Des Moines selected as preliminary-round host for 2016 Men's NCAA basketball tournament (2015, transfer)

[fezzador]

2016-18 preliminary rounds | NCAA.com

I've already mentioned this in the b-ball thread in the general Iowa forum, but this is a huge get for the city. Des Moines has never hosted the event before, except for the women's tournament, and depending on how well this goes, DSM may be considered as a regional (S16 & E8) site in the future.

[capitalcityguy]

This is big for Des Moines. That said, not sure the arena is big enough to host a regional.

[fezzador]

Omaha was given the green-light for the Midwest regional in 2018, and at 16K and change, Wells Fargo Arena's capacity is about 2,000 more than CenturyLink Center. Most other regional centers hold about 17-18K.

[fezzador]

WHO's take on WFA hosting the 2016 opening rounds of the NCAA tournament

[EastCB]

Centurylinks capacity is around 18900.

[fezzador]

I was looking at the CenturyLink in Louisiana for some reason.

If they can consistently cram 17K at WFA it might be enough to warrant consideration for a regional, but anything less than capacity then it'll probably just be for the opening rounds.

[capitalcityguy]

Yeah....WF Arena is already comparatively on the smaller-end of things for opening rounds. Just don't think regional is a realistic possibility and to be honest, I think we should be happy with getting what we got and hope we get more in the future.

[fezzador]

Another potential issue is that potentially none of the teams playing at WFA will be Iowa teams. If UI or ISU can nab a two-seed, they're a shoo-in, but to be realistic I don't think any Iowa-based team will get a seed that high and guaranteed virtual home-court advantage in the first two rounds. For example, this year Columbus OH was a second and third round site, but Ohio State played in Portland instead. If there are no Iowa-based teams playing in Des Moines there very well could be quite a few empty seats... it's not exactly a destination city, and is likely going to be many hundreds (if not thousands) of miles for several teams.

[capitalcityguy]

A few comments.

There's a difference between "empty seats" and unsold seats. For example, Louisville has something like the 3rd best attendance figures this year, but there was only a few thousand that were actually in attendance and in their seats during the first half of the Iowa State vs UAB game.

Des Moines is always hungry for events of national significance, so there is zero doubt this will sellout...and probably quickly. This is what occurs in Omaha (to use a regional example to draw from). The only question is how high ticket prices will be on the secondary market and that will be dependent on which teams are scheduled to play here. Kansas would be the a huge get because they travel so well.

IMO, given the combo of returning talent and transfers coming in, Iowa State will be even better than they were this year, so a #2 seed is not out of question. They'll probably be a Top 15 preseason team. That said, they are the host school so they are prohibited from playing in Des Moines so we won't see them scheduled next year for DM regardless of what seed they receive.