This weekend when West Virginia, Indiana, and Ball State travel to Lexington, Kentucky to play in their NCAA Regional, they will be staying in dorm rooms.
NCAA rules state when hosting a regional, “The tournament manager must make tentative housing arrangements for each visiting team. All hotels used should be of equal quality…A minimum of 25 rooms must be reserved for each team through the final possible night of competition at your site. All rooms should be held until the team(s) checks out and then, and only then, should they be made available to the general public.”
According to Ben Upton, Kentucky sent teams a set of places to stay and this includes dorm rooms for teams to stay in. The place for teams to stay in is Baldwin Hall — while using a four person suite to accommodate athletes.
“Teams have the option of putting 2 athletes in each room (4-person suite) or 1 athlete in each room (1-person suite). The total suite will be $185 per night. Bunk beds will be dismantled prior to team arrival,” the release sent to teams said.
ESPN reported Kentucky official Matt May said, “There is a great deal of stuff going on in Lexington: massive music festival, state high school baseball, softball and track on campus (baseball was shifted to an alternative site off-campus, as has been the university president’s mandate to host those high school events in recent years,” said Matt May, spokesperson for Kentucky baseball. “This has been known for months and all checkpoints with the NCAA both addressed and met to their satisfaction. Our bid was up front from the very beginning.”
A statement from the NCAA read, “Since Kentucky could not secure the minimum number of hotel rooms within the specified distance of no more than 30 miles from the host venue, the school informed the committee it had secured three different on-campus residence buildings within proximity to the baseball stadium where the teams could be housed.
“While the locations are residence halls, it was the understanding of the committee that the accommodations are an apartment-style residence facility. Kentucky also stated to the committee that each building will be staffed 24 hours a day by university personnel to provide any services needed.”
The Mountaineers begin their run in the NCAA Tournament on Friday, looking to win their first regional in the history of the program.
