NCAA women’s tournament makes major change to top-16 seeding

The NCAA is changing how the top 16 teams are seeded in the women’s basketball tournament beginning next season, eliminating a longstanding bracketing policy that separated the top four teams from the same conference into different regions.

Going forward, the top 16 overall teams will remain in their true seed order regardless of conference affiliation. Previously, if four teams from the same conference were among the top 16, they would be moved to different regions to prevent them from meeting before the Final Four.

The change means teams will no longer be shifted from their original placement because of conference affiliation.

The adjustment follows the 2026 NCAA Tournament, when four Southeastern Conference teams landed among the top eight overall seeds. Texas was the No. 3 overall seed, South Carolina was fourth, LSU fifth and Vanderbilt seventh. To avoid placing LSU and Vanderbilt in the same region as other SEC teams, LSU was moved to the seventh overall seed and Vanderbilt to eighth in the final bracket.

NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee chair Amanda Braun said the committee believed the previous policy undercut the work that went into evaluating and ranking the top teams.

“We put a lot of time into establishing those top 16 teams in the order they go in,” Braun said, as reported by Doug Feinberg of The Associated Press. “You’re splitting hairs to decide who has the edge and some of that is undone by those principles. To all of us, the work we did and the work those teams did justifies keeping them where they are in that group of 16.”

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament will continue using its current system, which separates the top four teams from the same conference into different regions.

The rule change is expected to primarily affect power conferences such as the SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big 12, which have been the only leagues to regularly place four or more teams in the NCAA Tournament field.

The announcement also comes after the NCAA approved expanding the women’s tournament to 76 teams beginning in 2027. Braun said the committee did not discuss the tournament’s recently introduced financial units for advancing teams during its meetings.

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