New for 2022: the ASUN Conference

Old news, but I didn't want to post it while ND's season was ongoing. Of course, you may remember that the Southern Conference was originally under the umbrella of the ASUN. This is not exactly the same thing. The impetus, apparently, was Bellarmine's decision to move all sports to the Division I level and join the ASUN. One other member of the SoCon (Air Force) will be moving with Bellarmine. New conference alignment for affected conferences is as follows:

ASUN
Air Force
Bellarmine
Cleveland State
Detroit
Robert Morris
Utah

SoCon
Hampton
High Point
Jacksonville
Mercer
Richmond
VMI

MAAC
Canisius
Manhattan
Marist
Monmouth
Quinnipiac
St. Bonaventure
Siena

Obviously a little bit of cooperation among the conferences in question here, since the Southern Conference keeps its AQ bid while the ASUN gets enough members to get an AQ bid. Jacksonville, despite being a full member of the ASUN, remains in the Southern Conference for men's lacrosse, although this probably fits better on the map. Jacksonville men's lacrosse will become somewhat of an oddity, in terms of a Division I sports program that does not play in its school's primary conference (as measured in terms of number of school sports playing in the conference) even though the primary conference plays that sport. The other exceptions I know of are ND football (obviously), Fairfield men's lacrosse (Fairfield primarily plays in the MAAC, but men's lacrosse plays in the CAA) and Coastal Carolina men's soccer (joining C-USA next season but Coastal Carolina primarily plays in the Sun Belt).

From ND's perspective, a majority of Division I programs within driving distance from ND will now play in the ASUN. The other two programs (Air Force and Utah) have, between them, only one possible Division I opponent within driving distance (Denver from Air Force). Thus, there is a decent chance that ND could face the ASUN champ in the first round of the NCAA tournament going forward, although that will depend on seeding.

I think the formation of the ASUN leads to a second play-in game. So if the ASUN champ plays in a play-in game, it will face either the #1 or #2 seed if it advances.

I also happen to think that further growth of the NCAA tournament likely will be spurred by the number of conferences with AQ bids. I think we're only one conference away at this point from expansion of the NCAA tournament field, likely to 24 teams at first.