Selection Sunday change coming to women’s March Madness

A big change arrives at the selection on Sunday, one of the sacred holidays of university basketball.

When viewers connect to ESPN for the revealing support next March, there will be surprises that have been spoiled.

Indeed, the NCAA selection committee will unveil the 16 best teams the previous night, giving schools that won the right to host matches during the first weekend of March Madness an additional day to prepare. This announcement will also be made on ESPN.

However, a little suspense will remain. While the 16 teams that organize will be revealed on Saturday, their seed order will not be revealed until Sunday with the rest of the 68 teams. The 16 teams that welcome will be announced in alphabetical order.

The NCAA Division I Basketball Committee approved this change at their summer meeting last week in Philadelphia.

It should be mentioned that this selection ad model – The Top 16 reveals one day before the full list of seeds and the support – is the standard for the Baseball Tournament of Division I of NCAA for many years.

Although there have been a lot of discussions on the potentially expanding of the March Madness domain, nor the male or female committees have made a decision to add teams to the support.

“The complete examination of the preliminary format of the committee will continue throughout its October meeting,” said a statement from the Women’s Basketball Committee of Division I of the NCAA.

For the moment, expect the format of the NCAA basketball tournament in division I to remain unchanged. The first four games will always be played on campus sites, as is the first and second round of the tournament. The Sweet 16 and Elite Eight stages will continue to be played on combined regional sites – this season, they are in Fort Worth, Texas and Sacramento, California – despite the complaints of high -level coaches.

“The Committee continues to examine and examine all the elements of the championship,” said Amanda Braun, director of athletics in Milwaukee and president of the committee in 2025-26. “The championship continues to grow in various ways and by various measures, which includes frequentation of records and broadcasting ratings in the past three years. The committee will continue to have additional discussions on these subjects while considering the team, players and fans and ensure that the women’s basketball championship has a solid business model.”

A change that will take into account the teams to play in the NCAA tournament is that the Committee adds the WAB (victories above the bubble) assessment metric to its selection criteria.

“We believe that WAB will be an important tool to help objectively see the value of each victory and each loss and how to assess and highlight the strength and the results of a team,” said Braun. “Whether it is a game of non-conference or conference, whatever the margin of rating, the WAB will tell us a lot about what a team has done against the calendar it played.”