while it’s a consolation prize, these players deserve the chance to secure another trophy
While the NCAA Men’s Bracket has been dominating headlines for it’s, well, questionable selections and seeding placements, the Gonzaga Women had to wait a long time to find out their fate for the NCAA Postseason, which is why I wish there was a video of the team waiting to hear their announcement as an automatic qualifier for the WBIT!
The WBIT took place for it’s inaugural event in the ‘23-24 campaign and was created by the NCAA to provide “equitable postseason opportunities for women’s basketball similar to that of men’s basketball.” This effectively means that the WBIT was developed as a way to replace or improve the WNIT as the second-ranked NCAA post-season tournament in existence.
The teams selected by the committee includes
- the first four teams out of the NCAA DI women’s basketball tournament
- regular season champions of DI conferences not otherwise selected for the NCAA DI women’s basketball tournament…
- at-large teams chosen by the WBIT selection committee
Gonzaga meets the second criteria and were awarded the #4 seed in the bottom left corner of the graph. Given their ranked seeding, other terms are strangely not provided a number rank, the Zags actually get to host the opening that will take place on March 20th at 6:00pm PST and see the Bulldogs matchup against UTSA Roadrunners.
The Roadrunners earned their bid into the WBIT by winning the AAC regular season with a 26-4 (17-1) record with their four loses coming against Texas A&M, Stanford, South Florida, and Rice in their first AAC Tournament game.
Excluding Gonzaga and Oregon State, the other WCC teams that made a post-season tournament were the Portland Pilots for the WBIT and the Washington State Cougars for the WNIT. The Pilots drew the unlucky card of squaring off against the higher seeded Stanford Cardinal while the Cougs were picked high enough for a first-round.
I’ll cover more about UTSA later this week, but until then, check out the bracket below.