It looks like this is how the NCAA and the women’s basketball committee are planning to handle the expanded NCAA Tournament for 2005-06.
First of all, an NCAA News article refers to a field of 63, which is one team more than the maximum we’d been hearing over the past two years. The expansion, which takes effect this fall for all Division III team tournament sports, means there will be one spot for every 6.5 schools that sponsor the sport, rather than one for every 7.5. (If there are 63 women’s NCAA Tournament bids, one should expect around 60 men’s slots. There are more women’s schools than men’s schools.)
In addition, with a Wednesday opening round, there has been concern over missed class time. The women’s basketball committee proposed and the championships committee accepted the following setup (follow carefully):
There are 63 teams. Therefore, one team gets a first-round bye and does not play an opening-round game. That team will face the winner of the one Wednesday first-round game on Saturday night. All other first-round games will be played Friday night, with the winners meeting on Saturday.
Although the NCAA News does not specify, one would expect this means a return to the four-team regionals at one site, with home-court advantage thrown out the window for half of the field. The winners of those first/second-round regionals would advance to the sectionals, which would be set up similarly to previous years.
This is not a done deal. There is still another committee that must approve this before it goes into practice. It has the advantage of cutting down a day of missed class time, since teams could currently miss Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday classes if they travel for a first-round game and win to advance to the second round.
However, the unspoken caveat here is cost. Now the NCAA must pay to house three-quarters of the teams playing that first weekend instead of one-half. With four teams at one site, three must travel. It will increase travel costs and could lower gate revenue (which, granted, is small to begin with).
The championships committee also recommended the men’s basketball committee adopt this format. I, for one, hope it does not. Some of the most exciting games of the early part of the tournament are between schools evenly matched in front of a large crowd. Now, what are the chances that a 6, 7 or 8 seed would host one of these four-team regionals for the first and second round? The NCAA would be making the event less fan-friendly and more expensive to run.
I understand your arguement against the weekend subregional format, but would you rather they not expand the tournament?
Of course not, I’ve been waiting for this expansion since they announced it, seems like four years ago. 🙂
Would it be too much to ask for to just go ahead and allow 64 teams in? Giving *one* team a bye seems pretty stupid. Then again, we are talking about the NC-penny-pinching-AA.
I can see a cost-savings benefit to having a less-than-full bracket…like giving Mississippi College that bye and then sending them to Maryville in the second round. That might help with the geographically challenged.
General information question—How many days of school do you miss with the playoffs in the more compact regions?
True, but then again, they aren’t going to go any higher than 64 teams so we might as well wait. 🙂
I think in general, depending on the travel, you see teams leaving for Wednesday first-round games early Tuesday afternoon, so missing a third or half a day of class on Tuesday, all of Wednesday. First-round losers are back in class on Thursday, barring flight situations. But first-round winners, especially if they’re on the road, might not get back to campus until after the second-round game on Saturday.
Certainly, this is a problem that should be looked at. It would be hard to play the women’s first round on Thursday at the same time as men’s because it could preclude some teams from hosting, but I’m not sure ripping homecourt advantage away from teams that would previously have earned it is the answer. There’s also the fan-unfriendly aspect.
Don’t most basketball players try to keep their classes to morning only during the season so that they can attend as much as possible. I do not think there will be widespread class time lost on Tuesday for a Wednesday game. I agree with Pat that the first-round home court makes for much more exciting and entertaining basketball.
Granted, for those of you in the more spread out areas of the nation, even tuesday morning might have to be sacrificed, but keeping teams close to home in the eastern regions probably won’t have too much of an effect on Tuesday class time.
A lot of the time some classes aren’t offered in the morning. You can schedule all the classes you want to in the morning, but if isn’t offered in the morning then you have to take it when they offer it.
If it means expanding the field, I’m all for it. As for theories on how it is done, why not have 8 7 or 8 team regionals (depending on field size) and play on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The field would be down to eight teams after the first week then send all 8 to Salem.
Only 8 teams would have to be moved more than once and the tournament would be completed in two weeks. No more hop scotching around in the early rounds and less politicking to see who gets a bye and who has to travel. 7 or 8 teams in a regional site should draw more attendance than 4 teams so that would be a way to off set some of the housing cost.
3 games in 3 days? Ouch.
With no consolation rounds it would only be 3 games in 3 days for the teams that made it to the championship. There are 8 team tournaments during the regular season all the time and nobody seems to worry about it. In fact isn’t Point going to have 4 in 4 days when they play in the Clarke Tournament this year ??? Or did I read it wrong???
It wouldn’t be a perfect system no matter how you do it, but I think it works a little better this way than to have teams travel twice in 4 days like they currently do in the first and second round. It would also reduce the NCAAs temptation to bracket teams out of convenience in early round games.
There’s a difference between playing three games in three days, which happens in maybe three regular-season tournaments out of 11,000 games (Lee Fulmer tourney at Redlands, Marymount tipoff and Seven Sisters) and deciding your natiopnal championship on three games in three days. (Clarke Holiday Tournament is three games over the course of four or five days; Cactus Jam is three games over four days, Chase Tournament is three games over four or five days).
You said earlier “less politicking to see who gets a bye and who has to travel” — I think it’s the opposite. With only 12.5% (give or take byes) of the field getting homecourt advantage, I think there would be MORE of that. Many schools would be ineligible to host because their facilities are fine for two or four teams, but not eight.
A war of attrition should not be the way to award Walnut and Bronze.
Another thing about three games in three days… how in the world is a team supposed to prepare for teams when its a NATIONAL title, not a regular-season tournament, on the line.
And for that matter, you maybe asking teams to still miss the same amount of class schedule. A Thursday, Friday, Saturday schedule at one location might mean a team from the west coast traveling to the midwest would have to leave Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning… so the team can recover from the trip. So count Wednesday out… see you back on Monday – but they will probably skip that day as well since they are EXHAUSTED.
I like how more teams are getting in, but as Pat said, its not a done deal… and there are many things still to be worked out. We are in July, they really don’t need this solved until the end of October I suspect.
Why not just play all games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday or just Saturday and Sunday? Have all the first round games on the first saturday, then the second round games on the first Sunday. Next weekend have the sweet 16 on saturday and the elite 8 on sunday. Then have the final four on the next Saturday, and possibly the National Championship the following Monday – on monday just because I don’t like the idea of giving two teams a week off to prepare for each other because then the coaches will know practically everything about the other team.
Count out Sunday. Some schools refuse to play on Sunday for religious reasons.
Three games in three days … maybe the best TEAM would be victorious. Not the team with the Best two players. You never know how his thing would work itself out.
It would be nice though for the field to expand. Then there might be less chance for the defending National Champion not making the field.
In each of the past three tournaments, the defending National Champion was denied the chance to defend its title.
uh? Sounds like a rip on the Pointers there. BTW, Point got to defend their 2004 title this year and Williams got a chance to defend their title from 2003 last year. For the record, you’re probably thinking of the women’s side.
Which is primarily what this blog entry is about, yes, the women’s side.
True. But changes in the men’s side are also happening this year as well, correct? 🙂
why propose one wednesday game? why not all 31 1st round games on friday? then there are 16 regions with one having 3 teams instead of 4.
I think the point of the one Wednesday game was that then the one team that got a first-round bye wouldn’t have an inordinate advantage by facing a tired team that had played the night before. The winner from Wednesday would have a reasonable amount of time to prepare for the top seed.