The NCAA Screwed Up The Three-Point Lines At The Portland Regional And They Aren’t The Same Distance

The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament had two regional sites, as Portland and Albany played host to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 action this weekend, meaning each site would play host to six games across the weekend.

One would think, given each site is hosting two regions, the NCAA would take extra care to ensure the court is, you know, correctly measured and that there wouldn’t be a discrepancy in the distance of the three-point line from one side of the floor to the other. You would, of course, be wrong. Prior to Texas and NC State’s showdown in the Elite 8 on Sunday, folks realized that the three-point line on the left side of the floor was a few inches shorter than the one on the right side of the floor, which was extremely noticeable on television once you had it pointed out to you.

You can see it best at the top of the key, where there’s clearly a larger gap on the right side than the left.

It’s pretty insane to have a “short side” and a “long side” in an NCAA Tournament game, and there’s not even a decent explanation for how it happened — there’s no longer a difference in the distance from the men’s and women’s line, so it’s not like a confused manufacturer issue with different measurements. They decided to just keep playing on the court, because what else were they going to do and in theory it should impact both teams the same, as each will spend 20 minutes of the game on each half of the floor.

NC State coach Wes Moore was clearly not thrilled with it when asked during his in-game interview after the first quarter, but he declined to get into it much in the moment asking instead to just talk about the game. This will clearly be a big topic of discussion after the game, though, and the NCAA will have an awful lot of questions to answer about how this could happen — and not get noticed until the third day of games.

UPDATE: The NCAA released a statement confirming the lines were wrong (but still haven’t said exactly what the wrong distance is), both teams agreed to play the game today, and the lines will be fixed before Monday’s game.