3-Point Lines Wrong Distance In Women’s Tournament Game At Portland’s Moda Center

The North Carolina State Wolfpack defeated the Texas Longhorns in the Elite Eight of the NCAA women’s college basketball tournament, but something wasn’t right the entire game.

Before Sunday’s matchup, it was discovered that one side of the court’s three-point line differed from the one on the other side. The women’s college basketball three-point line was moved in 2022, but the court in Portland still needs to make those changes fully, just on one end of the court.

“The NCAA was notified today that the 3-point lines on the court at Moda Center in Portland are not the same distance,” a statement from the NCAA said.

The court had been used on Friday and Saturday for the preceding round’s games, but the error wasn’t noticed until Sunday afternoon. Both coaches were made aware of the issue and were given the decision of whether they wanted to play or not.

“At first, Vic [Schaefer] was hesitant about it,” NC State head coach Wes Moore said. “And then he finally said, ‘I didn’t want to wait an hour or something to play the game.’ I was ready to get going. But Vic probably figured it out. Do you know what? This line down here is what we’re used to. That line down there isn’t.”

Ultimately, both coaches opted to play the game with the error on the court instead of waiting more than an hour to have the court remeasured and retaped. With both sides having to play on the end with the error, the thought was that it would just cancel each other out.

“At the end of the day, we had already played a game on it,” Schaefer said. “We both won, so we just decided to play.”

By the final whistle and after all of the games played on the court with the error, it was found that teams shooting on the original three-point line made a higher percentage of their shots than those on the side with the error. They also found that teams shooting on the standard three-point line averaged more than four points per game more than the team shooting on the opposite end. Despite that, both NC State and Texas were not pleased with the issue arising in the first place.

“I wish I hadn’t had known, to be honest with you,” Moore said.

“Well, I hate to say this, but I have a lot of colleagues that would say, ‘Only in women’s basketball,'” Schaefer said. “I mean, it’s a shame that it even happened. But it is what it is… I mean, I’m not the culprit here. You guys are asking me about something I had no control over.”

Following the incident on Sunday night, the NCAA announced that it would investigate how the issue happened and said it would be fixed before the USC vs. UConn game on Monday night.