NCAA Tourney Seeding Gets Major Overhaul

The NCAA has implemented a major shift in how the women's basketball tournament bracket will be seeded, starting next season. The selection committee will no longer consider conference affiliation when determining the placement of the top 16 teams. Instead, these teams will be distributed across the four regions based solely on the committee's overall ranking.

This new approach departs from past practices where conference rivals within the top seeds were deliberately placed in different regions to prevent early-round matchups. Such separations sometimes influenced seeding positions independent of a team's actual ranking. Now, the committee believes this method offers greater fairness, potentially allowing multiple top teams from the same conference to be placed in the same region if their rankings dictate.

These seeding adjustments coincide with the tournament's expansion from 68 to 76 teams next season. Notably, this change will not affect the men's NCAA bracket, which will continue to ensure top conference teams are separated until the Final Four.