More change in store for women’s tournament
In the ever evolving world that is the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, more change is on the way. And just about any coach will say it can’t happen too soon.
As first-round games got under way this weekend, a new format was taking shape for 2005. Get ready for eight teams at a site and maybe even “pods,” the system adopted in the men’s tournament to put teams as close to home as possible in the first two rounds.
Now, there are four teams at each of 16 first-round sites. Next year, there will be eight sites with eight teams each, the same as the men.
“I think it has the potential to be very advantageous,” Texas coach Jody Conradt said.
Eight teams at a site should enhance the tournament atmosphere, said Cheryl Marra, who chairs the Division I women’s basketball committee. Some administrative duties could be streamlined, she said, and there’s the potential for bigger crowds because twice as many teams will be selling tickets at a site.
What pleases Conradt and other coaches the most is that the current format will be scrapped.
For the past two years, the 16 subregional sites were chosen in advance — “predetermined sites,” the NCAA calls them. If a team is hosting a subregional and makes the NCAA tournament, it plays at home and three other schools are shipped there. If the host team doesn’t get in, four teams travel there.
While that system has given the tournament some neutral sites, it also has resulted in some high seeds playing on the home court of lower-seeded opponents. Before 2003, sites for first- and second-round games were awarded on Selection Sunday to the top four seeds in each region.
“I thought the whole predetermined thing was a mess waiting for a place to happen,” Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale said. “I think next year is a step in a direction that makes a little bit more sense.”
Coaches knew their sport was criticized for a system that allowed the best teams to play NCAA tournament games at home. But they preferred a system in which home sites were earned by what a team did during the season over one that awarded them to the highest bidders.
This weekend, 12 of the 16 sites have the home team playing. At six of those sites, teams ended up on the home court of a lower-seeded opponent. There was a chance for nine such matchups in the second round, including the possibility of Penn State, the No. 1 seed in the East, playing at eighth-seeded Virginia Tech.
“When the people that invented predetermined sites told the coaches that seed is more important than site, we laughed our heads off,” Penn State coach Rene Portland said.
“I’d like to be playing these two games at home. I wouldn’t mind being a No. 4 seed if we were on our own court.”
Portland would get no argument from Texas Tech coach Marsha Sharp. Her fourth-seeded team faced a potential second-round game with 12th-seeded Montana on Montana’s floor.
“Think about asking a men’s team that’s highly regarded and putting them on the campus of a lower-seeded opponent in front of their fans, 15,000 strong — can you imagine how scary that would be for them?” Sharp said. “That’s what we’ve done on the women’s side.
“I think there’s other ways to grow the game of women’s basketball without jeopardizing someone’s chances to win the national championship.”
The basketball committee thinks it has hit on a way to do that with next year’s plan, which by having fewer sites reduces the number of teams that could play at home.
Marra also said the committee is looking at the possibility of mixing regionals at one site to bring in as many nearby teams as possible.
“One of the things that we are trying to remember along the way is we need to bring our fans with us as we are making these particular changes,” said Marra, senior associate athletic director at Wisconsin. “Trying to protect the integrity of the bracket, where can we send people to … geographically allow those schools to be followed by their fans.
“I think that’s something that certainly we will take a good look at … because part of the student-athlete experience is having the people there to support them.”
ESPN, which televises all 63 games in the women’s tournament, likes the eight-site plan because it cuts in half the number of announcing and production teams needed for the first two rounds.
“It’s difficult to find 16 quality production teams,” said Tina Thornton, the network’s coordinating producer for the tournament. “Having eight sites will allow us to continue to pare down those folks and put the best possible people in those positions.”
NCAA officials frequently have said their ultimate goal is neutral sites for all games in the women’s tournament, something they have been hesitant to implement because of fears the games would not be well attended without a local draw.
Don’t wait, Baylor coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson said. Do it now.
“We need to get there and get there fast so we can stop all the controversy and stop all the negative things being said and written out there,” she said. “We need to get to neutral sites. We need to bite the bullet and get it done quickly.”