(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s capitol city is among the hosts of the opening rounds of the N-C-double-A men’s basketball tournament this week. Catch Des Moines president and C-E-O Greg Edwards says the games Thursday and Saturday will feature eight of the nation’s top teams in college hoops.

This marks the third time Des Moines has hosted the March Madness games, which is a tremendous boost for the area’s restaurants, hotels and parking decks.

Since the tournament’s opening rounds have already been staged at the Iowa Events Center twice before, Edwards says he’s pretty confident they have all of the bugs worked out of the process.

This is the third time Des Moines has hosted the -opening- rounds of the tournament, and Edwards says it’s possible they’ll bid on hosting -regional- rounds in the future.

Could Des Moines host a Final Four? That would be a long shot, Edwards says, at least not until we have an N-F-L team here with an 80-thousand seat stadium. Iowa is sending six teams to the tournaments this year, both the men’s and women’s teams from Drake, Iowa State and Iowa, which is significant for a state our size.

Play opens at 1 P-M on Thursday with Howard versus Kansas, followed by Arkansas versus Illinois at 3:30 P-M, Colgate versus Texas at 6:25 P-M, and Penn State versus Texas A&M at 8:55 P-M.