NCAA announces March Madness tournament is returning to Wichita for a third time
March Madness will be returning to Wichita for a third time.
The NCAA announced its future host site selections for the men’s basketball tournament on Wednesday and Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena was selected to host the first and second rounds in 2025.
Wichita previously hosted the first and second rounds of the men’s NCAA Tournament in 2018 and is scheduled to once again this coming spring on March 19 and 21, 2021.
According to Brad Pittman, an associate athletic director at Wichita State who leads Wichita’s bid for NCAA Tournaments, Wichita made a lasting impression with the NCAA after hosting in 2018.
“Overall, it was a smashing success,” Pittman said. “On open practice day, you could see it in the looks on their faces like, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before.’ It was something that reverberated across the NCAA community.
“I remember the conversations with (NCAA representatives) when they were here. They were thankful for everything that we did and they said they were going to be back. Wichita did a great job and they said they wished everybody would take pride in hosting like what we did.”
That is similar to what A.J. Boleski, the general manager of Intrust Bank Arena, heard after hosting in the 2018 tournament.
“It’s a big compliment to the city of Wichita and this community for rolling out the red carpet back then and having such a fantastic event,” Boleski said. “That makes announcements like this happen and had a lot to do, I’m sure, with us being selected again.”
Wichita was included with major cities like Seattle, Denver, Cleveland and Milwaukee as host sites for the opening rounds of the 2025 tournament. The city is also scheduled to host the regional rounds of the 2022 women’s NCAA Tournament, while it was also announced Wednesday that Newman will host the 2024 NCAA Division II wrestling championships at Park City’s Hartman Arena.
So what does the NCAA like about Wichita as a host site?
“The city has a beautiful venue and the local fans are some of the best supporters of college basketball, so it makes sense to bring our marquee event to Wichita,” the NCAA’s David Worlock told The Eagle.
While Wednesday’s announcement about 2025 was exciting for Visit Wichita, Intrust Bank Arena and Wichita State, who collaborated on the bid, there are still questions to be answered about the upcoming challenge of hosting NCAA Tournament games this spring with no end in sight to the coronavirus pandemic.
Boleski said Intrust Bank Arena hopes to host live events before March 2021 and that he has already devised a “comprehensive plan” that will be submitted for approval by the Sedgwick County Health Department that will require face masks for those in attendance and social distancing in the stands.
Another difference from 2018 is that there will be no March Madness Fanfest this spring hosted outside of the arena in downtown Wichita.
“For those fans who do come and the fans that are here, we sure want them to go to our establishments that are here that have been hurt by the pandemic,” Visit Wichita CEO Susie Santo said. “We’d love for all of our visitors to go and visit all of those great bars and restaurants and places in Old Town and on Douglass.”
There’s also a question of if Wichita — or any city — will be allowed to host games this spring.
After the NBA’s success with its bubble, where all teams gathered in once place to play games, there has been some public support for the NCAA adopting the same approach for the 2021 tournament.
Pittman said he has kept in regular communication with the NCAA and it is still his expectation that Wichita will host NCAA tournament games in 2021.
“From our seat, we’re pushing forward and we’re planning on it being here,” Pittman said. “The biggest unknown is we don’t know what it’s going to look like. Predicting what March will be is impossible because we don’t know what tomorrow is going to look like. We’re excited to host knowing it’s going to be different, but we’re just excited to have basketball.”
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 12:37 PM.
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