But really the best thing would be to play 7 vs 18, 8 vs 17 and 9 vs 16 the first day also.
Just make it 2 three game sessions and use 2 sites the first day - like tomorrow would be at
11, 1:30, 4:00 at UNC Charlotte and the other 3 start at 2/4:30/7 at the main arena.
That gets it to 12 the 2nd day just like it is now.
I like having teams at the bottom not make the ACC tournament. It gives the lower half of the league something to play for during the regular season to make it more meaningful. It’s similar to relegation in the Euro soccer leagues.
Bojangles Coliseum is even closer than UNCC. 3 miles, 8 minutes away from the Spectrum Center.
The Greensboro Complex has 3 basketball arenas on site.
I guess the downside of the 2 arenas idea is there aren’t 6 broadcasting windows, so you’d have overlapping games shown on different channels competing for viewers.
When and if we join the SEC or Big Ten, those will be maybe 22 or 24 team conferences. That’s a 7 day tournament if you eliminate 4 teams a day? Quadruple byes for the top 4 seeds. Maybe 5 days if you do a multi-site arrangement for the first 2 days to go from 24 to 16 to 8 and the top 8 get double byes.
That works too except for moving it back a day … give the better teams more rest before the madness and mercifully end the bad team’s season earlier
16 to 18 is simply too many teams to do a decent one-week tourney with. The NCAA tournament takes two weekends (11 days) to get through the last 16 teams, with no team ever playing two days in a row… and here we’re trying to do 18 teams in 5 days without a break.
The conference tourney weekend made sense with 8 teams. Now it doesn’t.
Pitt
Notre Dame
California
Virginia Tech
Syracuse
Florida State
Virginia
Georgia Tech
North Carolina
Stanford
SMU
Duke
Wake Forest
Louisville
Clemson