PORTLAND, Ore. — NCAA Tournament expansion has been a hot topic all season — and really, for a few years — but Wednesday at the Moda Center, the day before the first round of the 87th iteration of the tournament is set to tip, Wisconsin guard John Blackwell offered his own unique take on how to make the tournament bigger: more games.

Like, a lot more.

“Me personally, I think it’s fine where it’s at, I think the 64 is great,” said Blackwell, whose fifth-seeded Badgers will play 12th-seeded High Point in the first round Thursday. “The thing I would look at is the series. Especially going into, like, the Sweet 16, a three-game series.”

His teammate Austin Rapp agreed, saying a three-game series for the Sweet 16, Elite Eight and Final Four “would be cool.” A five-game championship series was even proposed at one point.

And yes, the players assured those gathered that they are absolutely in good enough shape to add 15ish extra games to a college schedule that already features 30-something games. Plus, they argued, a three-game series would allow you to “get a better scout on a team” and make March Madness even more competitive.

In fact, their coach isn’t opposed to it either.

“That’s well thought out,” mused Wisconsin coach Greg Gard. “I’ve always said, you get in this tournament, you can have a really, really good year and a bad 10 minutes and you go home. And everybody talks about the bad 10 minutes.”

Gard pointed out that nearly every other sport, save for college and pro football, plays multi-game series or has something other than a single-elimination format for the postseason. And even football has had its own form of expansion, by adding teams to the postseason.

That’s what’s been on the table for a couple of years when it comes to tweaking the basketball tournaments. Blackwell’s pie-in-the-sky idea aside, if there’s expansion, it’ll come in the form of more teams. An additional eight teams — bringing the total to 76 — is the most likely scenario, but expanding to 80 or even 96 teams has also been floated. NCAA president Charlie Baker is on record saying he favors expansion.

In February, the NCAA again tabled the expansion discussion, saying further talks would take place after the 2026 tournament. Still, coaches have thoughts.

“It’s hard when you’re in those (mid-major) leagues and you have a great year and you’re a one-bid league, and you gotta win your championship game,” Vanderbilt’s Mark Byington said in Oklahoma City, where his fifth-seeded Commodores meet No. 12 seed McNeese. Byington previously coached at JMU and Georgia Southern.

“(When) someone says, ‘I do not want this thing to get watered down.’ I don’t think with a smaller expansion, this thing is getting watered down. It’s still the NCAA Tournament. It’s still the best event in the world, but when you’re in the SEC, you get a chance really to earn your way in there, and you can have some slip-ups. I feel bad when you’re at the mid-major level: You can have five-and-a-half good months, but a bad five minutes and then not get in.”

Not everyone agrees with him. Gonzaga’s Mark Few subscribes to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy.

“I think this year is just a great example of why we should not expand,” Few said, referencing this month’s underwhelming NCAA Tournament bubble. “It’s perfect where it’s at right now.

“Other things are broke, obviously, within college basketball. But the one thing that isn’t, the shining light of everything in college athletics, is the NCAA Tournament. I don’t know why they would ever mess with that.”

He pointed out that the drama of “you’ve only got 40 minutes to play” is what makes the tournament so captivating.

As for the three-game series idea, well, Few might be persuadable.

“If there was a way we could go back into ’17, ’19, ’21, and ’22, I would love to have a three-game series because I think we’d be staring at three or four NCAA championships,” he joked.