Swarthmore and Johns Hopkins have both been selected as hosts of the opening two rounds of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament this weekend. The first and second round matchups will take place on Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7.
Swarthmore (26-1), which earned an at-large bid to the postseason, is the top-ranked seed in the tournament and will be hosting Brooklyn College, Babson College and Ithaca College in the first weekend. It will mark the fourth year in a row that the Garnet have hosted an NCAA game. The Garnet are set to play Brooklyn College (13-15) at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, with Babson (20-6) and Ithaca (23-5) opening the tournament at 5 p.m. on Friday. Winners of Friday games will play each other in the second round on Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Hopkins (24-3), the Centennial champions, will host Penn State Harrisburg (20-7), WPI (20-7) and Yeshiva (27-1) at Goldfarb Gym. JHU will take on Penn State Harrisburg at 6 p.m. on Friday while Yeshiva will meet WPI at 1 p.m.. The Blue Jays have hosted the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament in each of their last three appearances and four of the last five (2007, 2015, 2018, 2020).
The format of this year's tournament is different than in the past. The third round of the tournament will be a single game at a school site on Friday, March 13.The national quarterfinals and Final Four games will take place in Fort Wayne, Indiana on March 20 and 21, with the championship game set for April 5 in Atlanta in conjunction with the Division I and II championships.