NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament Selection Show: An In-Depth Look

The NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament, a centerpiece of "March Madness," culminates in the selection show, where the 68 participating teams are revealed along with their seedings and matchups in the knockout bracket. This article will delve into the intricacies of the selection process, the selection show, and the various factors that determine which teams make the cut.

The Selection Process: Who Gets In?

The selection process determines which teams will enter the tournaments and their seedings and matchups in the knockout bracket. Out of 355 eligible Division I teams, 68 participate in the tournament. The selection process primarily takes place on Selection Sunday and the days leading up to it.

Automatic Qualifiers

Thirty-one teams gain automatic entry by winning their respective conference championships. A total of 31 automatic bids are awarded to each program that win a conference tournament.

At-Large Bids

The remaining 37 teams rely on the selection committee to award them an at-large bid in the tournament. The remaining 37 bids are issued "at-large", with selections extended by the NCAA Selection Committee on Selection Sunday, March 16. Eight teams (the four-lowest seeded automatic qualifiers and the four lowest-seeded at large-teams) play in the First Four.

The at-large teams generally come from college basketball's top conferences, including the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, SEC and to a lesser extent, the American, A-10, Mountain West and WCC. Though each conference receives only one automatic bid, the selection committee may select any number of at-large teams from each conference.

The Selection Committee: Who Makes the Decisions?

The twelve-member basketball selection committee is made up of athletic directors and conference commissioners throughout Division I men's and women's athletics with separate committees for the men's and women's tournaments. The committees consist of one member selected from each of the five autonomy conferences and three members selected from the seven highest-ranked nonautonomy conferences based on basketball success. The remaining four members are selected from the 20 other conferences. All appointments are for five years.

To avoid potential conflicts of interest, committee members must leave the room when their own school is being discussed (or schools in the case of the conference commissioners). The member may be invited to answer factual questions regarding their team or teams (e.g., status of player injuries).

Factors Considered by the Selection Committee

The selection committee only selects the teams (37 for women) who receive at-large bids. The selection committee must first decide which teams will compete in the tournament. The committee officially considers predictive computer rankings, such as ESPN's BPI, Sagarin, and Pomeroy Ratings, which use additional factors considered by the committee, such as injured players in the case of the BPI. Additionally, committee members consider how teams do on the road and at neutral courts, strength of conference and schedule, non-conference strength of schedule, record against other selected tournament teams, and other extenuating factors.

Through the 2018 men's tournament and 2019 women's tournament, the RPI rating was often considered a factor in selecting and seeding the final few teams in the tournament field. However, the NCAA selection committee in 2015 said the RPI was only utilized for grouping the teams into groups such as top 50 and top 100 teams, to value the wins and losses, and not as a factor for selection.

A number of teams are assured an at-large berth no matter their performance in their conference tournament. Most teams in the Top 25 in the national polls or RPI are essentially guaranteed at-large berths even if they do not win their respective conference tournaments. However, teams that have been ranked heading into Selection Sunday but didn't win a weaker conference's tournament have been essentially penalized (or "snubbed") by the selection committee despite computer rankings or public opinion. The committee also selects four additional teams, the "First Four Out", who do not qualify for the tournament.

Read also: Crafting Your NCAA Profile

Wins Above Bubble (WAB)

The committee also voted to add the Wins Above Bubble evaluation metric to the championship selection criteria/priorities, noting that WAB will provide a resume-based metric that shows how many more, or fewer, wins a team has against its schedule versus what a bubble team would expect to have against the same schedule. The WAB metric, also currently referenced by the Division I Men's Basketball Committee, uses NET as the basis for opponent strength, with the reference "bubble team" being defined as a team ranked 45th in NET, based on a study of recent women's basketball seasons. The daily updated WAB metric will be added to the respective team sheets referenced by the committee that will be made public each day beginning Dec. "We believe that the WAB will be an important tool to help objectively see the value of each win and loss and how to best evaluate and emphasize a team's strength of schedule and results," Braun said. "Whether it's a nonconference or conference game, no matter the scoring margin, the WAB is going to tell us a lot about what a team did against the schedule they played.

Quadrant System

The NCAA continues to use its "quadrant" system, introduced for the 2018 tournament selection process, to classify individual wins and losses.

Seeding the Teams: The S-Curve

The selection committee's work to seed the teams is just as vital as their work to select the at-large teams. While the selection process starts before the seeding process, the two often overlap. Some conference tournaments do not finish until Selection Sunday itself, and there is only one hour between the end of the last game (usually the Big Ten tournament championship game) and when the brackets are officially unveiled, so the committee cannot wait until after all the games are played to start determining the seeds.

Though the brackets only feature the seed numbers 1-16 in each region, the committee first assembles a overall seed ranking of selected team from 1 through 68, formatted as an "S-curve". The selection committee uses a number of factors to rank teams for the S-curve, including record, strength of schedule, and the NET in the Division I men's tournament and the RPI in all other championship tournaments. Relative subjective comparison of individual teams close on the S-Curve are also considered.

The "S-curve" table in the guidelines displays four teams to a row, alternating left-to-right and right-to left. In theory, the teams 1-4 on the seed list will all be #1 seeds in their regions (the #1 "seed line"), 5-8 will be #2 seeds in their regions (the #2 seed line), and so on; however, bracketing rules allow minor deviation from this when necessary to meet other bracketing requirements. The S-curve rankings are most important for keeping each region balanced, the ideal being that each region will be equally strong. The committee tries to ensure that the top four seeds in each region are comparable to the top four teams in every other region.

While the seeds are almost never perfectly balanced throughout the four regions, the committee strives to ensure that they differ from each other by only a few points. Once the S-curve is established, the committee must place the teams throughout the four regions.

Regionalization and Pod System

While the regions are named for certain cities, the first and second round games are played in different cities which need not be anywhere near the regional finals. This is due to the "pod" system enacted before the 2002 tournament to minimize travel for as many teams as possible, especially in the early rounds. Any team may be sent to any region and any pod, although the tournament does try to keep teams, especially the top-seeded teams, closer to home.

Bracketing Rules and Considerations

A number of complex rules govern the seeding process, so it is not as simple as merely following the S-curve, although that is the top priority according to the NCAA's rules. Better teams have priority in remaining close to home, but no hosting institution's team can actually play at the location where the institution is hosting tournament games (generally, games are hosted on neutral courts, so this is not usually a problem).

Teams are spread out according to conference. The first three teams within the top 4 seeded lines selected from each conference must be placed in different regions. When a conference has more than three teams in the tournament, the committee tries to seed the teams so that they cannot meet until the regional final. The committee may move a team up or down one seed from its seed line in the S-curve in order to preserve other principles.

The committee also takes into consideration other non-basketball factors.

Selection Sunday: The Reveal

Selection Sunday is the day when participants are selected, seeded, placed accordingly, and announced. Selection Sunday is also when the men's brackets and seeds are released to the public. Beginning in 2022, the women's championship brackets and seeds are also announced on Sunday. Selection Sunday is currently the Sunday before the third Thursday of March, when the first round games begin. It is never before March 11, or after March 17.

ESPN has exclusive rights to cover the women's tournament selection announcements, as that network has sole rights to the women's tournament. Both CBS and ESPN cover the selections for the men's tournament live.

The 2025 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament

The 2025 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament was a 68-team single-elimination tournament to determine the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I college basketball national champion for the 2024â25 NCAA Division I women's basketball season.

Atlantic 10 champion George Mason, Big West champion UC San Diego, NEC champion Fairleigh Dickinson, Sun Belt champion Arkansas State, WAC champion Grand Canyon, and CAA champion William & Mary all made their NCAA tournament debuts.

For the first time in NCAA womenâs March Madness history since expanding to 64 teams, no team successfully completed an official upset. In addition, this was also the first time no team completed an upset in the Round of 64 alone, meaning no team seeded 11th or lower won in the first round.

ESPN broadcast each game of the tournament across either ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, or ABC.

Expert Predictions and Bracketology

While the selection committee assembles to do the official work, many predictions are made by various people and organizations. Speculations and buzz can come from anywhere from random college basketball fans to senior bracketologists and experts on the selection process and the seedings, such as ESPN's Joe Lunardi. Other well-known experts in this field include Ken Pomeroy of kenpom.com, Jerry Palm of CBSSports.com, Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com, and Dean Oliver of ESPN's BPI.

Looking Ahead: The 2026 Championship

The committee affirmed that the 2026 championship will feature an automatic qualifier from each of the 31 conferences to go along with 37 at-large teams as determined by the committee. The 2025-26 committee will be chaired by Braun, while she will be joined by Vicky Chun of Yale; Liz Darger of Brigham Young; Amy Folan of Central Michigan; Josh Heird of Louisville; Jeff Konya of San Jose State; Marvin Lewis of George Mason; Jill Redmond of the Missouri Valley Conference; Ashleigh Simmons of Western Carolina; Candice Storey Lee of Vanderbilt; and Lynn Tighe of Villanova. The committee elected Darger, senior associate athletics director and senior woman administrator at Brigham Young, to serve as committee vice chair during the coming year, moving to the chair position in 2026-27. As a new feature, the committee, with support from ESPN, will publicly announce the Top 16 seeds for the 2026 championship on the previous day, Saturday, March 14. This will allow additional time for those Top 16 seeded hosts and tournament operations to start preparations for the championship.

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