A year after the RBC Center was a host site for the first and second rounds of the women’s basketball NCAA Tournament, it will play host to the same rounds of the men’s basketball tournament this Friday and Sunday. The event begins its public phase with practices for participating teams open to the public on Thursday.
“Being your home facility, it’s on display. It’s great exposure for us because the Block ‘S’ logo, the N.C. State name, our brand is going to be on national television for a six- and seven-hour window through those four days,” site tournament manager Dick Christy said. “This event has some of the highest TV ratings in sports, really.”
But N.C. State, as the host institution, has designs on hosting even bigger events in the future at the RBC Center.
Next season, the arena will host a 2009 NCAA women’s basketball regional — third- and fourth-round games where the winner of the regional advances to the Final Four. And the goal is to have a men’s regional or another women’s regional in 2012, according to Athletics Director Lee Fowler and Christy.
The school has applied to host the first two rounds and regionals for both men and women in that season, although it of course can only receive one of those. NCAA rules dictate that a school must apply for both men’s and women’s for whichever rounds it wants to host.
And with the chance to host first- and second-round games this year, Fowler said State has a chance to take advantage of the NCAA’s tendency to reward host sites that do well. He said the collegiate athletics governing body also has to be sure to give a variety of places the chance to host, but that doesn’t discount the importance of institutions excelling when they do host.
“Doing a good job helps you get it as quickly as you possibly can get it,” Fowler said.
Christy said the Athletics Department usually seeks to host postseason events to give its teams a home-venue advantage in sports such as soccer, baseball and women’s basketball. While the women were able to play at the RBC Center last season, the men would not have been able to play at home if they had made the NCAA Tournament.
“The NCAA men’s tournament is more from a marketing and a branding standpoint, [it] really gives us great exposure and good contacts at the NCAA,” Christy said. “It’s good for our staff. It’s also good for the community.”
In 2004, the only other year N.C. State has hosted the men’s tournament games at the RBC Center, the Wolfpack men’s team was a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But unlike Duke and Wake Forest, which got to play in Raleigh, State had to travel to Orlando, Fla. Even so, Christy said hosting would not ever put the school’s teams at a competitive disadvantage.
“We know that they can’t play here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to go far away just because we’re hosting,” Christy said. “So even though we can’t make it a competitive advantage, we don’t feel like we’re hurting our teams by hosting at all.”
Under the “pod” system that began in 2002, high seeds in the tournament are placed as close to home as possible, a development that has landed No. 1 overall seed North Carolina the chance to play its first two games in Raleigh. It’s something Christy said should energize the RBC Center environment this weekend.
“It gives a feel like we would have during the regular season because just as many Carolina fans are out there as there are that don’t like Carolina,” Christy said. “So they get going back and forth in the arena, so it’s pretty neat to see the pockets of fans and how that goes.”
Fowler was the chairman of the NCAA Tournament selection committee the first year the pod system was implemented. He said the system has served well its purpose of keeping highly-ranked teams within their geographic regions early in the tournament.
“Some people think it might give too much advantage to the top seeds, but I think they earn that during the year by playing well, playing good teams and winning at a high level,” Fowler said.
And with State’s team not in the Big Dance for a second straight season, having NCAA games at the RBC Center can only serve to keep the program in the spotlight.
“It never hurts. The advertising is very important, and a lot of people will see that it’s in our arena,” Fowler said. “That’s very important whether we’re in or not in. It just adds to the University and the prominence of the University nationwide.”
