Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara Vanderver called out a measurement error that caused the top of the 3-point line to be 9 inches shorter at one end of the court in the first five games of the Portland Regional in the women’s NCAA tournament. The team that played against him.”
“When you get in the gym, especially in the NCAA tournament, you expect at least the baskets to be 10 feet and the floor surfaces to be accurate,” Vanderver said in a statement Monday. “For a mistake of this magnitude to cost two weekends of incredible basketball teams and incredible individual performances is unacceptable and deeply frustrating.”
The NCAA said Monday it had fixed the issue before the Elite Eight game between No. 1 USC and No. 3 Connecticut. That game is set for Monday at 9:15 pm ET.
The NCAA is ready to point out that the two lines with No. 1 Texas and No. 3 NC State on Sunday are uneven. The line by the Texas bench was correct, but the line by the NC State bench was too short and both teams elected to play the game without the court’s correction.
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The NCAA has not confirmed how it first became aware of the issue, but called it a “human error” by Connor Sports Contracts – the official vendor of men’s and women’s NCAA tournament courts since 2006. The NCAA apologized for the incident, he wrote. It would be good if he caught the error in his statement sooner.
The NCAA announced Monday that the foul 3-point line is painted “as closely as possible to the wood grain of the floor.” The correct 3-point line – 22 feet, 1 3/4 inches from the basket – is marked in black.
The NCAA said the corrected 3-point line was marked in black on the Moda Center court in Portland, Ore. (Photo: Ashley Young / The Athletic)
According to the NCAA, the foul only touched the tip of the 3-point line.
Coaches from NC State and Texas said the error did not affect their teams’ performance. NC State shot 50 percent from the arc Sunday, and while the Longhorns shot just 17 percent from deep, coach Vic Schaefer didn’t blame his team’s struggles on a measurement error. The players knew there was a difference after the game.
The NCAA released a statistical analysis on Monday showing how the invalid line affected teams.
Stanford was 5-of-25 shooting from behind the arc, while NC State was 7-of-17 from 3 for the game in NC State’s 77-67 loss to the Cardinals at the Moda Center on Friday. Aside from the inaccurate 3-point line, the Cardinals made 2 of 13 3-pointers (15.4 percent). They made 3 of 12 shots (25 percent) from beyond the arc to the fairway.
The NCAA called the incident an “isolated incident,” and said it had reviewed all other courts used in both the men’s and women’s tournaments in the past and determined they were correct.
The NCAA said: “We apologize for this mistake and for the fact that it went unnoticed for so long.” “Simply put, this court did not meet our expectations and the NCAA should have caught the mistake sooner.”
We will work with all NCAA vendors and suppliers to develop additional quality control measures to ensure this does not happen in future tournaments.
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(Photo: Candice Ward / USA Today)