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PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The 3-point line for the women\u2019s NCAA Tournament at Moda Center had a discrepancy in distance at each end of the court that went unnoticed through four games over two days before Texas and North Carolina State were informed of the problem ahead of their Elite Eight matchup on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The teams\u2019 coaches agreed to play Sunday\u2019s game as scheduled with the mismatched 3-point lines rather than delay it, the NCAA said in a statement.\u00a0N.C. State beat Texas 76-66\u00a0to advance to the Final Four.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NCAA was notified (Sunday) that the 3-point lines on the court at Moda Center in Portland are not the same distance. The NCAA staff and women\u2019s basketball committee members on site consulted with the two head coaches who were made aware of the discrepancy. All parties elected to play a complete game on the court as is, rather than correcting the court and delaying the game,\u201d Lynn Holzman, the NCAA\u2019s vice president of women\u2019s basketball, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Holzman said all lines would be measured after practices concluded on Sunday evening and the correct markings would be on the floor ahead of\u00a0Monday\u2019s game between Southern California and UConn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the NCAA\u2019s vendor has apologized for the error, we will investigate how this happened in the first place. The NCAA is working now to ensure the accuracy of all court markings for future games,\u201d Holzman said. \u201cWe are not aware of any other issues at any of the prior sites for men\u2019s or women\u2019s tournament games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court issue was another distraction for the NCAA during a women\u2019s tournament in which the play has been exceptional but other issues have taken the spotlight.<\/p>\n
There was a referee pulled out of a game at halftime in the first round.\u00a0Utah faced racist harassment\u00a0before its first-round game. Notre Dame\u2019s Hannah Hidalgo\u00a0was forced to remove a nose ring\u00a0and missed time in a Sweet 16 loss to Oregon State. LSU coach Kim Mulkey threatened to sue The Washington Post over a then-unpublished profile of her and later called out a Los Angeles Times columnist for what she said was sexist criticism of her team.\u00a0The Times edited the column\u00a0in response.<\/p>\n
And now, the court issue in Portland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate to say this, but I have a lot of colleagues that would say, \u2018Only in women\u2019s basketball,\u2019\u201d Texas coach Vic Schaefer said. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s a shame, really, that it even happened. But it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four Sweet 16 games on Friday and Saturday were played without any of the participating teams saying anything publicly about a problem with the court.<\/p>\n
During pregame warmups, Schaefer and N.C. State coach Wes Moore were informed that the 3-point line distance at the top of the key was different on both ends of the floor. The distance between the top of the key and the 3-point line was too short at the end in front of the N.C. State bench, while the line at the Texas end was correct, Moore said.<\/p>\n
NCAA officials were asked to measure the distance and brought out a tape measure about 15 minutes before tip-off. After discussions between NCAA representatives, the coaches and officials, the game went on as scheduled.<\/p>\n
A delay would have taken at least an hour, both coaches said, because someone from the outside would have to be brought in to remark the floor and could have forced the game to be bumped from being broadcast on ABC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a big deal to be on ABC,\u201d Moore said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fortunate to be on it a couple of times the last couple of years. But it\u2019s a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both coaches said their players were not aware of the discrepancy, and N.C. State\u2019s Aziaha James in particular had no trouble, making a career-high seven 3s on nine attempts. The NCAA said the court would be corrected before Monday\u2019s Elite Eight matchup between Southern California and UConn.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day we had already played a game on it and we both won, so we just decided to play,\u201d Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
While the NCAA did not provide details, one 3-point line near the top of the key appeared to be about 6 inches closer to the basket than at the opposite end of the floor. The NCAA 3-point line is at 22 feet, 1 \u00be inches for both women and men.<\/p>\n
The numbers showed that players struggled with the line that was too close to the basket.<\/p>\n
Through five games, teams shooting on the end with the closer 3-point arc were 25.8% (23 of 89) on 3s. At the end of the floor that was correct, teams shot 33.3% (29 of 87).<\/p>\n
\u201cThese kids, they shoot so far behind it sometimes nowadays, who knows where the line is?\u201d Moore said. \u201cIt is an unusual situation. But, like I said, I don\u2019t know that it was an advantage or disadvantage, either way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baylor coach Nicki Collen, whose team lost to USC in the Sweet 16,\u00a0posted on social media\u00a0that with eight teams at one site, the focus was on game plan, not what the court looked like.<\/p>\n
Baylor was 6 of 14 on 3-pointers in the second half while shooting at the end of the floor with the correct arc.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuess that\u2019s why we shot it better in the 2nd half,\u201d Collen posted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The 3-point line for the women\u2019s NCAA Tournament at Moda Center had a discrepancy in distance at each end of the court that went unnoticed through four games over two days before Texas and North Carolina State were informed of the problem ahead of their Elite Eight matchup on Sunday. The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}