The NCAA’s “bubbles” for its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments were established to block the threat of a tourney derailed by COVID-19. For the women, however, there’s one curious side-effect—it’s the first time that every game has been played at a neutral site.
That’s not new for the men. (Though those neutral sites are usually sprinkled around the country for the early rounds, rather than one giant site for the entire tournament, as is the case this year.) But it’s different for the women, who typically play the first and second rounds on the home courts of the higher seeds, before switching to four regional sites for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight and then converging in one city for the Final Four.