For the home team, it's always the same. It scores, the arena erupts. Its opponent turns the ball over, the opponent is heckled. It wears the same colors as the house.
Tuesday night in Blacksburg, Va. at Cassell Coliseum, it was no different. But this time around, the Virginia Tech women's basketball team was not simply hosting a regular season game in keeping with the conference rotation. It was hosting a second-round NCAA tournament game for which the Hokies, a No. 8 seed, had the advantage over Penn State, a No. 1 seed, since they had the luck of bringing their opponent to them.
"The way its been talked about nationally, I didn't have to talk about it [because] everybody else was talking about it," Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland said. "But that was really a very difficult thing."
Change is on the way, however, even if it is only partial. For the 2005 tournament, the NCAA Div. I women's basketball committee has decided to hold the opening two rounds of the women's NCAA Tournament at just eight sites instead of 16, with eight teams at a location instead of the current four. Further details, such as whether or not the eight teams will be from a single region, will be worked out at the committee's annual summer meeting. The change in format was primarily brought about to help make the tournament more neutral at every round.
"Moving to eight sites now limits the number of teams that play at home," Cheryl Marra, chair of the NCAA women's basketball committee, said. "This year it can happen 16 times and this way will make that happen half the time. More games are more neutral."
In the current setup, instituted before the 2003 Big Dance, 16 pre-determined sites are chosen before the season begins. Schools that are selected as sites and also qualify for the NCAA tournament, which 12 schools did this year, play at home, while the other teams that are not hosting are sent wherever their seed dictates.
This selection and assignment process will remain unchanged under the new system, so there is still the potential for teams to have a home court advantage in the opening rounds. But with the number of sites reduced, so is the number of teams set to protect their house.
"It's a step in the right direction," Portland said. "Some college campuses will still be hosting, so there's still another step we have to take to get it truly neutral."
But any step toward greater neutrality is a welcome one, especially in the tournament that can make or break a season. The new system also has other benefits than simply this increase in neutrality.
ESPN, the television partner for the women's tournament, welcomes the idea of having to only send production and coverage crews to eight places across the nation.
"Logistically, it is a lot easier," said Josh Krulewitz, director of media relations for ESPN. "Right now, we have 16 on-site production teams, 16 play-by-play announcers, 16 commentators. That requires deep resources. We will [now] be able to put our eight best teams together and, with the change, it will ease the production."
In addition, while Krulewitz declined to comment specifically on the finances of ESPN, he indicated that the new setup would help to streamline financial resources, thereby increasing efficiency.
Anxious to reach the point at which arenas are pushed to capacity, maximizing fan attendance was also an impetus for the change. The crowd size of the first two rounds of the 2004 tournament exceeded that attained last season, according to Marra, and it is hoped that with eight teams and eight teams' supporters all in one location, crowds will continue to grow and reach sellout potential.
Because women's basketball is still in the stage in which it attracts primarily fans of teams rather than fans of the sport, it is not yet beneficial to hold all rounds of the tournament at neutral sites, as is the case for the men.
"This is a process," Marra said. "We started with going to the top 16 seeds hosting, then we went to pre-determined sites, next we went to eight sites. Each year the committee has to re-evaluate. We are next looking at moving the regionals to be neutral, the step after that would be the first and second rounds neutral. Ultimately, we'll go to neutral sites for the first two rounds, but we'll do that when we're ready and when the growth is there."
Until then, the coaches and players will have to settle for this partial compromise. With the eight pre-determined sites for 2005 to be announced in the summer, Penn State is still in the process of wooing the committee. The Lady Lions know that they may have escaped an upset on a hostile court this time around, but it certainly wasn't fun -- and the next time around, they don't want to risk it being any different.
