The NCAA will host a men's college basketball tournament in 2026 that will include multiple title games in the same city, the association announced Thursday.
Indianapolis, the site of the 2026 Final Four, will also host the Division II and Division III national title games, as well as the NIT semifinals and finals. It is the second time the NCAA has hosted all three national championship games in the same city (Atlanta, 2013).
The NIT semifinals will be played at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse, with the title game at another unannounced location. The Division II and Division III national title games in men's basketball will be played at Gainbridge Fieldhouse one day before the Division I championship game, which will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium.
“This will be a tremendous celebration of men's college basketball across all three divisions in Indianapolis,” Dan Gavitt, NCAA senior vice president of basketball, said in a statement. “When we did this in 2013, we had nearly 8,000 fans watch the Division II and III championship games, and the final two nights of this year's NIT at Hinkle Fieldhouse featured sellout crowds of more than 9,000 fans. It will be an incredible opportunity for student-athletes from participating schools, as well as a showcase for the legendary college basketball fans in Indiana.”
The NCAA also announced Thursday that it will consider new analytics tools as the selection committee chooses the 37 at-large teams to be included in the 2024-25 tournament. Both the Bart Torvik rankings and the wins-against-bubble metric (an assessment of a team’s performance relative to its schedule compared to the average team in the bubble, like baseball’s WAR statistic) will be included in the evaluation process.
“The committee has always valued different data points and metrics to assist with its evaluation process, and these two indicators have been increasingly cited by members over the past few years,” Gavitt said. “Adding them to the team sheet ensures that all 12 members have easy access to this data. Torvik’s rankings, along with BPI and KenPom, give the committee three predictive ratings, while WAB, Strength of Record, and KPI give them three results-based metrics, all of which, in addition to NET, will be beneficial to the team’s evaluation process.”
