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https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/31143506/top-coaches-offer-different-opinions-whether-ncaa-women-basketball-tournament-go-all-neutral-sites

Who has opinions on this topic?

This question has been floated a lot this year, but Mechelle Voepel just wrote an official story about it. Voepel quotes just four coaches: Geno, Dawn Staley, Jeff Walz, and Kelly Graves. All of them seem mostly against the idea except for Graves. The biggest concern is a drop-off in attendance. Staley thinks the right to host is good because all teams have an equal chance to earn that right in the regular season. These seems like valid concerns to me.

My issue with the "celebrity" sampling of quoted coaches is that they represent teams perennially in the Top 16 who don't have anything more to gain by going to neutral courts. So of course their opinions would be influenced by that.

My other thought is, the current set-up (in a non-COVID year) puts a lot of power in the hands of the committee to decide who gets the hosting advantage, and I don't necessarily trust the committee. Take this year, for example. No one can really argue that the teams seeded on the 1 and 2 lines were correct. But I felt like there wasn't much variance in the teams seeded 3 through 6. The multiple upsets of 5's and 6's over 3's and 4's show that. Did the committee get it wrong, perhaps? "Getting it wrong" isn't that big of a deal on neutral courts because the teams have to face each other anyway. But with homecourt advantage at play, there is a lot more riding on what the committee thinks.

[Queenie]

Until such time as fan bases can be energized to show up to neutral-site games, and/or fan bases are large enough that there is a numerically significant contingent of fans who will travel, host sites are a necessary evil. Unfortunately, most fans are fans of their schools, not of the game itself, and don't care about showing support to the sport as a whole. It's hard enough getting them to show up on time for the not-their-team game in a pod, or in a holiday tournament.

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Ardent believer in the separation of church and stadium.

[Durantula]

Every D1 team plays like 15-20 home games a year, that is the time you can worry about attendance and money. For the teams that work hard to make the NCAA tournament, they deserve a neutral site game just like the men get. Do we think Wright State is beating Arkansas at Arkansas? The upsets make the game great and we would have fewer upsets without neutral sites. Also by having neutral sites you can have a true S Curve where the brackets are seeded by how a team ranks, and not based on geography. It is not fair that sometimes teams are dropped down a seed line for no legitimate reason except for geography.

[pilight]

In the "pod years" 2003-2014 there were neutral sites sometimes. The attendance was indeed very poor.

Staley is blowing smoke. All teams do not have an equal chance to "earn" that right. In 2015 we had an undefeated team from a top 10 conference with an RPI of 12 get a #8 seed. Further back you might recall how pissed Missouri State and Jackie Stiles were at getting shipped out to freaking New Jersey.


Would there be more upsets? Analysis here:

https://herhoopstats.substack.com/p/upsets-probability-march-madness

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I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

[FrozenLVFan]

A lot of teams that think they deserve neutral sites instead of playing at higher seeds are perfectly happy to play at the latter schools in the regular season to put cash in their pockets and themselves on television. A bit hypocritical IMHO.

[Howee]

[ClayK]

In an ideal world, the games would be at neutral sites with lots of fans.

In the real world, especially given the short turnaround, games at neutral sites would have few fans. That being the case, what arenas/schools would want to host?

The arenas will not host, because they will lose money.

The schools will not host, because a neutral site means their team must play somewhere else.

The first step, then, is to sell out the neutral sites for the Sweet 16. When that happens on a regular basis, then it will make sense to talk about neutral sites for the first two rounds.

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Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā

[Ex-Ref]