There are three universities with both men’s and women’s teams in the Sweet 16: Michigan, North Carolina, and — for the first time since 2000 — Iowa State. Gazette stories: MBB, MBB notebook, WBB, WBB notebook, column.
Only one of those three has their teams playing in overlapping time frames — and it’s happened in every round of the tournaments. It takes a lot of things to happen for that to happen, and yet somehow it has. But it’s better than the alternative!
The men’s game — Cyclones vs. Hurricanes in the Windy City, as others have pointed out — is late in Chicago presumably because it’s a matchup of double-digit seeds. But why in the world doesn’t it start until “8:59” Central Time? No basketball game should tip off after 8 PM local, and honestly anything after 7 is ridiculous.
The women’s game vs. Creighton is decidedly an undercard to the other matchup — North Carolina vs. South Carolina, being played in North Carolina — but has the later (8:30 CT) tipoff tonight.
The NCAA has no control over tip times, nor do athletic departments. CBS/Turner and ESPN certainly aren’t in cahoots with a goal of making things difficult for ISU fans.
Or so they’d have us believe. (No collusion! No collusion!)