TAMPA, Fla. — The complaints couldn’t be ignored. From Birmingham, Alabama, to Spokane, Washington, final weekend, a few of the most distinguished coaches in girls’s school basketball took goal on the NCAA’s fairly-new double-regional format.
First to loudly voice his disapproval with the format — the place eight groups play a complete of six video games within the span of 4 days in a single enviornment — was UConn coach Geno Auriemma, the 71-year-old Corridor of Famer who owns 11 nationwide championships. Auriemma’s protests had been targeted across the availability of court docket time for practices and shootarounds, which he argues impacts relaxation and restoration time for gamers.
“In a traditional world, run by regular folks, there would solely be 4 groups right here,” Auriemma mentioned final Sunday. “Which suggests we wouldn’t need to stand up at 6 a.m. to have an 8 o’clock observe right here this morning for an hour. Which suggests we wouldn’t need to stand up at 5 a.m. to have a 7:30 shootaround for half-an-hour. Takes us longer to get by safety than to really be on the court docket, okay?”
He continued: “The blokes, who don’t know shit about shit — in accordance with a whole lot of girls’s basketball folks — they end Sunday after which they’ve Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and so they play Saturday. However there’s lots of people within the girls’s basketball neighborhood that assume they’re smarter than that. So whoever got here up with this tremendous regional stuff — and I do know who they’re — ruined the sport. They did. They ruined the sport. Half the nation has no probability to get to a recreation in individual. However you’re making billions off of TV. Properly, truly you’re not, that may be the boys’s match. So, yeah, there’s a whole lot of points that they should repair.”
LSU’s Kim Mulkey and Vic Schaefer of Texas had been among the many coaches who voiced their displeasure with the format too.
Nevertheless, these coaches and followers of the game shouldn’t anticipate the double-regional system to finish any time quickly. NCAA President Charlie Baker appears to be a fan of the format and mentioned it will be troublesome to deviate from it within the rapid future.
“It will be actually onerous to alter it at this level with out rebidding the entire thing,” Baker instructed reporters on Friday throughout a spontaneous availability within the media workroom in Tampa’s Amalie Enviornment, which is internet hosting the Ultimate 4 this 12 months.
The NCAA switched the second weekend format of the match to simply two regional websites as an alternative of 4 after the 2022 match, which had regionals in Greensboro, North Carolina; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Wichita, Kansas and Spokane, Washington. Apart from the Bridgeport regional — performed in No. 2 seed UConn’s yard — no regional closing that 12 months drew greater than 7,800 followers.
In 2023, the NCAA pivoted to 2 websites in Greenville, South Carolina and Seattle, Washington. The bottom attended regional closing was LSU vs. Miami in Greenville, drawing 7,988 followers. Two of the opposite regional finals drew greater than 11,000 followers. Final 12 months, each regional closing video games in Albany, New York garnered greater than 13,000 followers. This 12 months’s regional finals in Birmingham and Spokane averaged 10,716 followers throughout 4 video games.
“The principle cause the ladies’s basketball committee went to the 2 websites was to fill the stands and create a greater expertise for the youngsters and to drive attendance,” Baker mentioned. “And so they achieved each of these goals. Attendance numbers have been a lot greater the previous couple of years, and the youngsters actually get pleasure from a packed home.”
At present, the double-regional format is ready by 2028 with websites already booked. The 2026 regionals might be in Fort Value, Texas and Sacramento, California, the 2027 video games might be in Philadelphia and Las Vegas, and the 2028 regionals might be hosted by Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon.
“There are a whole lot of coaches that do (just like the double regional format),” Baker mentioned. “Ask Daybreak Staley about it. See what she says.”
Baker is correct. Whereas the Gamecocks’ coach did lament the shootaround and observe occasions, she — like Baker does — appears to consider that the double-regional is nice for followers of the game.
“You don’t get a shootaround time at an inexpensive hour. Aside from that, I imply, I truly like the 2 areas. I like having seven different groups that’s attempting to advance to the Elite Eight and advance to the Ultimate 4 proper in a single place,” Staley mentioned. “I do assume it permits our followers, followers of girls’s basketball, to gravitate to at least one spot. I do know the attendance might be up due to it. So, backside line, we have to drive income as a lot as doable.”
Certainly, rankings for the ladies’s NCAA Match are higher than ever. After the Iowa vs. LSU Elite Eight conflict and Iowa vs. South Carolina nationwide title recreation shattered viewership data final season, the viewers has remained at the same time as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have moved on to the WNBA.
This 12 months’s Elite Eight was the second most-watched on-record because the 4 video games averaged 2.9 million viewers, which is up 34 p.c from the 2023 match. LSU vs. UCLA peaked at 4.4 million viewers. That’s excellent news for girls’s basketball groups within the match, who are incomes items for the primary time this 12 months.
Concerning the current attendance figures and people viewership stats, LSU’s Kim Mulkey believes the NCAA moved into the double-regional system too rapidly and will nonetheless thrive in the identical approach in a standard four-site format.
“We offered our soul too early. This recreation has gotten higher. And, man, should you nonetheless had 4 regionals, are you able to think about the attendance? I do know our fan base. They’ll’t afford to come back to Spokane. However they may if it was a little bit bit nearer,” mentioned Mulkey, the winner of 4 nationwide championships. “We have to repair this. We don’t have to attend till the contract’s up. Let the folks maintain their tremendous regionals. Simply go add two now. I’ve by no means ever been one to consider which you could’t work issues out if it’s higher for the sport.”
Baker added that the ladies’s basketball committee talks in regards to the regional format on a “fairly common foundation” and mentioned the subject could be broached once more when the committee meets after the Ultimate 4.
“In the event that they consider there’s an choice that may create the identical fan and pupil athlete expertise, I’m positive (the committee will) take that into consideration,” Baker mentioned.
Texas coach Vic Schaefer — who turned simply the fifth coach within the sport’s historical past this week to take two completely different applications to the Ultimate 4 — has been grumbling in regards to the format ever because it started.
“Appears to me like there might be higher group and higher planning throughout. This isn’t it, as I’d inform my youngsters,” Schaefer mentioned. “However (Mulkey and Auriemma) are proper. You bought to get (the gamers) up at 7 within the morning for a 30-minute shootaround at crucial time of the 12 months. There’s eight groups right here, it’s problematic.”
