PicoBlog

Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also buy Her Hoop Stats gear, such as laptop stickers, mugs, and shirts!

Haven’t subscribed to the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter yet?

The NCAA announced the creation of the Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament, a secondary postseason tournament for women’s basketball, in mid-July. Beginning in 2024, the tournament will bring the number of postseason opportunities under the auspices of the NCAA to 100 for women. That will equal the number that the organization has offered to men since it acquired the NIT in 2005.

The NCAA’s decision to finally offer women the same number of organization-sponsored postseason slots is a big step forward as far as the cost to the institutions–as long as the tournament operates the same way the NIT does. Prior to the introduction of the WBIT, the options for postseason play for women’s teams that didn’t get selected for the NCAA Tournament were the WNIT and the Women’s Basketball Invitational (WBI).

Participating in the WNIT or WBI helped younger teams get more practice time. Up-and-coming teams could gain experience in the postseason one-and-done environment that helped them in the following years. In recent times, teams like Arizona and Indiana have used WNIT runs in just that way. 

Between the two tournaments, women’s teams had an additional 72 postseason opportunities, but there was a catch. Those tournaments cost the institution to take part. They were not overseen by the NCAA but by outside organizations. Triple Crown Sports puts on the WNIT while Sport Tours International organizes the WBI. Neither finances participation by picking up travel costs or offering per diem stipends for participants. 

Since taking over the NIT, the NCAA has offered participating institutions travel expenses and per diem stipends when they are away from their home arenas. Schools also get a cut of the media rights and ticket sales depending on how far they advance in the tournament.

The question of what the institutions will get when their women’s teams are selected for the WBIT is still open. As of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, schools still don’t see the kind of return for women’s participation as they do for men’s in amount or even type of return.

Because the NCAA has traditionally packaged women’s basketball postseason rights with more than 20 other sports’ media rights, there is not the kind of payout to schools who participate in the NCAA Women’s Tournament. Increased popularity and viewership have put pressure on the NCAA to stop this practice, particularly for women’s basketball and softball postseason tournaments, but the current media deal with ESPN runs through 2023-24. There’s also the question of whether removing prime pieces of the package from the postseason bundle would hurt the overall bottom line, reducing the total amount the NCAA gets for all 20-plus sports it currently offers in that deal. In this sense, the more popular sports like women’s basketball, softball, volleyball, baseball, and hockey are currently subsidizing the rest of the sports in the postseason package.

The money piece is just one question still surrounding the WBIT. The NCAA has yet to determine where the event will take place, how teams will be selected, and what the bracketing process will be like. If it follows the NIT model, the WBIT would take place in home arenas until the semifinals, then move to a single location. The NIT currently holds its final two rounds in New York.

The tournament has already had an effect on the other women’s tournaments. The WNIT announced that it would be reducing its field from 64 teams to 48 beginning with the 2024 tournament. With the added 32 berths offered by the WBIT and an additional eight postseason slots in the WBI, that still offers postseason play for a total of 156 of the 361 Division I women’s basketball teams compared to 148 opportunities for men’s teams. 

The question remains whether it will be easy to fill all of those slots. The men’s side occasionally has problems filling all 148 of its postseason slots. In women’s basketball, it has not been unheard of for teams to turn down the opportunity to play in the WNIT due to injuries, funding, or simple disappointment in not making the NCAA Tournament. Will the addition of opportunities that come with NCAA funding reduce that practice? Will the increased opportunities help the sport grow or dilute the postseason product? Those are questions that can only be answered in practice.

Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

ncG1vNJzZmiglae1sLvPrKuarKNjwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89orqGZpGKwqa3NoJysZaeeua1506GcZq%2BSnsFurtGipaA%3D