The NCAA women’s basketball tournament had two regional sites, with Portland and Albany hosting the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games this weekend, meaning each site would host six games over the weekend.
You would think that given that each site hosts two regions, the NCAA would take extra precautions to ensure that the field is, you know, measured correctly and that there would be no difference in the distance of the line of three points on one side. from ground to ground. Of course you would be wrong. Before Texas’ matchup with NC State in the Elite 8 on Sunday, people realized that the three-point line on the left side of the floor was a few inches shorter than the one on the right side of the floor, which was extremely visible on television once it was brought to your attention.
The three-point lines are different on each side of the Portland court for the Elite Eight. The NCAA measured pregame and confirmed that one team had a different three-point length than the other. ????
NC State and Texas agreed to play there. ???? #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/UnBo13kBUi
– Awful Announcement (@awfulannouncing) March 31, 2024
You can see this best at the top of the key, where there is clearly a larger gap on the right side than the left side.
It’s pretty insane to have a “short side” and a “long side” in an NCAA tournament game, and there isn’t even a decent explanation for how it happened – there is no longer a difference in distance between the men’s and women’s lines, so it’s not like a confused manufacturer issue with different measurements. They decided to continue playing on the field, because what else were they going to do and in theory, it should have the same impact on both teams, since each will spend 20 minutes of play on each half of the field.
NC State coach Wes Moore clearly wasn’t happy about it when asked during his in-game interview after the first quarter, but he refused to get further involved in the moment , asking instead to just talk about the match. This will clearly be a big talking point after the game, and the NCAA will have an awful lot of questions to answer about how this could happen – and won’t be noticed until the third day of games.
UPDATE: The NCAA released a statement confirming the lines were wrong (but still hasn’t clarified exactly what the wrong distance was), both teams agreed to play the game today and the lines will be corrected before Monday’s game .
