Good news for Staley, Gamecocks: NCAA approves USC host site for tournament
Should South Carolina women’s basketball earn the right to host the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, the Gamecocks have been granted a waiver by the NCAA to do so in Charlotte, the program announced Thursday.
The need for a new venue was necessitated by the fact that the team’s home arena, Colonial Life Arena, will host the NCAA men’s tournament on the same weekend. NCAA rules require schools to apply for a waiver to host at any site more than 30 miles away from campus.
USC would play in Halton Arena, on the campus of UNC-Charlotte. The 9,100-seat arena hosts Charlotte 49er basketball games during the season.
“We looked at an extensive list of venues. Some seating-wise just didn’t, we think, have the capacity. Some were not available. It was a long list that we went through, and Charlotte was on the list from the very beginning and it worked out timing-wise that their building was going to be available,” athletic director Ray Tanner said.
“First and foremost, I think our athletic director Ray Tanner did a great job just fighting to make that happen,” USC coach Dawn Staley said. “That doesn’t happen at all, just so everybody knows the magnitude of what took place. They don’t give waivers in this situation. He worked extremely hard over the past couple weeks to make that happen.”
As The State and other media outlets previously reported, two in-state options, North Charleston Coliseum and Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, already had events scheduled for that weekend.
Had the waiver not been granted, USC could have been forced to play as the higher seed at a venue much farther away. Bracketology projections in recent weeks had suggested East Lansing, Michigan or Piscataway, New Jersey, as possible destinations.
“We weren’t going to be able to play here nor anywhere near here if we don’t get a top-16 seed or if we did get a top-16 seed. We would have been shipped somewhere else, playing on somebody else’s floor,” Staley said. “Granted, we have to take care of our business and be in the top 16, but hopefully that’s enough for us to do what we need to do to make coach Tanner’s work not be in vain.”
Tanner said he had some doubts that the waiver would be approved prior to submitting it, but credited its success to Staley’s program-building over the past decade.
“Yeah, there was concern. It’s not an automatic,” Tanner said of the waiver request. “We put in a waiver request ... and there’s no guarantees. I didn’t know of a precedent that had been set. I didn’t know of a situation where a women’s team had gone to another venue. I just didn’t have that in front of me. So we were talking to the committee and we made the formal request, and we weren’t 100 percent sure the request would be granted. And it was.
“I think the fact that coach Staley and her program, what they’ve done consistently for a long time now, and the attendance leading the country, from that standpoint, what we’ve done in NCAA play, I think that all factored in. They didn’t tell me that, but I would assume that this is great for women’s basketball.”
Over the past four years, South Carolina has hosted the first two rounds of the tourney each season. In that time, it has averaged 9,883 fans per game, far above the average attendance. Last year, the Gamecocks topped 10,000 and led all first-round host sites.
“If we were averaging 500 fans a game, it’s not such a priority, but it is a priority for us and our women’s basketball program, and we think that we can travel well to Charlotte,” Tanner said. “It’s not that far, it’s a great city, lot of things to do there, and I think it’s a great opportunity for women’s basketball from an NCAA standpoint to host the tournament in a city like Charlotte.”
South Carolina is prepared to incur extra costs in order to host, Tanner said.
Carolina will find out if it is a top-four seed on Selection Monday, March 18, on ESPN at 7 p.m. The first two rounds of the tournament will take place the weekend of March 22.
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 3:51 PM.
