{"id":89679,"date":"2025-07-24T21:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T21:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/89679\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T21:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T21:49:11","slug":"univ-of-houston-out-as-host-school-for-2026-ncaa-tournament-regional-opening-door-to-play-close-to-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/89679\/","title":{"rendered":"Univ. of Houston out as host school for 2026 NCAA Tournament regional, opening door to play close to home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-colleges \">The Univ. of Houston is \u201cno longer the host school for next year\u2019s men\u2019s basketball regional at Toyota Center, paving the way for the Cougars to potentially play the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament in their own backyard,\u201d according to Joseph Duarte of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. A source said that UH had \u201cpetitioned for a waiver to be eligible to play in the South Regional while also serving as host but was denied by the NCAA.\u201d The source added that the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority will \u201ctake the lead on which local school will now handle the host duties, which include logistics and behind-the-scenes responsibilities.\u201d Duarte notes Rice is the \u201clikely option to serve as host.\u201d By relinquishing the South Regional host duties, UH would be \u201celigible to play the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament &#8212; which includes the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds &#8212; less than three miles from campus.\u201d Toyota Center was selected as one of four sites to host a second-weekend regional for the 2026 NCAA Tournament as part of a \u201cjoint bid between UH and the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority in 2020.\u201d The other three regional sites are SAP Center in San Jose (West), United Center in Chicago (Midwest) and Capital One Arena in D.C. (East) (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/sports\/college\/article\/uh-ncaa-south-regional-no-longer-host-20784724.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/sports\/college\/article\/uh-ncaa-south-regional-no-longer-host-20784724.php\">HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 7\/24<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Univ. of Houston is \u201cno longer the host school for next year\u2019s men\u2019s basketball regional at Toyota&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":89680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,2076,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-89679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114910420889001249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}