2025-2026 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

Upthread (p86) I posted my annual complaint that the NCAA fails to select tournament sites based on data.  I put all the data there but the short version is that based on historic 1-4 seeds, there should usually be only ONE first round site in the MST and PST timezones.  

You would *THINK* that the reason they do it anyway is to get more games in later timezones so that they can play later but you would be wrong, the latest tip-offs today are (all times EST unless indicated otherwise):

• 10:10 Mizzou vs Miami in St Louis (9:10 local)
• 10:00 Furman vs UCONN in Philly
• 9:45 Cal Baptist vs Kansas in San Diego (6:45 local)
• 9:25 Prairie View vs Florida in Tampa
• 7:35 Queens vs Purdue in St Louis (6:35 local, the first half of a set with #1)
• 7:25 UCF vs UCLA in Philly (first half of a set with #2)
• 7:10 N. Iowa vs St. Johns in San Diego (4:10 local, first half of a set with #3)
• 6:50 Iowa vs Clemson in Tampa (first half of a set with #4).  

This makes no sense to me.  If you are going to have an over-abundance of games out West why don't you AT LEAST take advantage of that fact and play the games out west LATER.  The set of 5/12 St. Johns/N. Iowa and 4/13 Kansas/Cal Bap could be two or even three hours later.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

How significant is the Iowa State injury? 

Clearly not significant enough to cause them to fall to a 15, but could be bad when they face tougher competition? Much like the Isaac Haas injury a couple years ago for Purdue that basically took away their in the paint matchup advantage and dramatically killed the ceiling (leading to a S16 loss). 

[MaximumSam]

Upthread (p86) I posted my annual complaint that the NCAA fails to select tournament sites based on data.  I put all the data there but the short version is that based on historic 1-4 seeds, there should usually be only ONE first round site in the MST and PST timezones. 

You would *THINK* that the reason they do it anyway is to get more games in later timezones so that they can play later but you would be wrong, the latest tip-offs today are (all times EST unless indicated otherwise):

• 10:10 Mizzou vs Miami in St Louis (9:10 local)
• 10:00 Furman vs UCONN in Philly
• 9:45 Cal Baptist vs Kansas in San Diego (6:45 local)
• 9:25 Prairie View vs Florida in Tampa
• 7:35 Queens vs Purdue in St Louis (6:35 local, the first half of a set with #1)
• 7:25 UCF vs UCLA in Philly (first half of a set with #2)
• 7:10 N. Iowa vs St. Johns in San Diego (4:10 local, first half of a set with #3)
• 6:50 Iowa vs Clemson in Tampa (first half of a set with #4). 

This makes no sense to me.  If you are going to have an over-abundance of games out West why don't you AT LEAST take advantage of that fact and play the games out west LATER.  The set of 5/12 St. Johns/N. Iowa and 4/13 Kansas/Cal Bap could be two or even three hours later. 

I think the data they look at for game times are television ratings, but I'm not sure how they decide that

[betarhoalphadelta]

This makes no sense to me.  If you are going to have an over-abundance of games out West why don't you AT LEAST take advantage of that fact and play the games out west LATER.  The set of 5/12 St. Johns/N. Iowa and 4/13 Kansas/Cal Bap could be two or even three hours later. 

Ratings? 

Apparently about half of the entire US population lives in the Eastern time zone, and it's around 80% if you combine Eastern and Central. 

Just as only die-hard CFB fans liked to stay up for "Pac-12 After Dark" back in the day, only die-hard CBB fans are going to tune into a tournament game starting at 10 or 11 PM local. 

[bayareabadger]

Upthread (p86) I posted my annual complaint that the NCAA fails to select tournament sites based on data.  I put all the data there but the short version is that based on historic 1-4 seeds, there should usually be only ONE first round site in the MST and PST timezones. 

You would *THINK* that the reason they do it anyway is to get more games in later timezones so that they can play later but you would be wrong, the latest tip-offs today are (all times EST unless indicated otherwise):

• 10:10 Mizzou vs Miami in St Louis (9:10 local)
• 10:00 Furman vs UCONN in Philly
• 9:45 Cal Baptist vs Kansas in San Diego (6:45 local)
• 9:25 Prairie View vs Florida in Tampa
• 7:35 Queens vs Purdue in St Louis (6:35 local, the first half of a set with #1)
• 7:25 UCF vs UCLA in Philly (first half of a set with #2)
• 7:10 N. Iowa vs St. Johns in San Diego (4:10 local, first half of a set with #3)
• 6:50 Iowa vs Clemson in Tampa (first half of a set with #4). 

This makes no sense to me.  If you are going to have an over-abundance of games out West why don't you AT LEAST take advantage of that fact and play the games out west LATER.  The set of 5/12 St. Johns/N. Iowa and 4/13 Kansas/Cal Bap could be two or even three hours later. 

Why would you want them later? You might be able to finagle to give them the last tip time, but the point is to be somewhat watchable across the whole country.

[ELA]

Upthread (p86) I posted my annual complaint that the NCAA fails to select tournament sites based on data.  I put all the data there but the short version is that based on historic 1-4 seeds, there should usually be only ONE first round site in the MST and PST timezones. 

You would *THINK* that the reason they do it anyway is to get more games in later timezones so that they can play later but you would be wrong, the latest tip-offs today are (all times EST unless indicated otherwise):

• 10:10 Mizzou vs Miami in St Louis (9:10 local)
• 10:00 Furman vs UCONN in Philly
• 9:45 Cal Baptist vs Kansas in San Diego (6:45 local)
• 9:25 Prairie View vs Florida in Tampa
• 7:35 Queens vs Purdue in St Louis (6:35 local, the first half of a set with #1)
• 7:25 UCF vs UCLA in Philly (first half of a set with #2)
• 7:10 N. Iowa vs St. Johns in San Diego (4:10 local, first half of a set with #3)
• 6:50 Iowa vs Clemson in Tampa (first half of a set with #4). 

This makes no sense to me.  If you are going to have an over-abundance of games out West why don't you AT LEAST take advantage of that fact and play the games out west LATER.  The set of 5/12 St. Johns/N. Iowa and 4/13 Kansas/Cal Bap could be two or even three hours later. 

I mean in the first round, whatever, there are 4 windows.  Each regional hosts one in each, and the difference is negligible.

It's weird that they don't consider it in the Round of 32.

Also, I don't think it's just about TV, I think there's a fan component.  Moving it around so local fans can attend.  I've gone twice.  Once for the S16/E8 in Detroit, when MSU was there.  It was ALL MSU fans.  Once for the opening weekend in Pittsburgh, where Villanova and OSU were the closest schools.  It was probably 60% just people who didn't have a rooting interest and bought tickets because it was here.

[ELA]

Wildcats roll Vs their 16-seed matchup to move ahead to Sunday Vs the winner of Utah State & Villanova tipping off next. Went ahead and bought my ticket to see Sunday's game now that Arizona has advanced. Turns out when you by a Tournament ticket, the first two rounds are sold in two-game sessions. Meaning Sunday's ticket will also get me into the other 2nd Round game hosted in San Diego - a potential #4 Kansas Vs #5 St. Johns matchup.

Correct.  And actually it's a decent deal to just get a 3 session pack.  When it came to Pittsburgh we bought the whole weekend for under $400 for 2 tickets.  That's 12 tickets

[ELA]

Took Nebraska in my survival pool today, thanks for making that very stress free!

Hopefully Purdue makes it as stress free as my pick today, but picking Purdue to win as a heavy favorite is the most nervous bet there is

[medinabuckeye1]

Why would you want them later? You might be able to finagle to give them the last tip time, but the point is to be somewhat watchable across the whole country.

I get this and it is definitely about ratings and:

Ratings?

Apparently about half of the entire US population lives in the Eastern time zone, and it's around 80% if you combine Eastern and Central.

Just as only die-hard CFB fans liked to stay up for "Pac-12 After Dark" back in the day, only die-hard CBB fans are going to tune into a tournament game starting at 10 or 11 PM local.

As it is the late game in San Diego is at 9:45 (EST).  I'm sure some consideration is given to making it watchable for the 50% of the country that lives in the EST but . . .

That game overlaps a LOT:

• The 9:25 #1 UF vs #16 Prairie View game will go to about 11:25 and overlap all but ~ the last 20 minutes.  
• The 10:00 #2 UCONN vs #15 Furman game will overlap all but the first 15 minutes.  
• The 10:10 #7 Miami, FL vs #10 Mizzou game will overlap all but the first 25 minutes.  

If you pushed it back two hours it would tip off at 11:45 (EST) and only the first ~25 minutes would be overlapping with ANY other game.  

Even if you consider people watching multiple games on multiple TV's, they aren't watching commercials (which is what ratings matter for) anyway because when one game goes to commercial they switch to another.  As it is scheduled you'll have four games going on at once from about 10:10 to about 11:25.  You can't get 4x the ratings because a LOT of your potential viewers are going to be pulled away by one of the other games.  


If they pushed the San Diego games back a couple hours sure a lot of Eastern fans would go to sleep when the earlier game ended around midnight but SOME would stay up plus for fans in the PST that would only be 9pm so primetime.  

I get that it is about ratings but I think they are missing a trick here.  It is kinda like how for a while there nearly EVERY big CFB game was on Saturday night but then FOX figured out that if they put their big game at noon they'd have less competition and thus get better ratings.  I think the same applies here.  Sure, there are more people watching CBB at 10pm than a midnight but the people watching at 10PM are divided over four games.  At midnight there would be no division.  The ONLY game available would be the San Diego game so you either watch that or go to bed.  

[bayareabadger]

The upside there is just too low, especially considering you don’t have the fan base weighting of say a late West Coast football game.

If anything, you could probably start the First game a little bit earlier and try to cut down on the gap between sessions.

[ELA]

Yeah, if anything, anyone watching at noon is taking the day off, so start it at 11

[Wildcat4E]

How significant is the Iowa State injury?

Clearly not significant enough to cause them to fall to a 15, but could be bad when they face tougher competition? Much like the Isaac Haas injury a couple years ago for Purdue that basically took away their in the paint matchup advantage and dramatically killed the ceiling (leading to a S16 loss).

Probably ends their shot at a deep run.  Dude was 1st team All-Big 12.

I have not read all these posts about scheduling and placement carefully, but the powers that be put a real damper on K-State's best team in my lifetime's chance--and they were absolutely contenders--by having the late game 2-OT war against Xavier, and then scheduling the first game of the day against Butler in the Elite 8.  Remember that Gordon Hayward led team that lost in the Championship to Duke?

But, there would have been something else.  Meteor, Terrorist Attack, QB Fumble....nothing can stop Lucy from pulling the football for us.