Bellarmine Clinches NCAA Tournament Berth For Jacksonville State

In just their second year as a Division 1 school, the Bellarmine Knights defeated the Jacksonville Dolphins 77-72 to clinch their first ASUN championship. However, most of us would agree that the greatest benefactor was actually the Jacksonville State Gamecocks. As Bellarmine has yet to complete their four-year transition to D1, the NCAA Tournament bid goes to the regular-season championship, Jacksonville St. Let's talk about the multitude of issues of deciding who gets to dance in such a manner:

First, why is there even a period of ineligibility for the NCAA Tournament? If a team reclassifies up to D1 and is good enough to win their conference tournament in their first year (or years 2-4), they deserve to dance, simply put.

If, for whatever reason, the ineligibility period must remain, there are a couple of potential solution. The easy way out would be to prevent a team like Bellarmine from competing in their conference tournament, but that's not fair to those players. I would agree that they should be allowed to run through the ASUN tourney and compete in the NIT if not the NCAA Tournament.

While potentially logistically difficult, I think it would be fair to replay the tournament as if every game that involved Bellarmine was treated as an automatic victory for their opponent. Obviously this wouldn't be possible for tournaments that end just before Selection Sunday, but the ASUN ended days before the bracket reveal and conferences can make accommodations if they know that they'll have a situation like Bellarmine.

It would be one thing if the team that got the auto-bid was Jacksonville because they at least made it to the finals to play Bellarmine, but the fact that it's the team the Dolphins beat in semis, Jacksonville State, just makes the whole situation far more upsetting. I would be interested in seeing Florida Gulf Coast play Liberty, and then the winner of that game would play Jacksonville in order to see who grabs the automatic bid, but life unfortunately isn't fair and this is one of the most blatant examples.