Selection Sunday is when the NCAA DI Women’s Basketball Committee determines seeding based on very specific criteria. All 32 conference champions make the tournament, as well as the 36 best “at-large” teams remaining.
“I like how the tournament is set up,” Girls basketball player Jennifer Aguilera said, “I like how so many teams can make the playoffs and have a chance to win no matter their record.”
Four regions, consisting of 16 teams, play each other in four different rounds of games until one team is left in each region. Once there is one team in each region, regions 1A and 1B will play each other while regions 2A and 2B play each other to determine which two teams will play in the national championship.
This year, region 1A and 2B will be in Albany, New York, and region 2A and 2B will be in Portland, Oregon. The Women’s College Basketball National Championship will be played in Cleveland, Ohio.
There are a lot of big-name teams in each region that people are looking for to win the whole tournament. The South Carolina Gamecocks secured a first seed in region 1A after going undefeated in the regular season and being SEC champions two years in a row. Another team to look out for will be the other Albany one seed, the Iowa Hawkeyes, who have Catlin Clark, who broke the NCAA all-time scoring record this season with 3,771+ points.
“The winner’s gonna come out of the top [the Albany regions] there’s no doubt,” freshman basketball player Harlee Lowe said, “They have the best teams with South Carolina and Iowa on the same side of the bracket.”
Virginia Tech is a team that can make a run after making it all the way to last year’s Final Four before they lost to the eventual champion LSU. The defending champions are a 3 seed for the second year in a row, but that makes them the lowest-seeded reigning champion since 2012.
“Being last year’s champs they are way too low and I think they are going to prove everyone wrong,” sophomore Peyton Brady said.
