Back in 2023, the NCAA changed the structure of the women’s basketball tournament, condensing the regionals to just two sites instead of four. This year the two host sites for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 are Spokane, Washington and Birmingham, Alabama.
The reasoning behind the concept was to get more fans to the regional sites. Having eight games at each site rather than four makes it more likely to get general fans of women’s basketball to make the trip and buy tickets, which means attendance is slightly less dependent on the fan bases of the teams playing to fill the arenas. The change also happened after the spotlight got turned on the NCAA for the facilities and amenities provided to the women’s tournament compared to the men’s, and centralizing regionals to two locations made it easier (and, surely, cheaper) to provide better facilities and offerings than doing it at four locations.
Not everyone is a fan of the new system, and on Friday one of the biggest voices in the sport, UConn coach Geno Auriemma, ripped the NCAA for the issues it presents to teams during his press availability. Auriemma got teed up on a question about two teams having to fly across the country on Tuesday and then play in the Final Four on Friday in Tampa, and used that as a jumping off point to air his many grievances with the NCAA’s new set up.
“Somebody’s always gonna have to travel, but it’d only be one team. Correct? One team,” Auriemma started. “In a normal world run by normal people, there’d only be four teams here. Which means there would be no games today. The games would be tomorrow. Which means we wouldn’t have to get up a 6 a.m. to have an 8 o’clock practice here this morning for an hour. Which means we wouldn’t have to get up at 5 a.m. to have a 7:30 shoot around for half an hour, take us longer to get through security than to actually be on the court.
“God bless whoever wins Monday night, and they’ve gotta fly cross-country which is all day Tuesday, and then they have two days, Wednesday and Thursday, to play the biggest game of their life. The guys, who don’t know shit about shit, according to a lot of women’s basketball people, they finish Sunday, then they have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and then they play Saturday. But there’s a lot of people in the women’s basketball community that think they’re smarter than that.
“So whoever came up with this super regional stuff — and I know who they are — ruined the game. They did. They ruined the game,” Auriemma continued, sticking the dismount on his rant. “Half the country has no chance to get to a game in person. But you’re making billions off of TV. Well, actually you’re not — that would be the men’s tournament. So, yeah, there’s a lot of issues that they need to fix. And again, we could get our ass beat tomorrow and that won’t change my feelings.”
Auriemma’s complaints are understandable. The practice situation, in particular, is abysmal, and the new schedule to play games on Friday and Sunday instead of Sunday and Tuesday for the Final Four certainly creates a time crunch. The NCAA could probably mitigate some of the practice timing problems by selecting regional sites that can house more practice locations and build identical courts in those spots. That may not satiate coaches who want their teams to get reps on the actual court in the actual arena, but it could keep them from having to stack practices in the morning because games happen in the afternoon.
While Auriemma took a flamethrower to the NCAA, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley sees things a bit differently. While she agreed that the shootaround and practice schedule issue is real, she thinks the two regional structure is better for fans and helps raise attendance for the games, which is a worthy trade-off.
“[The practice schedule] is probably it,” Staley said when asked about issues the two regional set-up presents. “You don’t get a shootaround time at a reasonable hour. Other than that, I mean, I actually like the two regions. I like having seven other teams that’s trying to advance to the Elite Eight and advance to the Final Four right in one place. I do think it allows our fans, fans of women’s basketball, to gravitate to one spot. I know the attendance will be up because of it. So bottom line, we need to drive revenue as much as possible.”
This year’s travel split for the 1 seeds was pretty simple to figure out for the NCAA, as sending South Carolina and Texas to Birmingham and USC and UCLA to Spokane was an easy decision. However, with there not being any 2 seeds from the West Coast — TCU being the furthest West — some teams were destined for long travel days, and UConn happened to land one of the short straws (along with NC State).
Perhaps Staley would feel a bit differently if South Carolina had cross-country travel to deal with, but one of the perks of being a perennial top seed is that you tend to get put in a regional closer to home. In the three years of the new system, South Carolina has played in Greenville, Albany, and now Birmingham. UConn, on the other hand has made a trip out West each year of the new system, playing second weekend games in Seattle, Portland, and now Spokane. It’s pretty clear this frustration has been building over those three trips out West for Auriemma, and he’s going to do his best to push the powers that be to return to the four regional model. That likely won’t happen any time soon, though, as future regional sites are already set through 2028.