasion.
If you could work the various issues out though, not that it’d be easy, you could theoretically have an open tournament because Disney World has 36,000 hotel rooms and would love to fill some up.