No longer guaranteed home court advantage?

[schooner2]

Again, from the wbball email list.....no more guaranteed home court advatange for the #1-#4 seeds in each region?

At their meeting yesterday, the NCAA Board of Directors approved the budget committee's recommendation to fund predetermined first and second round sites starting with the 2003 tournament.

Apparently the 16 hosts will be announced in July.

I wonder if someone misread this? This is huge news if this is right. Can you imagine all the upsets that will occur now in the first two rounds. Maybe worse yet.....can you imagine all the empty seats during the first two rounds?

If this is true, Oklahoma sure did itself good by having the highest attendance of any home site in the first and second rounds in this year's tourney.

[Jennifer]

I don't think that's what the game needs right now. Maybe eventually, but we're not their yet (see Raleigh regional attendance for proof).

And this also means you're going to have higher seeded teams playing on a lower seed's home court. I don't see a way around it, unless maybe you make a higher seeded team travel way further than neccesary.

[swok34]

I read an article that about ?70% of the coaches oppose it....
I saw a link posted over on the UConn board, but somehow, I didn't see any info relating to the "home court" issue.

[schooner2]

Another tidbit:

When sufficient viable bids are submitted, institutions may not host more than two consecutive years.

Will be interesting seeing UCONN and Tennessee and others go away from home in the first 2 rounds.

[ISUbballfan]

I was thinking I had read somewhere that this was coming but didn't realize it would be this soon. In the same article I remember it saying that the Big 12 was wanting to stager the bidding so that a big 12 school would always be a hosting first round site.

[BenEClone]

Potentially more critical is whether the host will be allowed/required to play at its own site, regardless of seeding, or whether geography will play a role pro or con to allow a non-host school to play at the closest site. Didn't MBB experiment with proximity this year?

[cyfanatic]

I guess I see both sides of it, but I don't have to like it. I guess what bothers me most is, as someone already mentioned, that there is great potential for a lot of empty seats. I am still of the opinion that women's ball doesn't get enough televised coverage, and when/if they televise games where there is a low attendance, they are doing the sport a disservice.