The NCAA announced that the entire 2021 women’s basketball tournament will be held at a single location.

The arrangement is similar to the men’s tournament, which will be held in and around Indianapolis. Indianapolis was already scheduled to host the 2021 Men’s Final Four. San Antonio was scheduled to host the 2021 Women’s Final Four.

The idea is to create a bubble situation similar to what the NBA and WNBA used for their seasons. Unlike those bubbles, where all games were played at the same location, the tournament bubble will play games at multiple sites around the city.

Give a gift that can change your loved one’s professional life. Buy an expert-written resume today from professional recruiter and Gamecock alum Franklin Buchanan: https://postupcareers.com/services/resume-writing/

The playing dates and exact sites in San Antonio are still being finalized. The original dates for the tournament were March 19-April 4. The Alamodome, the scheduled host of the Final Four, is a football stadium and could easily fit two courts, especially if no fans are allowed to attend. AT&T Center is the primary basketball facility in San Antonio, but the Spurs likely would have to agree to a lengthy road trip to make it available. Freeman Coliseum hosted the San Antonio Stars in 2015 would probably be an option. UTSA’s basketball teams play at the on-campus Convocation Center, which would presumably be available. San Antonio is also home to the University of the Incarnate Word, which plates at the McDermott Center. UTSA and Incarnate Word are the host schools.

All things considered, the Gamecocks have as little to lose this season as any. Unlike the canceled 2020 tournament, when the Gamecocks would have been in the Greenville region and essentially had a home court advantage all the way to the Final Four in New Orleans, this season the Gamecocks would have been on the road anyway. Normally, the first two rounds of the tournament are held at the home sites of the top 16 seeds. The Gamecocks will lose the advantage of those games, but so will everybody else. The four region sites were supposed to be Spokane, WA, Albany, NY, Cedar Park, TX (a suburb of Austin), and Cincinnati, OH. Cincinnati would have been the nearest site for the Gamecocks, and that trip is over 500 miles and an eight or nine hour drive. The NCAA will attempt to return to these sites in the future.

In 2022 and 2023 there will be much more desirable sites. Greensboro, NC hosts in 2022 and Greenville, SC hosts in 2023. Greensboro was the site where South Carolina advanced to its first Final Four in 2015, and Greenville is where South Carolina has won a pair of SEC Tournaments.

NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee chair Nina King, who is the senior deputy athletics director and chief of staff at Duke, released the following statement:

“Conducting the championship in one geographic region allows for more planning and execution of safeguards that provide potential benefits for promoting the health and safety of student-athletes, the NCAA membership and all individuals involved in the championship. By making this difficult decision now, it allows for an earlier opportunity to work proactively with local public health officials within the host communities and ensures that the identified guidelines and protocols are considered for a more controlled environment.”