Outside the handful of media members chatting up a storm, Gampel Pavilion was eerily quiet when the UConn women's basketball team took the court for its practice on Saturday.

Other than a 15-minute session available to the media, the NCAA did away with the practice of allowing fans to watch the practices before the first games in the subregional. The decision was made because teams would go little more than a glorified layup line and go elsewhere to conduct actual practices out of the glare of the spotlight and that the fan turnouts at many sites left a little to be desired.

"What the committee looked at this summer was teams would have to do this open practice and then they would have to go to this auxiliary site to do another hour of practice," NCAA spokesman Rick Nixon said. "What we decided to do to accomodate was to do a 15-minute window for the media to start with and close it at that point just to allow teams to get that work here and not go somewhere additionally. We got some feedback from the teams that would work out a lot better."

So is the NCAA expecting a backlash from the fans at sites like UConn and Tennessee with a history of supporting their teams and showing up in large numbers at the open practices?

"A little bit," Nixon said. "We certainly understand that. It was the compromise of trying to assist and help out the teams. We weighed it against the attendance we've had in the past years. Some sites attendance are better than others but when you have very few fans in the seats for those practice sessions, it just didn't justify the means or making them to do the practices at two sites."

The setup will be the same for the regionals but there will be open practices on April 2, the day before play begins in the Final Four.

Hartford coach Jen Rizzotti was unaware of the change in format until she received the fact sheet for the UConn subregional a couple days ago.

"I wouldn't say it has been impactful one way or the other for us," Rizzotti said. "The only time I really remember (a large fan turnout) was when we played here against Rutgers in the NCAA tournament. Every other site we have been to it's been pretty minimal. I don't think it matters either way. I think the focus we have is just having a chance to shoot in the gym we are going to play in. I don't know if I could care less how many people are there watching. I don't know what the coaches of the bigger schools have thought or have wanted."

NO UCONN/HARTFORD GAME NEXT SEASON
This season ended a run of six seasons when UConn and Hartford played a game at the XL Center. Rizzotti wanted to free up her schedule so she could play in an exempt event and also set up home and home series to strength its non-conference schedule.

Rizzotti said there are no plans to resume the series next season.

"The kids like the non-conference because it was different because once you get into conference, you are playing kids twice every year and sometimes three times," Rizzotti said. "Changing up non conference is good not just to keep them fresh but the novelty of playing UConn wears off when you play them every single year. I want that game when we play it to be special, I don't want it to be 'oh, we are going to the (XL) Center again this year to play UConn.' A lot of these kids grew up watching them and the first couple of years we played them, it was a big deal and then the last few years it wsn't. There are multiple reasons why we took a year off and next year as well and what happens in the future, I don't know. We haven't really thought that far ahead."