This week the respective men’s and women’s college basketball committees got together to talk format and potential tournament expansion (there’ll be no expansion for 2026, at least), and the women’s committee decided on a change to the way the tournament field is announced:
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.
College baseball has done this for a while and it’s a nice added feature, so why not bring it over to the similarly-structured women’s hoops tourney? And with the bonus of additional television content for ESPN? Okay, the discussion-padded one-hour (or whatever) reveal show is going to be annoying, but otherwise this is a positive move.
The women’s NCAA tournament selection committee will still have a pair of in-season top-16 reveals as well.
The only other noteworthy development from the women’s committee meeting is the addition of Wins Above Bubble to the selection process. The men’s side added WAB to its selection process last year.