NC State, Texas women play NCAA basketball game on court with incorrect measurements
N.C. State and Texas are playing for a berth in the NCAA Tournament’s women’s Final Four Sunday in Portland, Oregon, on a court with unequal measurements at either end.
NCAA officials discovered that the distance from the baseline to the top of the 3-point arc on one end of the Moda Center’s court is shorter than the other. Measurements were conducted during pregame Sunday, when both N.C. State coach Wes Moore and Texas coach Vic Schaefer were notified of the issue. They agreed to play on.
Tournament games were played the court Friday and Saturday, including Duke’s 53-45 regional semifinal loss to Connecticut on Saturday night. The only change to the court from those games to Sunday’s N.C. State-Texas game was new lettering on the baseline for the Elite Eight.
According to the broadcast, the teams discovered the 3-point lines were different distances. Guess we're gonna play on, though. https://t.co/4iQzHdg6z4
— Jadyn Watson-Fisher (@jwatsonfisher) March 31, 2024
Connecticut and Southern Cal will play their regional final game on the court Monday night to determine the final entrant into next week’s Final Four in Cleveland. An NCAA official said a “professional measuring” will be conducted on Monday.
Both Moore and Schaefer walked off the distance themselves on Sunday. During an interview with ESPN following the game’s first quarter, Moore acknowledged that they measured the court again and then declined to comment further.
During N.C. State’s first-round win over Chattanooga, official Tommi Paris was removed at halftime and replaced by an official from an earlier game after the NCAA belatedly discovered Paris had a degree from Chattanooga, which violates NCAA conflict-of-interest guidelines.
This is a developing story and will be updated
