The NCAA Tournament will be undergoing it's first significant change since 2011, as the event will be expanding from 68 teams to 76 teams.
It's a move that isn't coming without it's fair share of controversy, but one would think it would most benefit a team like WVU, who as been on the bubble of the tournament looking in during recent seasons, given that this expansion will likely come with most of the extra bids handed out to Power 5 teams.
But Joe Lunardi at ESPN released his first Bracketology projection for next season after the tournament expanded, and in his first crack at predicting next season's bracket, the Mountaineers probably won't be fans of where they find themselves.
ESPN projects WVU basketball will miss the first 76-team NCAA Tournament field
The first Bracketology projection post expansion has the West Virginia Mountaineers listed as the first team out of next season's tournament, despite the fact that eight more teams will make it next year.
The Mountaineers have missed the NCAA Tournament for three consecutive seasons now, so maybe it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to fans that pundits are starting to view West Virginia as the type of team that might struggle to make even an expanded field.
But after Ross Hodge has put together an impressive offseason haul that includes both a high school recruiting class and a transfer portal class that are ranked among the Top 15 in the country. So it's easy to see why some Mountaineer fans might feel snubbed by Lunardi's choice.
However, there's a long way to go until the season even gets underway, and a lot of basketball to be played once it does, so it's probably too early at the moment to make a real call about whether the Mountaineers are a tournament team or not.
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