Iowa Has Some Of The Best College Basketball Cities In The U.S.

Basketball fans are gearing up for one of the most exciting times of the year. Conference tournaments are ready to begin, which means the NCAA tournament isn't far away. The second day of the tournament is one of the best sporting days of the year, in my opinion. The entertainment value the NCAA tournament provides makes for one of the best tournaments in all of sports. You can watch college basketball teams duke it out for their tournament lives, from sun up to sun down.

There are games on many different channels and you can follow along with your bracket, hoping all of your big upsets are winners. The NFL Championship, the Sunday of the Master's golf tournament, and day 2 of the NCAA college basketball tournament will always be my 3 favorite sports days of the year. Did you know Iowa has multiple cities that are regarded as some of the best college basketball tournament cities in the country?

It's not really a surprise that the highest-ranked city is Iowa City. According to Wallet Hub, Iowa City is the 25th-best NCAA tournament city in the entire United States. The Hawkeye women's basketball team has just won the Big 10 tournament and the men's team is constantly participating in the 68-team tournament.

Wallet Hub studied 290 different cities and used 9 key metrics in their findings. While cities with better teams faired pretty well in the research, it wasn't the only factor they used. Social media engagement, the number of teams per city, and the winning percentage all played a factor.

Something I found really cool is that Iowa City isn't the only city in the state to make an appearance. Basketball is played at an extremely high level in multiple cities in this state. Ames shows up as the 51st-best city for the tournament, Cedar Falls joins the ranks at 98th, and Des Moines shows up at 148.

Get your brackets ready as one of the most fun tournaments of the year is right around the corner. One of my favorite ways to pick winners is to ask my fiance, who admittedly doesn't know anything about college basketball, which teams mascot she thinks would win in a fight. I'm not even kidding when I say she helped me pick a bracket that was 94% correct 2 years ago.