The Continental Divide
An analysis of the NCAA Tournament regional locations, their hosts, and travel
Much has been said about NCAA men’s hockey tournament regional sites where they are and where they should be, so let’s take at what the data says.1
Hosts
Arenas
27 different arenas have hosted regionals, while 8 arenas have hosted 5 times or more—SNHU Arena (10), DCU Center (10), MVP Arena (7), Total Mortgage Arena (7), Scheels Arena (6), Amica Mutual Pavilion (6), PPL Center (5), Van Alden Arena (5).
9 different eastern2 arenas have hosted, while 18 different western arenas have hosted regionals.
Schools
Each regional has a “host” school which takes care of the logistics of the regional and if the “host” school makes the tournament they will automatically be placed in that region.
In total 27 schools (and 2 conferences) have served as the host of a regional—in a few cases two schools have served as co-hosts, Yale and Fairfield and Yale and Sacred Heart in Bridgeport, and UMass and AIC in Springfield.
4 schools have hosted 7+ times: UNH (10), North Dakota (8), Holy Cross (7), Minnesota (7).
There are 27 instances where the host school made the tournament, led by UNH with 5 followed by North Dakota and Minnesota with 4 each.
In total 14 western teams have played in regionals in which they hosted, and 13 eastern teams have done so.
Of these 27 instances, 10 (7 west, 3 east) one seeds have hosted, 6 (3 west, 3 east) two seeds, 8 (4 west, 4 east) three seeds, and 3 (all eastern) four seeds.
Visitors
One aspect of the neutral site vs. home regional debate centers on some teams having to travel more than others.
Schools
Since every team has a different number of NCAA tournament appearance, it’s hard to compare the raw number of times that a school has been forced to travel outside their “region.”3
There are 15 teams that have traveled—i.e., an eastern school playing in a western regional and vice versa—50% of their non-hosting appearances in the NCAA tournament. Of those 15 teams, six were western schools and nine were eastern schools.
Seeds
In terms of seeds, western teams are forced to travel more, however they may just be a product of more western teams in the tournament and by extension more potential first round intra-conference matchups to resolve.
For example, there were 12 instances where there were more western 1 seeds than western regionals.
Seeds and Schools
Of the 5 schools in this era with 5+ times as a 1 seed—Minnesota (10), BC (9), North Dakota (7), Denver (7), Michigan (5)—only Michigan (80%) and Denver (57.14%) have been forced to travel more than 12% of their times as a 1 seed. BC and Minnesota each being forced to travel once, and North Dakota never being forced to travel.
Conclusion
56 different teams have made the NCAA Tournament in the 16 team, 4 regional era—30 from the east, 26 from the west—of those 1 of the eastern teams has dropped to D2 (AIC) and 2 of the western teams have dropped the sport (Wayne State and Alabama-Huntsville). As a result, 54.7% of active teams with NCAA comes from the East.
In the end, the issue of the regionals, with regard to attendance, isn’t whether they should be at neutral sites or home-sites, it’s schedule. Games should not be scheduled at 2 pm on a Thursday afternoon.
If anyone wants the regional data I’ve included the table above which has the option to download the data.
In this analysis, we will only look at the 16 team 4 regional era, i.e., since 2003.
PPL Center is classified as “eastern” even though its host, Penn State, is in a western conference
For simplicity, regions are strictly “east” and “west”