SPOKANE, Wash. — UConn coach Geno Auriemma took aim Friday at the current women’s NCAA Tournament structure in a fiery rant after the team’s early morning practice.
Unlike the men’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight, which has four regional locations based in different areas of the country, the women’s have two “super regional” locations — a move that Auriemma said “ruined the game.”
This year’s locations are in Spokane, Wash., and Birmingham, Ala., with 16 teams at each spot.
The current structure not only puts additional strain on the teams who have to adjust their schedules to accommodate the first set of Sweet 16 night games, but Auriemma also said that the two teams who advance from the Spokane regional will be at a disadvantage because they have to travel more than 2,800 miles and three time zones for the Final Four in Tampa, Fla.
“In a normal world, run by normal people, there would only be four teams here,” Auriemma said. “Which means there would be no games today, the games would be tomorrow. Which means we wouldn’t have to get up at 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. [Saturday] to have a 7:30 shoot around for half an hour. Takes us longer to get through security than to actually be on the court.”
NC State and LSU are scheduled to play Friday at 4:30 p.m. local time.
The Ole Miss-UCLA game will follow at 7 p.m.
The winners will play Sunday.
Meanwhile, Connecticut and Oklahoma are set to play Saturday at 2:30 p.m., and the Kansas State-USC game will follow at 5 p.m.
Those winners are scheduled to play Monday.
“God bless whoever wins Monday night, okay, and they have got to fly cross country, which is all day Tuesday, then they have two days, Wednesday and Thursday, to play the biggest game of their life,” Auriemma said. “The guys, who don’t know s–t about s–t, according to a lot of women’s basketball people, they finish Sunday and then they have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and 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.
“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.”
The NCAA went from having four regional locations to the current two-site format for the 2023 NCAA Tournament to help boost revenue.
But with interest in being an all-time high for women’s basketball, some believe the current structure is doing more damage than good.
The NCAA is locked into the two-site format until at least 2028.
