The Single-Site Tournament Worked

When the NCAA announced that the entire men's and women's basketball tournaments would take place at one site, I wasn't sure how it would work out.  It was 100 percent necessary, especially after seeing how well the playoff "bubbles" worked in the NBA and NHL last year.  And it was the smart move.  You didn't want teams flying all over the country, so the controlled environment was really the only way to go.  But I still wasn't sure if they'd be able to pull it off.

Not only did the NCAA pull it off, they pulled it off with flying colors!  It went so well, in fact, that the NCAA is now talking about potentially doing the single-site thing again for the later rounds of future tournaments.  That won't be happening anytime soon.  Tournament sites thru 2026 have already been awarded, so it wouldn't happen before then.  But, now that we've seen it done (and done well), it is an intriguing possibility.

Frankly, Indianapolis was the perfect place for a single-site men's tournament.  It helped that the NCAA headquarters are in Indianapolis, but that was really just a coincidence.  The reason Indianapolis was chosen was because the Final Four was already scheduled to be there.  And because they had the venues.

I'm not sure the first run for a single-site tournament would've worked as well anywhere else.  The proximity of all the venues helped, but the fact that they're all historic and hadn't hosted the NCAA Tournament in a long time (or ever) certainly added to it.  They were playing NCAA Tournament games in Hinkle Fieldhouse!  THE Hinkle Fieldhouse!  The same arena where the actual Hoosiers game took place all those years ago!

Even though all of the venues were in the Indianapolis area, they still had their own feel.  Since crowd sizes were limited, they could use smaller venues than they normally would, which was actually perfect.  They even made Lucas Oil Stadium seem less cavernous by using two courts and putting a curtain between them.  And, personally, I think the curtain looked significantly better than an elevated floor at the 50-yard line!

Likewise, the women's tournament was centered around San Antonio since that's where the Final Four was scheduled.  While some of the criticism about the venues on the women's side was a little unfair, they made it work, even if it wasn't ideal.  I think it's silly that the Spurs had home games during the tournament, making their arena unavailable and forcing the NCAA to have more games than they probably would've liked at St. Mary's, a Division II school, and more than an hour away at Texas and Texas State.

The women's tournament, of course, is set up differently than the men's tournament.  The first and second rounds are normally on the campuses of the top 16 seeds, so playing the whole thing at a neutral site must've been a different experience for everyone.  But, just like Indianapolis did for the men, San Antonio worked for the women.  I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't sure it would, simply because of the lack of venues.

Next year's tournaments should go back to normal, with games being played all over the country with fans and students of each school filling the arenas.  And it should.  After one year of no tournament at all and a second where the tournament looked and felt very different, everyone deserves that.  But I don't think this is the end of some of the changes we saw this year, either.

This year's schedule got thrown off because of the necessary precautions and quarantines.  I wouldn't be surprised to see some elements of that new schedule become permanent, though.  Especially the prime time Elite Eight games!

Will they also make changes to the First Four?  This year's First Four games were the highest-rated ever, although that was certainly helped by the fact that two of the games were on TBS instead of truTV (and one of those games was UCLA-Michigan State).  They were also all played on Thursday night, which is traditionally the first full day of the tournament.

Moving forward, I think prime time Elite Eight games are more likely than an all-Thursday night First Four.  The Monday afternoon second-round games probably won't fly next year, when people are presumably going to work in the middle of the day again.  So, logically, it makes more sense that the NCAA would revert to the standard Thursday-Friday schedule for the first round, moving the First Four back to Tuesday and Wednesday.

However, the Saturday-Tuesday second week schedule may be here to stay.  They didn't have to do simultaneous Sweet 16 games, which they loved!  Ditto with the prime time Elite Eight games!  And, with the Final Four not until Saturday, the teams that play on Tuesday will still have plenty of rest between games.  (Speaking of rest, the gap between games at the same venue won't need to be as great moving forward, which will prevent early/late tip-offs.)

They also changed the schedule for the women this year, not starting until Saturday, then playing Saturday-Tuesday again in the second week.  With the Women's Final Four on a Friday-Sunday schedule, that won't work moving forward, so I'd figure they'll go back to the old Friday-Monday schedule for the first two weekends.  It also must be noted (because people were too busy complaining about nonsense to notice) that every game of the women's tournament was shown nationally for the first time this year, including several games on ABC, something that will presumably continue in the future.

And it's on the women's side where we'll see the biggest change to the NCAA Tournament moving forward.  Starting in 2023, there will be just two regional sites, with eight teams at each.  So, they're halfway to a single-site.  If that goes anywhere near as well as Indianapolis or San Antonio, it'll likely be huge successes.