NC is hosting the entire NCAA soccer tournaments. Let’s do the same with basketball.
As North Carolina begins the mighty task of hosting the entire men’s and women’s NCAA soccer tournaments simultaneously, concluding next month in Cary, the state’s years of experience hosting NCAA events and hosting them well leaves little doubt that it can pull this off.
North Carolina was a perfect fit for this, just as Indianapolis was for the men’s basketball tournament and San Antonio was for the women’s basketball tournament. There’s a long-lived love of college soccer here, and nobody has hosted more College Cups. It’s not even close.
Even if it wasn’t home to the NCAA’s headquarters, Indianapolis was still an obvious choice for the COVID-colocated basketball tournament, with similar experience hosting Final Fours and access to multiple venues, and the city and state rose to the task.
But it’s also fun to think about whether North Carolina could do in basketball what it’s doing now in soccer.
Just as the ACC should bring the 75th ACC tournament back to Raleigh and Reynolds Coliseum in 2028, think, for a second, about what an NCAA tournament played entirely in NC would look like, for the men or the women.
The array of arenas is incomparable, the tradition thick, the love of the game as deep here as it is in Indiana.
Until Charlotte builds some kind of retractable-roof TepperDome for the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC, North Carolina falls short on a Final Four venue in a full-attendance scenario.
But in a restricted-attendance situation? How about this for a (Tobacco) Road to the Final Four:
Imagine the first and second rounds being played in and around the Triangle at Cameron Indoor Stadium, PNC Arena, the Smith Center, Carmichael Arena, Reynolds Coliseum, McDougald-McLendon Arena, Elon’s Schlar Center and Campbell’s Gore Arena.
The second weekend could stay in the Triangle or move to the Triad, with six games each at the Greensboro Coliseum and Joel Coliseum.
Then the Final Four at Charlotte’s Spectrum Center.
Things would get trickier in a full-attendance, non-pandemic situation. Assuming a Final Four at the imagined TepperDome, the state only has five arenas capable of hosting NCAA tournament games under standard conditions. The NCAA would have to make concessions on attendance to play at Cameron and Carmichael and Reynolds … which it should!
The games this March at Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse were some of the most memorable of the tournament. Buildings matter -- something the NCAA has tacitly acknowledged by generally moving regionals out of domes and into basketball arenas in recent years.
Technically speaking, since Raleigh had been scheduled to host first- and second-round games at PNC Arena last month before the tournament was condensed, the NCAA sort of owes us one.
Alas, NCAA president Mark Emmert made it clear at the Final Four that the one-site concept was a one-time deal, strictly to manage the strictures of the pandemic. While the NCAA may end up tinkering with the format -- Las Vegas has pushed for several years to host the entire women’s Sweet 16 -- Emmert affirmed the geographical diversity of NCAA basketball tournament sites was considered one of its prime virtues.
“Sitting here today, absent another pandemic, we’re not going to be back in another single site for a while,” Emmert said.
Fine.
No one wants that.
But it’s fun to think about.
