Tobacco Road is front and center of March Madness with 3 women's sites and men's site in area

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Oregon women's basketball coach Kelly Graves was excited when he saw his team was headed to Duke to play in the NCAA Tournament.

The Ducks had success there a few years back when they played in the 2017 NCAA Tournament, advancing also as a 10-seed. But more importantly, it meant a chance for his family to watch both the Ducks play and the Florida men's team where his son, Will, is a graduate assistant coach.

The Gators played their first-round game in Raleigh, North Carolina, about 30 minutes from Cameron Indoor Stadium, where Oregon will face Vanderbilt on Friday. The Graves family got together Thursday night at a hotel. Most of them watched the Ducks beat Vanderbilt 77-73 in overtime. Florida beat Norfolk State 95-69.

“Every family has those trips or memories that are just different," Graves said. "Our first trip to Durham was one of those and now to be back it brings up those memories again even if it's under different circumstance. My boys were so pumped to be at Cameron before and now we're back."

Tobacco Road is the center of the NCAA Tournament this week with three women's first-round sites at Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State. There's also the men's first-round games being played at N.C. State as well. In all, there's 21 men's and women's teams in the area for the games. No city comes close to that, including Los Angeles, which has both UCLA and Southern California hosting first-round women's sites.

The L.A. sites boast two of the top players in the country in USC's JuJu Watkins and UCLA's Lauren Betts.

“I might be biased, but I think this is like one of the best basketball cities in the country,” Watkins said. “It's really cool to be able to see two arenas here that are hosting the biggest tournament of the year.”

Back in North Carolina, it's the first time that there's been so much basketball in one area at four different venues. The “Triangle” as its known, hosted three women's first-round sites in 1998, but there was no men's games in the area that year.

Even with so many teams in the area, hotels, busing and other logistics were relatively easy. The teams playing at Duke all were staying within 20 minutes of the arena. Teams in Chapel Hill were even closer. The men’s and women’s teams up at N.C. State also were all within a short drive from the arenas.

It’s a fitting location for such a hoops-heavy week.

“I think it’s awesome. This is ACC, Tobacco Road. This is what it’s all about. To have eight men’s teams and then have all three of the local teams on the women’s side hosting is pretty amazing,” N.C. State coach Wes Moore said. “It’s a great accomplishment, makes it hard to get hotel rooms, things like that. Other than that, I think that’s what it’s about. March Madness, you know.”

No state has hosted more NCAA Tournament games on the men’s side than North Carolina, with the state’s 269 games entering this year 41 more than California as the next closest state. Coming into this weekend there have been 154 women's games in the state — third most behind Texas and California.

“I mean, think about it, how many Metropolitan areas do you know of that could have three teams like that in one area and draw? Most people draw because they have a whole state that is behind them, or just an entire city,” Duke coach Kara Lawson said. “So they can draw from one hour east and one hour north and one hour south and one hour west, and like everyone can converge upon this town that supports the one team. ... There’s nothing like it in the country."

North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart remembers when she took over the program in 2019, the Tar Heels and Blue Devils were struggling. Now to have them both hosting games is huge.

“As much as it's hard to say, you are kind of secretly rooting for each other to bring basketball back here,” she said.

Cities like the state capital in Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro have all hosted men’s games in the past decade, with men’s games back in Raleigh for the first time since 2016.

And that gave the Duke men — who entered the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 — a roughly half-hour drive over from campus to start their push for a sixth national title.

Teams in Raleigh held news conferences and open practices Thursday at the Lenovo Center, home to Duke’s Atlantic Coast Conference neighbor N.C. State. The Blue Devils’ open practice gave the first glimpse at freshman star and unanimous Associated Press first-team All-American Cooper Flagg since his ankle injury in the ACC Tournament. Flagg glided through Duke’s practice, then joined his teammates in throwing T-shirts to an arms-waving crowd as they wrapped up their work.

Both the Duke men and women play on Friday. It is possible for fans to make both contests with the men playing in the afternoon and the women in the evening.

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AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard, AP Sports Writer Beth Harris and freelancer Bob Sutton contributed to this report.

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