SPOKANE, Wash. — UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma took the podium for his pregame press conference Sunday around 9 a.m., barely 15 hours after his team finished its postgame obligations following a Sweet 16 victory over Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament.
Shortly after his opening statement, Rihanna’s “Work” began blaring through the drapes that separated the space from the court at Spokane Arena. UCLA and LSU were participating in their morning shoot-arounds ahead of Sunday’s Spokane 1 regional final, and with a noon tip off on the west coast, there was no way to avoid overlap with the Spokane 4 media availabilities.
On the opposite side of the country, the regional site in Birmingham, Alabama was dealing with similar issues. Texas coach Vic Schaefer echoed Auriemma’s comments from earlier in the week about concerns with the two-site regional structure the women’s NCAA Tournament has used for the past three years. The tournament is committed to two sites through at least 2028 with bids already awarded to host cities.
“We’re trying to have a press conference right now, and it sounds like there is a daggum party next door,” Schaefer said Sunday ahead of Texas’ Elite Eight game against TCU. “Last year I had a press conference and there was some machine backing up with a beep, beep, beep going on. It seems to me like there could be better organization and better planning all around. This is not it, as I would tell my kids … There’s eight teams here, it’s problematic. So it’s just, I would agree. I guess I probably just better leave it at that.”
Auriemma sounded off about a variety of frustrations with the two-regional format on Friday, from early practices and limited time on the arena court to the inaccessibility of the sites to the majority of fans around the country. LSU coach Kim Mulkey, whose Tigers fell to UCLA in the Spokane 1 regional final Sunday, agreed with Auriemma particularly about the prohibitive cost for fans to travel.
UConn’s Geno Auriemma expresses hatred for NCAA Super Regional setup: ‘They’ve ruined the game’
“We sold our soul too early,” Mulkey said. “This game has gotten better, and man, if you still had four regionals, can you imagine the attendance? I know our fan base; They can’t afford to come to Spokane. But they could if it was a little bit closer, and it does matter. It matters a lot … We need to fix this. We don’t have to wait until the contract’s up.”
The players, too, are feeling the effects. LSU star Flau’jae Johnson said teams only got half an hour for their pregame shoot-arounds, forcing them to shorten and rush through their regular routines.
“It’s so many teams in one gym,” Johnson said. “I feel like that’s one little downfall … It’s really the warmup time for me. Like nah, 30 minutes? We normally take 10 minutes to start warming up.”
The impacts of the two-site schedule will linger even after teams depart ...
