It’s been the dominant discussion of the past week in women’s basketball: How much does hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament help the top seeds?
The women’s tournament has experimented with different hosting strategies over the years, including taking tournaments to lower-seeded teams and a four-year trial of regional “pods” that hosted eight teams, instead of the current four. But for the vast majority of the time, the first two rounds have been at the home court of the top teams.
As the men continue to play exclusively on neutral sites, as they’ve done since the very beginning, should the women do the same?
As you can guess, opinions differ strongly, even among the coaches at the top of the women’s game.
Adia Barnes of Arizona called the idea of going all-neutral “a terrible idea,” but the coach of the team that beat Barnes’ Wildcats on their home floor, North Carolina’s Courtney Banghart, is in favor of the move.
The all-time winningest coach in women’s college basketball, Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, sees the advantages of playing at home but says it doesn’t win games for the team.
It’s certainly complicated. Let’s look at the numbers, and what the coaches around the game are saying, to see what should be done.
The data: Home court = less upsets
I looked at the last 10 tournaments played on both the men’s and women’s side (2012-2022, as no tournament was played in 2020). We looked at teams seeded No. 1 through No. 4, which have been hosting the first two rounds on the women’s side but not on the men’s.
Here’s how many of those teams didn’t reach the Sweet 16:
— The all-neutral sites men’s tournament: 59 of 160
— The (mostly) home courts women’s tournament: 44 of 160
And that women’s number is boosted up by the fact that, for a stretch of the late 2000s and early 2010s, the host sites for the first and second rounds often were not the top teams seeded.
In fact, 11 of those 44 top four seeded-teams who lost before the Sweet 16 didn’t play on their home floor — and often played on the floor of a team they were facing.
That practice has all but stopped since 2016. And in the last five years on their home floors, the number of top seeds getting upset dropped to 23 — an average of 4.2 per year.
But with COVID forcing the cancellation of the 2020 tournament and wreaking havoc on the 2020-21 season, the NCAA went with all-neutral site bubbles in 2021: Indianapolis for the men and San Antonio for the women.
And, in the sense of creating upsets, it worked.
For the women’s tournament, six top-seeded teams — who would’ve been hosting in a normal year — didn’t reach the Sweet 16: three No. 3 seeds and three No. 4 seeds. And for the first time since 2012, a top-four seed lost a first round game, when No. 4 Arkansas was beaten by No. 13 Wright State.
Oh, and one more thing:
Playing on the home court seems to especially help make it hard for teams to knock off the best teams in the country, too. Going back to the last 10 years, eight No. 1 seeds on the men’s side have been beaten before the Sweet 16.
For the women? Zero.
Every women’s No. 1 seed has gotten to at least the Sweet 16 since 2009, when No. 1 Duke lost to No. 9 Michigan St. In East Lansing, Michigan. On the Spartans’ home floor.
Vulnerability at home
But 2022 showed both the increased competition and parity in the women’s game … and also the value of hosting, too.
Yes, there were five top-four seeds — No. 2 Baylor, No. 2 Iowa, No. 3 LSU, No. 4 Arizona and No. 4 Oklahoma — who all lost on their home floors in the second round.
Following up the six top-four seed upsets in the all-neutral site 2021 tournament with these five upsets, all on the higher-seeded team’s home floor, is considered a good thing.
But perhaps the most tantalizing part was that we were really close to even more upsets — even early in the tournament.
In the first round, No. 3 Iowa State, No. 3 Tennessee, LSU, Oklahoma and Arizona all had close games into the fourth quarter on their home floors, with many saying their home crowd helped them pull out the win.
But checking the box scores beyond just the five second round upsets shows just how crazy things almost were:
No. 1 Stanford was only up two at halftime against No. 8 Kansas.
The No. 1 overall seed South Carolina played a low-scoring slugfest against No. 8 Miami.
No. 1 Louisville was given a good fight by No. 9 Gonzaga and only won by nine.
No. 2 UConn barely held on to beat No. 7 UCF in another defensive battle.
No. 3 Indiana beat No. 11 Princeton by one, on a shot in the final minute.
No. 4 Tennessee needed a furious comeback to beat No. 12 Belmont by four.
That’s 11 different top-four teams who either lost or were pushed to the brink on their home floor in the second round — and five teams had scares in the first round, too.
Would playing those at a neutral site have flipped the result, from a close win to an upset loss? We’ll never know for sure. But many see a big risk in losing the home games, though.
Coaches express concerns
Barnes was rather adamant about why she thinks the neutral site idea is bad, even after her Wildcats lost on their home floor.
“I think, on the list of 100 things to change, to me, that’s [No.] 100,” Barnes said on Monday.
“I think there’s so many things to change before that with equity and stuff that that’s not even a consideration for me or not even on the list.
“I think that it’s more valuable in our game because it’s different. I think it’s more valuable to play in McKale (Center) with 10,000 people than it is to go to San Antonio to a neutral site with 1,500 people. I think that makes no sense. I don’t think it generates any income, and I don’t think it’s good for our game where we are right now.”
Attendance numbers from around the country back her up: 216,890 fans showed up for first and second round games at the 16 host sites, an all-time record for the women’s tournament.
Former Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw agreed with Barnes’ notion.
“As an analyst, I know we’d have more upsets at neutral courts, but as a fan I don’t want to lose the atmosphere of packed arenas,” McGraw said on Twitter. “It’s good for the game. Let’s keep growing our fan base.”
And McGraw also called out that the chance to host is a reward for a good season, which was VanDerveer’s big takeaway, too.
“I feel like we’ve earned it,” VanDerveer said. “The way the women’s tournament works, the top 16 teams, in the same way that the NBA, we played a whole regular schedule.
“Everyone is not equal at this point. I feel we have earned that home court. It’s nice to not have to travel. Maybe you get to sleep in our own bed or eat your own food. There is a comfort level.”
Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma agreed, saying it’s “one of the big pluses, I think, of a successful regular season.”
But Auriemma also said there’s a downside, in that the first two games at home don’t “feel like a NCAA Tournament game” the way it does for their opponents. And VanDerveer made sure to stress that playing on the home floor isn’t an automatic win, either.
“I think sometimes it also puts extra pressure on a team,” VanDerveer said. “Yes, there is maybe a certain home court familiarity and comfort, but you have to still put the work in.
“Home court does not make baskets for you. The crowd doesn’t get any rebounds, they don’t play any defense that I’ve seen. So you’ve got to do the right things.”
As the NCAA continues to evaluate the right way to market its women’s basketball tournament, and make up the major issues with equity that were so apparent in the 2021 bubble, the host sites vs. neutral sites debate is sure to persist.
But even the coaches who are in favor of neutral sites understand the most important thing: creating atmospheres, like the one I witnessed on Saturday and Monday down in Tucson.
And for UNC’s Banghart — even if she wants neutral sites — winning in that building on that night had to be just that little bit sweeter.
“This environment is so great … this felt really special for both teams,” Banghart said. “Nobody here tonight, whether it’s a fan or a player, won’t remember this.
“And so that’s why I just want to make sure it doesn’t get lost, is the moment of remembering how special the energy and excitement is.”
For now, the best way to keep that energy and excitement is to stay at the home courts. Yes, it could mean fewer upsets than the men’s tournament.
But if 2022 is any indication, the quality of the women’s game and the quantity of good teams is growing exponentially. And not even the home courts may be able to stop the upsets from following suit.
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Source: www.mercurynews.com