It isn’t often that Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame coaches Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jim Boehim get shut down on the same day.

But Thursday was one of those days and it isn’t even basketball season, yet.

The Duke, North Carolina and Syracuse coaches were among the ringleaders of and cheerleaders for an Atlantic Coast Conference proposal announced on Wednesday that would expand the 2021 NCAA Basketball Tournaments to, well, practically infinity.

Their idea, backed by the rest of the ACC coaches, was to have all 350 Division I teams not under suspension or ineligible, play in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. Then, double that with the women also getting a similarly expanded field.

Talk about a Big Dance, this would have been a five-fold increase. Yes, even Arkansas-Pine Bluff and UC Riverside would get invites.

Thankfully, Dan Gavitt, the college basketball czar, officially known as the NCAA Senior Vice President for Men’s Basketball, swatted it down like a wobbly shot Thursday, less than 24 hours after it was launched.

“Every college basketball team’s goal is to play in the NCAA tournament because everyone loves March Madness,” Gavitt said in a statement. “Certainly we missed it this year and can’t wait for 2021. While all who care about the game are entitled to their opinion, and we’ll always listen respectfully, at this time we are not working on any contingency plan that involves expanding the tournament field.”

Or, basically, “thanks guys, but no thanks.”

It is a ruling saving us from brackets as big as king bed sheets. And spares athletic directors from having to scour athletic department sofas for change to reward all those coaches with NCAA Tournament bonus clauses in their contracts.

An all-in tournament field has been discussed before and never gotten traction. That it would garner any more in a pandemic period was unlikely, especially if you’ve seen the case numbers on some of the campuses such as, well, North Carolina.

After canceling this year’s NCAA Tournament in March due to the onslaught of COVID-19 and still not being out of the woods with the virus, the NCAA’s stated goal, indeed its fervent wish, has been just to play one in 2021. Even if that means dropping to 48, or fewer, teams in order to do it.

The NCAA took a nearly $900 million hit with the cancellation in March, reducing member payments to 33 cents on the dollar and has said it can ill-afford to repeat that scenario.

What the ACC proposal would have done is replace the 32 conference tournaments with a plethora of early round NCAA Tournament games, a plan that would be unlikely to produce more money and would surely provide a whole lot less drama than teams scrapping for limited, hard-to-attain NCAA berths.

If many of the early-round games are blowouts with a 68-team field, what would you expect Kansas vs. Delaware State to serve up? Forget the chances of a 16 seed knocking somebody off, how about a 50-something seed?

Unlike college football, where the events of the past six months reinforce the belief that nobody in the NCAA seems to be in charge, basketball has somebody who is. And he is apparently willing to stand up to coaching blue bloods in doing it.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.