The NCAA on Monday announced its 2016-18 preliminary-round host cities for the NCAA Tournament. Among the cities chosen was Des Moines, which had never been selected to host an NCAA Tournament game.

Des Moines will serve as a playing site for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. It will join Brooklyn, Providence, St. Louis, Raleigh, Oklahoma City, Denver, and Spokane.

The committee also changed the name of the Thursday-Friday games from the first round to the second, and the Saturday-Sunday games from the second round to the third in an attempt to assert that the First Four games were not “play-in” games.

“The purpose of referring to those games as the second and third rounds was to sway people to use first round or better yet First Four when referencing the games in Dayton,” Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president for men’s basketball, said in a release.

— by Jacob Sheyko