women's first round games on Friday this year

[knight82]

Just found out that the women's NCAA Tournament has changed the format a bit. Now instead of first/second round games being Saturday/Monday and Sunday/Tuesday, they are Friday/Sunday and Saturday/Monday. And there will be some first round games played on Friday afternoon at noon and 2:30. Playing on Friday afternoon would not be good for a lot of us.

 

[RUClassof67]

Originally posted by knight82:
Just found out that the women's NCAA Tournament has changed the format a bit. Now instead of first/second round games being Saturday/Monday and Sunday/Tuesday, they are Friday/Sunday and Saturday/Monday. And there will be some first round games played on Friday afternoon at noon and 2:30. Playing on Friday afternoon would not be good for a lot of us.

Thanks for this information. I wonder why they made this change. It seemed perfectly fine with the Saturday/Monday and Sunday/Tuesday dates. No conflict with the Men's tournament for Monday/Tuesday sub-regional and Regional final games. The NCAA site says that the Final Four is still Sunday/Tuesday avoiding the conflict with the Men

 

[ecojew]

I think that's an improvement over the 2nd round M/T games, which almost always saw an attendance drop off from the first round games over the weekend. That was very much the case for RU, both in Trenton and at home against Auburn, where the numbers fell despite having much better opponents in both cases.

So while Friday afternoon games might not be ideal, at least there will be Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday games, leaving just those second round games on Monday with the big drop-off in attendance.

 

[BoroKnight]

Maybe it has occurred to them that the TV ratings aren't going to be any good anyway for the opening rounds so they might as well play around and see what is better for attendance. Change the format, gauge the difference and decide what to do going forward.

Credit to them for tinkering with it. If it gets more bodies in the building, good for them.