One of the biggest gripes about the current 68-team NCAA Menâs Basketball Tournament is the vast distances that teams may be forced to travel on short notice, with this yearâs first-round sites being spread out to far-flung metros like Spokane, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City, to name a few.
While thereâs no perfect solution to the travel blues, the phenomenon is not unique to one coast or another, with East Coast teams like College of Charleston and Yale joining West Coast stalwart Oregon on this yearâs list of CBB teams with the longest first round commutes.
To get a sense of which teams got the short end of the stick, distance-wise, at this yearâs tournament, BetCarolina.comâyour home for North Carolina sports bettingâbroke down the college basketball teams that will travel the farthest and compared those figures with those that get to play their opening round contests close to home.
Teams Traveling Furthest For March Madness 2024
*First Four teamsâ potential 1st round matchups not included
The national leaders when it comes to first-round distance are College of Charleston, Yale and Oregon, who play Alabama, Auburn and South Carolina in this weekâs opening round of the Big Dance.
The first two face the Crimson Tide and Tigers in Spokane, a cool 2,660 miles (From Charleston) and 2,652 miles (from New Haven) away, while Oregon heads 2,586 miles to the east to play South Carolina in Pittsburgh.
Other teams that made the list include the aforementioned Tigers, who will travel 2,396 to face the Bulldogs in Eastern Washington, while the UAB Dragons are fifth with a 2,255-mile trek to Spokane and the Crimson Tide travel 2,249 miles from Tuscaloosa to Spokane.
The rest of the list includes a trio of teams playing in Salt Lake City, in Samford, which heads 1,778 miles west to Utahâs capital to face Kansas, while Daytonâs itinerary is 1,641 miles to hit SLC to play Nevada and McNeese Stateâs is 1,581 miles to play Gonzaga.
Finally, Utah State has a 1,516-mile journey to Indianapolis to square off against TCU in the first round, before playing Purdue in all likelihood in the second round should they knock off the Horned Frogs.
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Teams Traveling Shortest Distance For March Madness 2024
*First Four teamsâ potential 1st round matchups not included
Conversely, the NCAA teams that were spared the travel bug this week include the Boilermakers, who have the shortest trek of any team in the first round, with Purdue traveling 69 miles from their West Lafayette campus to play in Indy against either Montana State or Grambling State .
Next up are the Akron Zips (110 miles to Pittsburgh), Drake (140 miles to Omaha) and UNC (140 miles to Charlotte), while Iowa State (168 miles to Omaha), Western Kentucky (226 miles to Indianapolis), Tennessee and South Dakota State (233 miles each to Charlotte and Omaha) and Marquette (281 miles to Indianapolis) have the next shortest first round sojourners.
For the Tar Heels, their first-round showdown against either 16th-seeded Howard or Wagner represents a chance to earn the programâs record to 19-1 in first-round games this century, with the schoolâs lone opening-round loss coming in 2021, when they lost to Wisconsin, 85-62, as a nine seed.
Prior to that, UNCâs last first-round knockout came in 1980, when the Heels lost to Texas A&M, 78-61 in double overtime, illustrating how successful the Heels have been at avoiding early-round letdowns in the Big Dance.
North Carolina will look to keep that trend alive and well in the Queen City on Thursday afternoon when the Heels face either Howard or Wagner in the first round of the Big Dance.
Check out our best North Carolina sportsbook promos throughout the NCAA basketball tournament.
