Days after March Madness expansion talks, NCAA shows signs of bringing major women's rule to men's basketball

The NCAA is contemplating some big changes. Following talk of March Madness expansion, the league has now proposed a formatting change for men's college basketball.

On3 analyst Alex Byington pointed to information in a Tuesday press release by the NCAA that suggests major change could be coming to the men's game.

According to the press release, the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee began gathering feedback from a joint working group last month about possibly switching college men's basketball from halves to quarters.

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The NCAA revealed that there has been "positive momentum" about this potential change and that the goal would be to "help enhance the flow of the game." The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel encouraged Division I conferences to build a working group to provide further feedback.

Men's college basketball is currently the only division of the sport still operating in halves as opposed to quarters. Women's college basketball made the transition to quarters in the 2015-16 season.

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The NCAA went into detail about the potential of changing the men's game to quarters in the press release and explained that it's still a work in progress.

“In considering the decisions last month, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee had conversations about ways to continue this direction in the upcoming years, which includes positive momentum for moving the men’s game from halves to quarters,” the NCAA’s press release read.

“The committee realizes there are hurdles to implementing the quarter format to the game, including the structuring of media timeouts to accommodate commercial inventory. The committee recommended NCAA Division I conferences create a joint working group to provide feedback on the potential change from halves to quarters.”

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NCAA looks to possibly expand March Madness

This college basketball offseason has come with a number of suggested rule changes. Along with the potential change in men's basketball from halves to quarters, the NCAA has also suggested an expansion of March Madness.

NCAA president Charlie Baker proposed changing the NCAA Tournament from its current 68 team format to 72 or 76 teams, beginning next season. Baker brought up the possible expansion at Big 12 spring meetings.

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This change would need to be approved by the NCAA men's basketball committee, and Baker expressed that he will look to get an answer on March Madness expansion in the coming months.

"Our goal here is to try to sort of either get to yes or no sometime in the next few months because there's a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this if we were to go down this road," Baker said, according to Matt Murschel of the Orlando Sentinel.

Many changes are on the horizon for college basketball ahead of next season, but decisions have yet to be made.