Travis Steele and the Miami (OH) Redhawks achieved incredible accomplishments with their perfect regular season and winning the MAC regular-season title. However, they had to fight for the right to have a spot in the 2026 NCAA Tournament as an incoming expansion brings that situation to light.

March Madness begins a new era as the tournament expands its bracket from 68 teams to 76. Given recent events, Steele was honest yet optimistic about the sport's future amid the latest expansion.

“There's people out there that are like the extremists say, ‘Oh, this is going to ruin such a great thing.’ Listen, it's the best tournament in the world. Do I personally love it? No, but it's not my decision. But it's not going to ruin it like some people think. I mean, it's elite. It's the best of the best. I mean, March Madness is known all around the world, man. I do think the positive of it is you get more people to experience it, so I think that's a positive,” Steele said during an interview with ClutchPoints.

Travis Steele's firm stance on latest NCAA Tournament expansion

Steele enters Year 5 of his stint with the Redhawks. The program has improved each season since his arrival to Miami in 2022 following his time at Xavier. Going from 12 and 15 wins in his first two years, they significantly improved to 25 wins in 2024-25 before earning 32 victories the following season. This featured a perfect 18-0 showing in MAC contests, winning the conference's regular-season title. Despite suffering an early exit from the MAC Tournament after losing to UMass, Miami (OH) still qualified for the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid.

The RedHawks proved themselves to be quite a viable squad in the tournament. They took down the SMU Mustangs in the First Four before falling to the Tennessee Volunteers in the Round of 64.

However, Miami's place in the Big Dance wasn't fully secure, even with the undefeated regular season and the MAC regular-season title. Headlines popped with basketball analysts and bracketologists floating the Redhawks with the SEC's Auburn Tigers for one of the last At-Large bids in the Field of 68. It took until Selection Sunday arrived for Miami to have relief about its place in the tournament. Auburn ended up not making it, but they settled for a place in the NIT as they won the championship after beating the Tulsa Golden Hurricane.

Next season marks a new era with the NCAA Tournament having 76 teams for the 2026-27 campaign and beyond until further notice. This means that more games will be on the schedule, as Steele noted cities like Wichita and Dayton will garner more chances to host games featuring some of the best squads in the nation.

“Again, I think it gives more people an opportunity. I'm a glass-half-full guy, so I listen to the people that it's way above me, [Senior Vice President] Dan Gavitt in the NCAA, they know what they're doing, so I'm sure that's going to be incredible,” Steele said.

Steele is aware of fans' concerns, especially those from mid-major squads. Teams from those leagues often have to have excellent regular seasons and win their conference tournament to secure their place in the NCAA Tournament. On the other hand, Power-5 squads from the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 have more room for error as their strength of schedule gives them a benefit of doubt from the selection committee when March arrives.

Steele noted how this can result in mid-major teams missing the cut even if their record presented them as a viable contender for the Big Dance. Belmont was a notable example he named, a team that missed the cut despite winning the MVC regular-season title and having a 26-6 overall record.

Which is why Auburn garnering At-Large consideration garnered headlines. They had a 17-16 record ahead of Selection Sunday, concluding SEC play with a woeful 7-11 display that included them losing nine of their last 12 games. Steele is hopeful that the expansion grants more spots for talented mid-major sides to qualify for the tournament, but he understands that metrics will play a crucial role in that aspect.

“The metrics, the Ken Pomeroys and stuff, it's always going to favor those P5s, and that's where it's so hard. I think the teams that will get in will be more of the teams like Auburn or who else last year didn't make it from the P5s that were close, but a team like an Auburn will be in now. So again, I don't know how many of them will go to mid-majors because there's a lot of really good mid-major teams out there that maybe don't win their conference tournament like we didn't last year and it'd have been a shame for us not to be in it because I thought we were more than deserving and definitely good enough to be in it but so…There's a lot of good teams out there that would be very deserving,” Steele said.

The NET rankings had Miami (OH) at 64th place while Auburn sat at 38th place. The Redhawks' strength of schedule ranked 340th, while the Tigers had the fourth-strongest schedule of any team in the nation. Despite this, the Redhawks benefited from ranking 32nd in RPI, 28th in Win Above Bubble (28th), and 53rd in Strength of Record, per Warren Nolan. In comparison, Auburn was 36th, 44th, and 43rd in those respective categories.

Steele notes difficulty of scheduling better opponents

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This upcoming campaign presents great momentum for Travis Steele's Miami Redhawks as well as teams in the MAC. They got to be a two-bid league in the NCAA Tournament last season, with Miami (OH) securing the At-Large bid and Akron automatically qualifying after winning the MAC Tournament.

A solution to mid-major teams' problems, including MAC teams, would be to schedule more games against the high-major sides. However, Steele notes how analytics would get in the way of making plenty of those matchups come to fruition. For starters, Miami (OH) won't have any contests against P5 squads or any high-major team.

“I get it with all the analytical data. It doesn't make a ton of sense for them. It's not that they're scared to play us or anything crazy like that. Like it's a numbers game. They want to put themselves in the best position, which I get it. So they're always going to have a harder, stricter schedule because when they get to league play, all those numbers, they start to really build up. But whatever your NET is and whatever your Ken Pomeroy is going into league play, man, it protects your league,” Steele said.

The Redhawks made up for it by putting together quality games against James Madison, Wright State, and High Point, but Steele knows that the difficulty of scheduling elite squads will remain challenging for mid-major programs. Nonetheless, their objective of building on the historic success from last season remains the task at hand as they go on the quest for a second consecutive bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The RedHawks' 2026-27 campaign will get underway with an intriguing mid-major matchup. They clash with the James Madison Dukes as tip-off commences on Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. EST.