Gonzaga/Rutgers

[RoyDodger]

Let me make one more point on this. I'm arguing in theory. I understand that there are practical reasons for the way the NCAA tournament is scheduled. Sites are set up long before the teams are selected. And it's not always possible to fit every team into the perfect location. And I recall reading that the NCAA women require that if a "host" team (i.e., a college sponsoring the opening round) makes it into the tournament, they have to play at their home location (such as Fairfield U. might have had it won its conference). While I would in theory oppose this policy, I understand that women's basketball is not on the same footing as men's basketball from an attendance and monetary point of view. But it's improving and hopefully as it improves the NCAA committee can find itself to follow policies similar to those of the NCAA men's committee and have a rule (which I believe is the case) against a team playing on its home court. Why else would the UNM Lobos have been playing in Portland, OR, while there were games going on at the same time on its home court in Albuquerque?

 

[Kait14]

The NCAA puts the sites where they think they will sell the most tickets.. Gonzaga fans show up regardless of team, that's why there is always a round in Spokane.. they go where the money is

 

[Kait14]

Let me make one more point on this. I'm arguing in theory. I understand that there are practical reasons for the way the NCAA tournament is scheduled. Sites are set up long before the teams are selected. And it's not always possible to fit every team into the perfect location. And I recall reading that the NCAA women require that if a "host" team (i.e., a college sponsoring the opening round) makes it into the tournament, they have to play at their home location (such as Fairfield U. might have had it won its conference). While I would in theory oppose this policy, I understand that women's basketball is not on the same footing as men's basketball from an attendance and monetary point of view. But it's improving and hopefully as it improves the NCAA committee can find itself to follow policies similar to those of the NCAA men's committee and have a rule (which I believe is the case) against a team playing on its home court. Why else would the UNM Lobos have been playing in Portland, OR, while there were games going on at the same time on its home court in Albuquerque?

Because the committee knows that Lobos fans travel well and don't mind making that trip.. They will spend the money.. if they didn't think so, they'd probably keep them at them in NM

 

[RoyDodger]

Just for information, this is from Wikipedia (which I don't site as gospel but I have no reason to doubt this):

In the men's tournament, all sites are nominally neutral: teams are prohibited from playing tournament games on their home courts prior to the Final Four (though in some cases, a team may be fortunate enough to play in or near its home state or city). Under current NCAA rules, any court on which a team hosts more than three regular-season games (in other words, not including conference tournament games) is considered a "home court".[7]
However, while a team can be moved to a different region if its home court is being used in any of the first two weeks of the tournament, the Final Four venue is determined years in advance, and cannot be changed regardless of participants. For this reason, in theory a team could play in a Final Four on its home court; in reality, this would be unlikely, since the Final Four is usually staged at a venue larger than most college basketball arenas. (The most recent team to play the Final Four in its home city was Butler in 2010; its home court seats only 10,000, as opposed to the 70,000-plus of Lucas Oil Stadium in its Final Four configuration.)

 

[ScarlettB]

I agree with RoyDodger that it is unfair to have higher seeds playing on lower seeds courts and having unequal travel for top seeds. I also understand the need to fill seats. IMHO it would be fairer to go back to having the top four seeds in each region host the first two rounds. At least you would have earned home court advantage. Coupling the predetermined sites and the rule that the home team must be sent there if they make the tournament, with the rule that teams from the same conference can't meet until the regional finals unless there are more than eight teams from the same conference in the tournament causes the committee to have to manipulate seedings and place first and second round pods in regions that don't work geographically.

IMHO Gonzaga was under seeded all the way down to an 11 and that pod was put in a region other than Fresno because they couldn't seed them as an 8 or 9 in that region and have #1 Stanford forced to play their first round game there. They also had to deal with separating 8 teams from both the Big East and SEC. The sites where the home teams didn't make the tournament were all in the east / southeast with the exception of Bowling Green. As Baylor was the top ranked #1 seed it got to go there as it was the closest neutral site. At the same time, it caused the committee to under seed Ohio State and unfairly put them in Baylor's path because they wanted to have a somewhat local team at that site for economic reasons.

I think the committee needs to reevaluate some of the existing rules. Personally, I would rather play a conference foe earlier in the tournament if it meant that I didn't have to play on a higher seed's home court or would cut the distance I had to travel.

 

[Icebear]

That's not the point. Of course, a team needs to be able to win on the road to be a champion, but there need to be basic rules of fairness and standards in organized activity, including sporting events. I'm simply arguing against inconsistency of treatment of teams of equal stature. I'm repeating myself, but why in the world should a #6 like Rutgers (and I couldn't care less about Rutgers per se in this matter) have to travel 3,000 miles and play on the home court of a #11? Whey should two #1 seeds get to play at or near home while the other two have to travel significant distances? In other words, why can't the NCAA committee arrange its bracket in a way that puts teams of equal stature or quality (i.e., seeding) in essentially the same playing circumstances? Seems like a rather obvious concept to me.

because of the monetary needs of running the tournament and booking venues, etc. You may not like it but that is how it is.

 

[Icebear]

Just for information, this is from Wikipedia (which I don't site as gospel but I have no reason to doubt this):

And that is the way it is in the men's game because the men's fans travel better and the sites are still profitable. That is not true for the women's tournament where the NCAA is trying to minimize the LOSSES due to the cost of running the tournament. It used to be that first round games were played on the courts of the higher ranked teams who were expected to protect the necessary dates if they qualified.

 

[Scotter]

If April had gone to UCONN her career might have been completely different!

It may have, but I'm pretty sure Sykes would have under performed at UConn as well. Geno isn't for everyone, and he's especially not for players that make inconsistent decisions on the court.

 

[ScarlettB]

April would either have sat on your bench or possibly transferred. She is a lovely young woman, but apparently suffers with self-confidence problems. I don't know if anyone could have developed her better. She started off slowly as a freshman, got herself in better condition and by the end of her junior season, looked pretty good, but she lost her shot again midway through her senior season and never found it. It was sad for her and put a lot of pressure on the rest of the team.

 

[DobbsRover2]

And that is the way it is in the men's game because the men's fans travel better and the sites are still profitable. That is not true for the women's tournament where the NCAA is trying to minimize the LOSSES due to the cost of running the tournament. It used to be that first round games were played on the courts of the higher ranked teams who were expected to protect the necessary dates if they qualified.

Not sure that anyone in this discussion has come up with any way to create a fairer+equally profitable+geographically acceptable way to change the system.

• Teams traveling long distance to venues. Unless the system goes back many decades to the men's way of having all the western teams playing in the west, southern in south, etc., there are some teams that will need to travel in a quasi-mixed geography setting. And as long as western schools can host, some eastern schools are heading out there because there's a dearth of good western schools. The UConn men have actually been kind of fond of traveling out to the west.
• Host sites assigned by a vetted bidding process with host schools protected vs. top 4 seeds hosting. Could be that having high seed hosts would pack in the attendance at some sites, but there are others where it would be the pits. Perhaps the fans of the non-high seeds are encouraged to travel more if they think their team has a better chance with a neutral site. And Georgia supposedly earned a #4 seed and would have been guaranteed a host site in a high-seed-host system, but the lowest seed in their pod beat them down in SEC country. Again, the selection process has its ugly wrinkles, and basing a hosting system on a flawed selection process is not the best answer. Gonzaga does get an advantage by being a frequent host, but it's hardly fair to complain about a school that does things right by supporting their WCBB team. In addition, high-seed-hosting leads to more predictable results, and many WCBB critics already say that the results are way too predetermined versus the wild and woolly MCBB, which has a #13 seed in the Sweet 16.
• Rotating big arena regional hosting. The idea of having a regional pod of say 4 big venues not associated with a particular schools and having them rotate the hosting in an assigned four year schedule, has its attractions, but the venues often cost more money to line up and the games in early rounds can have that "10 women in Mammoth Caverns" look. You have to balance better attendance figures against whether you're actually earning more revenue.

Much of the hosting and attendance issues deal with the need for better marketing and promotion issues. The question of what's fair will be seen differently from different perspectives, so probably the best we can hope for is semi-fair.