Even though the current college basketball season ended last night, local hoops aficionados are already starting to think about next year's postseason.
Although that may at first seem presumptuous, it is a real concern for administrators of the area's Division I basketball programs. The Wachovia Center will host first- and second-round games in the 2006 NCAA Tournament, with the Atlantic 10 Conference serving as host institution.
Considering the already-high expectations for the Big 5 next year, coming off of a season when Villanova and Penn made it to the Tournament and Saint Joseph's was a win away, a short trip down Broad Street is quite an incentive for success in the regular season.
The team with the most at stake is unquestionably Villanova. All of the players on this year's Wildcats squad -- which finished the season a point away from knocking off eventual national champion North Carolina in the Sweet 16 -- will return next season.
If Jay Wright's players are able to come anywhere close to meeting the the high expectations that will be placed upon them by their fans, they will almost surely land a coveted top-four seed in the Field of 65. That will nearly guarantee a trip to the closest venue to their campus -- the Wachovia Center.
"It would be helpful if we were able to play NCAA tournament games in the facility that's basically 20 miles from our campus, and the floor, court and building which we are familiar with," Villanova Senior Associate Athletic Director Bob Steitz said last week.
There is a caveat, however -- the Wildcats always play a few games a year at the Wachovia Center, whose 20,644-seat capacity is more than triple the Pavilion's capacity of 6,500.
Because a team cannot play more than three games in a venue without it being officially classified as a home arena for NCAA Tournament seeding, the Wildcats will have to be careful which games they play there, especially considering next year's expansion of the Big East.
The conference will welcome Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul, Marquette and South Florida. Coupled with the high probability of non-conference games against major teams from across the nation, there will likely be a lot of people wanting to see the Wildcats play.
"We always try to take a look at trying to move our higher profile games down to the Wachovia Center," Steitz said. "We have to take a hard look at our schedule [next year]."
Steitz strongly dismissed the idea of Villanova playing additional games beyond its Big 5 schedule at either the 8,722-seat Palestra or Temple's Liacouras Center, which has a capacity of just over 10,000.
"The [Wachovia] Center is the building that we are most interested in," he said.
Using the 18,000-seat Spectrum -- Villanova's off-campus home before the Wachovia Center opened in 1996 -- was also ruled out.
"If we're going to move a game off of our campus, it would be to the Wachovia Center," Steitz said. "I think that's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past so we would probably stick with that plan."
The whole idea would be moot if Villanova were the host, since institutions cannot play in the venue at which they are hosting.
Not only is Villanova safe, but all of the other Atlantic 10 schools can play in Philadelphia as well, because none of the conference's members call the Wachovia Center home.
"They can certainly be in this draw," Atlantic 10 Associate Director of Communications Stephen Haug said.
Haug added that local teams would not necessarily have to get a top four seed to play in Philadelphia, noting that Wisconsin, as a No. 6 seed, only had to travel to Milwaukee for its first and second round games last year.
"They'll do the top four and the pods and all that and if they end up [in Philadelphia], they end up there," Haug said of the NCAA Selection Committee. "I don't think they would go out of their way to push a team away because they are from the Atlantic 10 or they are from the city."
But not everyone is paying attention to this issue right now. While in St. Louis before the Final Four, Penn coach Fran Dunphy said that he is not concerned with the Philadelphia venue as an incentive, and would rather his team not focus on that in the first place.
"I think if that's one of your incentives, then you're in the wrong business," he said. "I can't imagine it's extra motivation to win your league and get into the Tournament."
Indeed, the Quakers and the rest of their local brethren have to get through an entire season first in order for this conversation to move from the hypothetical to the very real.
