Portland games played with incorrect 3-point line
PORTLAND, Ore. — Five NCAA women’s basketball tournament games - all at Moda Center in Portland - were played with different-length three-point arcs on either side of the court. That has included four Sweet 16 matchups Friday and Saturday, then North Carolina State’s 76-66 win over Texas in the Elite Eight on Sunday. Coaches for the Wolfpack and Longhorns were alerted to the discrepancy shortly before tip-off but ultimately decided to start on time rather than delay the game to fix the court.
The arc in front of N.C. State’s bench was shorter than it was supposed to be, according to Wolfpack Coach Wes Moore, who added that the arc in front of Texas’s bench was the correct distance. Texas Coach Vic Schaefer said officials gave the coaches the option of altering the incorrect line with tape, which they said could have taken up to an hour. A spokesperson for the tournament site declined to comment, referring reporters to the NCAA. Lisa Peterson, chair of the NCAA Division I women’s basketball committee, also declined to comment.
“I wasn’t going to be the guy that goes, ‘No, I don’t want to do it,’” said Schaefer, who was in favor of delaying before changing his mind. He added that it was about a one-foot difference between the two sides. He and Moore had walked from the baseline to the top of the keys, measuring the distances with their footsteps.
“You want to know if I think it had anything to do with the game? Probably not,” Schaefer continued. “But I really would have loved to have done what I normally do my last 12 minutes before a game instead of walking around out there, trying to see if the floor’s screwed up.”
The NCAA offered few clarifying details in a statement released during the game. Then it issued a second statement that placed blame on Connor Sports, the vendor for hardwood floors used in the women’s and men’s tournaments. The Michigan-based company did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. NCAA officials did not allow The Washington Post to independently measure the court dimensions after the game. They said the court was closed to reporters for the rest of the night.
“The NCAA was notified today that the three-point lines on the court at Moda Center in Portland are not the same distance,” the organization’s initial statement read. “The two head coaches were made aware of the discrepancy and elected to play a complete game on the court as is, rather than correcting the court and delaying the game. The court will be corrected before tomorrow’s game in Portland [between Connecticut and USC in the Portland Region 3 final].
“At the conclusion of tonight’s game and practice in Portland, the NCAA will be measuring all court lines and markings on the court at Moda Center,” read the second statement, which was attributed to Lynn Holzman, the NCAA’s vice president of women’s basketball. “While the NCAA’s vendor has apologized for the error, we will investigate how this happened in the first place. The NCAA is working now to ensure the accuracy of all court markings for future games. We are not aware of any other issues at any of the prior sites for men’s or women’s tournament games. The NCAA regrets the error was not discovered sooner.”
In 2021, the NCAA moved the women’s arc to 22 feet, 1.75 inches all around, the same distance used in the WNBA and men’s college games. Before that, the NCAA women’s distance was 20 feet, 9 inches. On Sunday, N.C. State made 9 of 18 three-pointers, whereas Texas went 1 for 6 from behind the arc. The Wolfpack shot 6 for 9 on the side with the correct dimensions, then 3 for 9 on the side with the too-short arc. Texas, on the other hand, shot 1 for 3 on the side with the wrong dimensions, then 0 for 3 on the other end.
Teams shot 33 percent from the correct line and 29 percent from the wrong one, according to ESPN. Nicki Collen, Baylor’s women’s basketball coach, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Guess that’s why we shot it better in the 2nd half… correct 3 pt distance!! FYI with 8 teams at one site you get so little prep time on the main court and your focus is on game planning and simply getting shots up!” Baylor lost to USC, 74-70, on Saturday night.
“If you look, I think we shot the ball better on the other end both games because that’s the normal line,” Moore, the N.C. State coach, said Sunday. “But I’m not going to blame it on that. I mean, these kids, they shoot so far behind it sometimes nowadays, who knows where the line is? You know, it is an unusual situation. But like I said, I don’t know that it was an advantage or disadvantage either way. We both played a half on each end.”
At the start of Sunday’s game, one NCAA official told another that a fan inside Moda Center first noticed the discrepancy. Enter Michael McGrath. The lawyer splits his time between Portland and Arizona. Up north for the weekend, he saw Sunday morning that he could attend an Elite Eight game for $7. Before the game started, McGrath, sitting in the 300 level, noticed the three-point lines were off.
He snapped pictures facing each bench and posted them on Reddit. When a man sitting in front of him waved to a person courtside, McGrath suggested the fan text that person to let them know about the arcs. McGrath said the person courtside was working the game in some capacity. Soon, officials started measuring the distance between the baselines and the top of each arc. The game started about 15 minutes late.
Neither an NCAA spokeswoman nor an on-site spokesman would confirm that a fan had been the first to spot the problem.
“I think they’re remeasuring it all,” McGrath recalled telling the fan next to him. “Why?” the fan asked. “Because I told them,” McGrath said. “I told them to tell the refs.”
“I thought someone would give me a T-shirt or something, but oh well,” McGrath said in a telephone interview. “I was seated in front of the Texas bench, so I thought, ‘Well, maybe it’s a weird angle.’ But it’s only a 20-foot walk over to the left, so I took the two pictures. At that point, I knew it wasn’t about perspective. It was just off. Once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.”