At its summer meeting this week in Philadelphia, the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee approved championship and selection enhancements, reviewed tournament format, met with organizers of the 2026 Women's Final Four and named a future committee chair.
The meeting also provided an opportunity for updates from ESPN representatives, with detailed broadcast coverage plans for the 2025-26 season and championship. Selection Sunday and the announcement of the 68-team championship bracket will take place March 15, with the show airing on ESPN at 8 p.m. Eastern time. 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. On the early Top 16 reveal, the Top 16 schools will be provided in alphabetical order. Exact time for the early reveal March 14, with ESPN, is still to be determined. The final bracket and true seed order, 1-68 for the entire tournament field, will again be provided publicly on Selection Sunday.
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At its summer meeting this week in Philadelphia, the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee approved championship and selection enhancements, reviewed tournament format, met with organizers of the 2026 Women's Final Four and named a future committee chair.
The meeting also provided an opportunity for updates from ESPN representatives, with detailed broadcast coverage plans for the 2025-26 season and championship. Selection Sunday and the announcement of the 68-team championship bracket will take place March 15, with the show airing on ESPN at 8 p.m. Eastern time. 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. On the early Top 16 reveal, the Top 16 schools will be provided in alphabetical order. Exact time for the early reveal March 14, with ESPN, is still to be determined. The final bracket and true seed order, 1-68 for the entire tournament field, will again be provided publicly on Selection Sunday.
The committee started its discussions around other championship format matters, including for the current First Four, first and second rounds, and regionals. The committee's comprehensive preliminary format review will continue through its October meeting. In 2026, First Four and first- and second-round games are scheduled to be hosted by the top 16 seeds, on March 18-23, while regional play will take place March 27-30 at two regional host sites, with eight teams competing at each site, in Fort Worth, Texas, and Sacramento, California.
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. While possible future bracket expansion was discussed by the committee, no recommendation was provided coming out of the meeting.
"The committee continues to review and consider all championship elements," said Amanda Braun, director of athletics at Milwaukee and chair of the committee in 2025-26. "The championship continues to grow in a variety of ways and by various metrics, that includes record attendance and broadcast ratings the last three years. The committee will continue to have additional discussion around these topics while considering the team, player and fan experiences and ensuring that the women's basketball championship presents a solid business model."
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. 1.
"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. This will be used along with the established selection criteria when considering the selection and seeding of teams.
"While we are looking forward to implementing WAB into the team evaluation process, it's still about 12 committee members using their individual judgment after watching hundreds of games, investing many hours of personal team observations, review and comparison of objective data, plus discussions with coaches and campus/conference representatives, that dictate how each committee member ultimately votes on the selection of the 37 at-large teams, followed by the seeding and bracketing of the 68-team championship bracket each year," Braun said.
At its meeting, the committee also discussed tournament operations, ticket pricing, future site selections timeline and process, officiating program and possible player availability reporting. Committee members also heard from the Phoenix Local Organizing Committee, which provided an update on its planning efforts for the 2026 Women's Final Four, to be held April 3 and 5 at PHX Arena.
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. One committee member position, from the Big Ten Conference, is still to be determined.
 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. Darger has more than 16 years of experience in intercollegiate athletics, including time spent as an assistant women's basketball coach at Utah Valley from 2009 to 2015. She earned a bachelor's degree in 2000, a master's in 2004, and a doctorate in 2023, all from Brigham Young.
"It has been a privilege to serve on the Division I Women's Basketball Committee, and I am honored by the trust my peers have placed in me to serve as vice chair this year and chair in 2026-27," said Darger, a member of the committee since 2024. "I look forward to serving in this leadership role as we strategically navigate an exciting time of growth in Division I women's basketball with wisdom and care. I am grateful for the encouragement and support of BYU Athletics Director Brian Santiago and am excited to continue serving a sport and its student-athletes that mean so much to me."
At its meeting, the committee also discussed tournament operations, ticket pricing, future site selections timeline and process, officiating program and possible player availability reporting. Committee members also heard from the Phoenix Local Organizing Committee, which provided an update on its planning efforts for the 2026 Women's Final Four, to be held April 3 and 5 at PHX Arena.
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. One committee member position, from the Big Ten Conference, is still to be determined.
 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. Darger has more than 16 years of experience in intercollegiate athletics, including time spent as an assistant women's basketball coach at Utah Valley from 2009 to 2015. She earned a bachelor's degree in 2000, a master's in 2004, and a doctorate in 2023, all from Brigham Young.
"It has been a privilege to serve on the Division I Women's Basketball Committee, and I am honored by the trust my peers have placed in me to serve as vice chair this year and chair in 2026-27," said Darger, a member of the committee since 2024. "I look forward to serving in this leadership role as we strategically navigate an exciting time of growth in Division I women's basketball with wisdom and care. I am grateful for the encouragement and support of BYU Athletics Director Brian Santiago and am excited to continue serving a sport and its student-athletes that mean so much to me."
At its meeting, the committee also discussed tournament operations, ticket pricing, future site selections timeline and process, officiating program and possible player availability reporting. Committee members also heard from the Phoenix Local Organizing Committee, which provided an update on its planning efforts for the 2026 Women's Final Four, to be held April 3 and 5 at PHX Arena.
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. One committee member position, from the Big Ten Conference, is still to be determined.
 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. Darger has more than 16 years of experience in intercollegiate athletics, including time spent as an assistant women's basketball coach at Utah Valley from 2009 to 2015. She earned a bachelor's degree in 2000, a master's in 2004, and a doctorate in 2023, all from Brigham Young.
"It has been a privilege to serve on the Division I Women's Basketball Committee, and I am honored by the trust my peers have placed in me to serve as vice chair this year and chair in 2026-27," said Darger, a member of the committee since 2024. "I look forward to serving in this leadership role as we strategically navigate an exciting time of growth in Division I women's basketball with wisdom and care. I am grateful for the encouragement and support of BYU Athletics Director Brian Santiago and am excited to continue serving a sport and its student-athletes that mean so much to me."
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