Marquette's NCAA Tournament draw not so lucky
When you're a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament you usually don't expect to catch too many breaks. But playing your first round game in your opponent's home state and about 100 miles from their campus? That's a fairly unexpected, unlucky turn of events.
That's the situation the Marquette men's basketball team finds itself in as it prepares to take on seventh-seeded South Carolina in the first round of the East Regional at approximately 8:50 p.m. Friday at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C.
"That's just the way the NCAA Tournament goes sometimes," Marquette head coach Steve Wojciechowski said. "Hopefully we'll have a few extra fans down there as well."
Of all the teams in the Greenville pod, the Gamecocks are clearly the team that will be playing closest to home. The teams that are supposed to receive the biggest regional advantage — North Carolina, the No. 1 seed in the South Regional, and Duke, the No. 2 seed in the East Regional — are both about 240 miles from Greenville.
None of this would have been an issue if the first and second rounds were held in Greensboro, N.C. as had been initially planned. That city is definitely closer to Chapel Hill and Durham, providing a clear advantage to North Carolina and Duke while only a slight advantage to South Carolina.
However, in October the NCAA decided to pull its championship events out of the state of North Carolina in protest of the state's Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, more commonly known as House Bill 2 or HB2. The aspect of the law that has fallen under the most scrutiny and led to numerous high-profile boycotts involves transgender individuals, stating that they must use the bathroom that correlates with the gender on their birth certificate rather than the gender with which they identify.
In order to keep the tournament in the same area of the country, the NCAA decided to move the event to Greenville. The change made for the first NCAA championship men's basketball event in South Carolina since 2002 when Greenville hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
The reason for the long layoff was an NCAA ban that spanned from 2001-'15 that was levied against South Carolina for its decision to fly the Confederate flag at the state Capitol. That ban barred South Carolina from hosting any tournament games, and it expired on July 10, 2015, when the Confederate flag was lowered and removed.
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But the main problem that head coach Frank Martin sees is that two of the most recognizable brands in the sport have expected to land in Greenville for months.
“Here’s the problem for us right now," Martin said. "Our fans are all rookies to this right now. When you’ve been in this tournament four times in 43 years there’s a lot of fans that don’t really know how to handle this right now. Unfortunately for us, two of the schools (Duke and North Carolina) that are in this bracket have huge followings and they’re in it every single year, so I’ve got to think their fans for the last 2-3 weeks have been buying every single ticket they can get. …
“Our fans that can get their hands on tickets are going to be there. ... They’re going to figure out a way to get in there.”
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If there's a silver lining for Marquette it's that the Golden Eagles were placed in the second set of games on Friday, with their first-round game coming immediately after Duke's game against Troy. Wojciechowski spent four seasons at Duke as a player followed by 15 more as an assistant coach for the Blue Devils before becoming Marquette's head coach in 2014.
With plenty of Duke fans expected to be in the building, it wouldn't be surprising for them to throw their support behind Wojciechowski and Marquette.
"I'm hoping a big contingent of Marquette fans will show up there and I would think we'll have some fans outside of the Marquette fans there hopefully supporting us," Wojciechowski said.
