“To be honest, the bottom line in expansion is that it’s not going to happen in my coaching lifetime. There are too many other factors in the NCAA to see it happen. It’s from my experience that it has gone around in circles. Every time expansion gets a little bit of momentum, something gets in the way to stop it.”

As Princeton head coach Bill Tierney uttered those words in the very pages of this newspaper last spring, he hoped — no, he prayed — that he would be disproven.

He looked ahead to this season, when six automatic qualifiers will combine with six at-large bids, leaving a number of deserving teams out of the NCAA Tournament and including a number of those that the Syracuse club team could compete with.

He knew full well a proposal was in the works to expand the tournament to 16 teams. But he also knew about the four levels of NCAA bureaucracy to clear, and he knew the Budget Subcommittee shot it down once before.

So he spoke out of frustration, taking shots at every NCAA bigwig down the line. Then he prayed like he’d never prayed before.

Funny enough, it seems like someone listened. Because as Tierney answered the phone in his office Tuesday, the NCAA expansion proposal was clearing the third hurdle of approval — the NCAA Management Council, which meant it had already passed the Championship Cabinet and Budget Subcommittee.

This leaves only the stamp of the NCAA Board of Directors, which meets at the end of the month, before the tournament expands from 12 to 16 teams next season.

“Nothing’s changed for me,” Tierney said, while also singling out the efforts of SU coach John Desko and Associate Director of Athletics Janet Kittell, among others, for the NCAA’s change of heart. “I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree. What I say doesn’t always hold true. There’s a lot of times in my life that I say something I hope to heck is going to be wrong.”

This time, Phil Buttafuoco — chairman of the lacrosse committee and commissioner of the ECAC — said Tierney could not have been more accurate. Buttafuoco predicts with full confidence that the proposal will be accepted.

“I would expect the Management Council to accept and adopt the petition to select 16 teams next year,” he said. “Once it goes through the first three stages, the fourth is almost always passed as well.”

The toughest stage of the four is the Budget Subcommittee because everybody wants a piece of the money, from the student-athlete advisory committee to the drug-testing committee. Last year, Buttafuoco said, $4 million was requested for NCAA championships. The Budget Subcommittee only had one quarter of that in the budget.

Hence the tough route for expansion.

But when lacrosse was paired with men’s ice hockey (also expanding from 12 teams to 16) and women’s softball (48 to 64) in the fall, the proposal began to gain momentum. Now, with the “extremely strong endorsement” from the Budget Committee, Buttafuoco said, “everyone expects all three to be approved.”

“The NCAA championship is conscious of championship gender equity,” Buttafuoco added. “By expanding women’s softball, this allowed the committee to expand men’s sports as well.”

According to coaches and commissioners, the benefits for expansion are threefold.

First, it increases the number of lacrosse players who can participate in the championship and increases the growth of the sport in general. Second, it eliminates byes from the first round. Third, it gives every conference with six teams an automatic berth, while at the same time leaving an adequate number of at-large bids.

That brings us to this year’s problem.

“I don’t think there’s a coach in the country that’s not for expansion,” Loyola coach Bill Dirrigl said. “With the two new automatic qualifiers this year, everybody thought that was the right decision. I’m not so sure it was. I’m just a coach. That’s all I am.

“But there are going to be some teams, some great teams, left out of the tournament this year. My personal feeling is that’s very sad.”

At 7-1, Dirrigl’s Greyhounds are likely to be included. But consider this scenario: There are eight Division I leagues, six with automatic qualifiers. The two without are the ACC and the Colonial Athletic Association.

The ACC boasts four teams but does not receive an automatic berth. The Colonial Athletic Association just added Towson and Hofstra and will be granted an automatic qualifier next season.

That leaves six remaining at-large bids and 11 teams at the moment making a strong case with fewer than four loses and at least one quality win. Independents Syracuse (8-2) and Johns Hopkins (7-1) are nearly locks, leaving four spots for a number of other schools.

Possible selections include an ACC school — Duke (5-4), Maryland (7-2), North Carolina (6-3) or Virginia (7-1). Or, a team could come from the CAA — possibly Loyola, Hofstra (7-3) or Towson (a 3-4 longshot). Another possibility is the second place team in either the ECAC (Georgetown or Massachusetts) or Ivy League (Princeton or Cornell).

“That’s why you’ve got to hope it happens,” Hopkins coach Dave Pietramala said. “It’s as simple as that. This is very good for lacrosse. Needless to say, I’m not a big fan of automatic qualifiers.”

Here’s why: If the NCAA Tournament started tomorrow, the six at-large berths would likely go to Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Virginia, Maryland, Loyola and either the second-place team in the ECAC, the Ivy or North Carolina.

That leaves out two teams from the above scenario and perennial powers, Duke, Towson and Hofstra. In their place will be teams from conferences with automatic qualifiers like Stony Brook in the America East, Providence in the MAAC and Hobart, a team the Orangemen crushed, 19-4, from the Patriot League.

Although an AQ for the Patriot League helps expand the sport, the current state of the Great Western depletes the quality of the tournament. Disappointing Notre Dame (five losses but none in conference), upstart Fairfield (four losses, one in conference), Denver (five losses, two in conference) and Ohio State (three losses, none in conference) all still have a shot at an AQ.

Which, of course, will make for some interesting matchups come May. And essentially, there are three ways to look at the current AQ format. The first is that it’s ruining the current tournament, a view taken by many coaches.

“Start with our conference,” said North Carolina coach John Haus. “We have four of the best teams in the country right now. Expansion can do nothing but help the sport of lacrosse. It’s what the fans want, it’s what the players want, is to be in competitive situations in the tournament, with the best teams playing each other.”

The second is that it’s good for promoting lacrosse across the country, a view espoused by Buttafuoco.

“When most people get mad, they may be referring to the MAAC,” he said. “None of the MAAC teams have ever been in the tournament before. My response is that it’s great for MAAC schools and great for growing the sport of lacrosse.”

Tierney clings to the third view, where the increase of AQs boosts the chances of tournament expansion.

“There are going to be a lot of angry teams out there this year,” Tierney said. “But it will be like, ‘All right, it’s wrong. This sucks.’ But there will be a light at the end of the tunnel, in that every coach that doesn’t make it knows that this will never, ever happen again.”

Tierney also points to another possible positive outcome from this season. Teams will continue to have to play strong competition early because quality wins count preciously for at-large bids.

Don’t believe? Just ask Massachusetts, which was snubbed by the tournament committee last season for failing to play a challenging enough schedule, despite a 12-2 record and two one-goal losses to Tournament-bound teams.

“The committee sent a message loud and clear the past four or five years,” Tierney said. “There’s always been some controversy attached to that. They’ve gone with the team with the strong schedule. I’m biased, but I personally agree with that.

“We’ve lost to the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 teams this year. I think that teams should schedule that way.”

Buttafuoco indicates that none of this will be a problem next season, should the proposal weave itself down the slow and winding road of NCAA bureaucracy. Coaches will just have to adapt this season, many of them from their living rooms.

And most, having been through the process before, aren’t willing to concede a 16-team tournament as reality just yet.

“Should it happen, and I said should, it would be the best thing that’s happened to our sport in a long time,” Virginia coach Dom Starsia said. “If it happens, we’re moving in a positive direction. I’d say it’s the most positive invention since the Final Four.

“Now, I’m just keeping my fingers crossed.”

Published on April 10, 2002 at 12:00 pm