The NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball Event is an annual faculty basketball match for girls. Held every March, the Ladies’s Championship was inaugurated within the 1981–82 season. The NCAA match was preceded by the AIAW Ladies’s Basketball Event, which was held yearly from 1972 to 1982. Basketball was certainly one of 12 ladies’s sports activities added to the NCAA championship program for the 1981–82 college 12 months, because the NCAA engaged in battle with the Affiliation for Intercollegiate Athletics for Ladies (AIAW) for sole governance of girls’s collegiate sports activities. The AIAW continued to conduct its established championship program in the identical 12 (and different) sports activities; nevertheless, after a 12 months of twin ladies’s championships, the NCAA prevailed, whereas the AIAW disbanded.
Attendance and curiosity within the Ladies’s Division I Championship have grown over time, particularly from 2003 to 2016, when the ultimate championship recreation was moved to the Tuesday following the Monday males’s championship recreation.[1] The ladies’s championship recreation is the penultimate total recreation of the school basketball season since 2017. From 1982 to 1990, 1996 to 2002, and since 2017 the Ladies’s Remaining 4 is normally performed on the Friday earlier than the Males’s Remaining 4 or the hours earlier than the lads performed on the ultimate Saturday of the match. The ultimate was normally performed the Sunday afternoon following the Males’s Remaining 4; since 2017, Sunday night.
The match bracket is made up of champions from every Division I convention, which obtain computerized bids. The remaining slots are at-large bids, with groups chosen by an NCAA choice committee. The choice course of and match seedings are primarily based on a number of components, together with workforce rankings, win-loss information, and NET information.
In contrast to the lads’s match, there are solely 32 at-large bids (since 2014), and no play-in recreation. The ladies’s match, like the lads’s, is staged in a single elimination format and is a part of the media and public frenzy recognized colloquially as March Insanity or The Large Dance.
Each 2020 males’s and ladies’s tournaments had been cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.[2]
In 2021, all the match was performed in Texas, with most video games, together with the Remaining 4, in San Antonio; some video games had been performed in Austin and San Marcos.[3]
Contents
Event format[edit]
A complete of 64 groups qualify for the match performed in March and April. Of those groups, 32 earn computerized bids by profitable their respective convention tournaments. Since 2017 the Ivy League conducts their very own post-season match. The remaining groups are granted “at-large” bids, that are prolonged by the NCAA Choice Committee. Dr. Marilyn McNeil, vice chairman/director of athletics at Monmouth College is the present chairwoman. On March 1, 2011, Bowling Inexperienced State College’s director of intercollegiate athletics, Greg Christopher, was appointed chair of the NCAA Division I Ladies’s Basketball Committee throughout the 2011–12 educational 12 months.[4]
The match is break up into 4 regional tournaments, and every regional has groups seeded from 1 to 16, with the committee ostensibly making each area as similar to the others as doable[citation needed]. The highest-seeded workforce in every area performs the #16 workforce, the #2 workforce performs the #15, and many others. (that means the place the 2 seeds add as much as 17, that workforce shall be assigned to play one other).
Variety of groups, and seeding[edit]
The primary NCAA ladies’s basketball match was held in 1982. The AIAW additionally held a basketball match in 1982, however a lot of the prime groups, together with defending AIAW champion Louisiana Tech, determined to take part within the NCAA match.
The championship consisted of 32 groups from 1982 to 1985 (in 1983, 36), 40 groups from 1986 to 1988, and 48 groups from 1989 to 1993. Since 1994, 64 groups compete in every match.
Previous to 1996, seeding was carried out on a regional foundation. The highest groups (eight within the 32-, 40-, and 48-team codecs, and 16 within the 64-team format) had been ranked and seeded on a nationwide foundation. The remaining groups had been then seeded primarily based on their geographic area. Groups had been moved outdoors of its geographic area provided that it was essential to steadiness the bracket, or if the proximity of an opponent outdoors of its area can be comparable and a extra aggressive recreation would consequence. In 1993, all groups apart from the highest 4 had been explicitly unseeded. The regional seeding resumed in 1994. In 1996, seeds had been assigned on a nationwide foundation utilizing an “S-Curve” format[clarification needed] just like the method utilized in choosing the sphere for the lads’s match.
The next desk summarizes a number of the key attributes of the seeding course of:[5]
† Some exceptions. Resulting from venue availability, in some circumstances, the decrease seed hosted, or the sport was performed at a impartial web site.
‡ From 2003 to 2014, sixteen predetermined websites had been chosen for first and second-round video games. Groups had been allowed to play at dwelling, if internet hosting.
Between 2005 and 2008, eight websites had been used for first-round video games.
Choice course of[edit] – “w ncaa basketball”
A particular choice committee appointed by the NCAA determines which 64 groups will enter the match, and the place they are going to be seeded and positioned within the bracket. Due to the automated bids, solely 32 groups (the at-large bids) depend on the choice committee to safe them a spot within the match.
Ladies’s NCAA Division I basketball champions[edit]
Workforce titles[edit]
NCAA Remaining Fours by college[edit]
A number of NCAA championship coaches[edit]
NCAA Championship by Convention[edit]
Word: Conferences are listed by all champions’ affiliations at the moment; these don’t essentially match present affiliations.
NCAA Remaining 4 areas[edit]
Event tendencies[edit]
Prime-ranked groups[edit]
Because the ladies’s match started in 1982, 17 groups have entered the match ranked #1 in not less than 1 ballot and gone on to win the match:
Champions excluded the subsequent 12 months[edit]
Solely as soon as has the reigning champion (the earlier 12 months’s winner) not made it to the match the subsequent 12 months.
#1 seeds[edit]
Since 1982, not less than one #1 seed has made the Remaining 4 yearly.
Underneath coach Geno Auriemma, Connecticut has been seeded #1 a file 22 instances. Tennessee is second with 21 #1 seeds.
All 4 #1 seeds have made it to the Remaining 4 4 instances (champion in daring):
The championship recreation has matched two #1 seeds 14 instances:
Three groups have overwhelmed three #1 seeds throughout the course of a match (the biggest variety of such groups that may be confronted) (all three groups received the nationwide championship as beating a third #1 seed in a single match can solely occur within the finals):
Previous to the growth of the match to 64 groups, all 4 #1 seeds superior to the Candy Sixteen with three exceptions. Notably, the primary two instances this occurred had been by the hands of the identical college:
Excessive seeds[edit]
Low seeds[edit]
Lowest seeds to achieve every spherical for the reason that growth to 64 groups:
Finest Performances by #14 & #15 Seeds[edit]
In contrast to within the males’s match, no #14 seed has overwhelmed a #3 and no #15 seed has overwhelmed a #2 seed, however they’ve come shut.
First-round video games[edit]
Because the growth to 64 groups in 1994, every seed-pairing has performed 108 first-round video games with these outcomes:
Second-round video games[edit]
Because the growth to 64 groups in 1994, the next outcomes have occurred for every pairing:
word: The three losses by the #1 seed vs #8/9 had been: Duke (vs Michigan St, 2009), Ohio St (vs Boston Faculty, 2006), Texas Tech (vs Notre Dame, 1998).
word: The #9 vs. #16 recreation was Arkansas over Harvard in 1998.
Groups coming into the match unbeaten[edit]
Of the 18 groups who’ve entered the match unbeaten, 9 went on to win the Nationwide Championship.[7]
One exception is Cal Baptist, who was excluded from the 2021 match as a transitional Division I member, regardless of a 24–0 file.
Undefeated groups not within the match[edit]
The NCAA match has undergone dramatic growth since its first version in 1982, and just one unbeaten workforce has did not qualify for the match—California Baptist in 2021, which was 24–0 after profitable the Western Athletic Convention Event.[8] As, by definition, a workforce must win its convention match, and thus safe an computerized bid to the match, to be undefeated in a season, the one means a workforce may end undefeated and never attain the match is that if the workforce is banned from postseason play. (Different prospects are that the workforce is impartial, or is from a convention not but eligible for an computerized bid.) Postseason bans can come about for certainly one of two causes:
California Baptist was eligible for the WNIT as a result of that match isn’t operated by the NCAA, in contrast to the lads’s model; the Lancers has misplaced within the quarterfinals to Rice.
Residence state[edit]
Just one workforce has ever performed the Remaining 4 on its dwelling courtroom. Two different groups have performed the Remaining 4 of their dwelling cities, and 7 others have performed the Remaining 4 of their dwelling states.
The one workforce to play on its dwelling courtroom was Texas in 1987, which misplaced its semifinal recreation on the Frank Erwin Particular Occasions Middle.
Previous Dominion loved almost as giant a bonus in 1983 when the Remaining 4 was performed on the Norfolk Scope in its dwelling metropolis of Norfolk, Virginia, but in addition misplaced its semifinal. The Scope has by no means been the Girl Monarchs’ common dwelling courtroom. ODU has at all times used on-campus arenas, first the ODU Fieldhouse and since 2002 Chartway Area. The next 12 months, USC received the nationwide title at Pauley Pavilion, the house courtroom of its Los Angeles arch-rival UCLA.
Of the opposite groups to play of their dwelling states, Stanford (1992) received the nationwide title; Notre Dame (2011) misplaced within the championship recreation; and Western Kentucky (1986), Penn State (2000), Missouri State (2001), LSU (2004), and Baylor (2010) misplaced within the semifinals.
Championship margins[edit]
Identical-conference championship video games[edit]
7 championship video games have featured two groups from the identical convention (winner listed first and bolded):
End result by college and by 12 months[edit]
283 groups have appeared within the NCAA Event in not less than one 12 months beginning with 1982 (the preliminary 12 months that the post-season match was below the auspices of the NCAA). The outcomes for all years are proven on this desk beneath.[11]
The code in every cell represents the furthest the workforce made it within the respective match: