NCAA Creates Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament
The NCAA has announced the creation of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament, a 32-team postseason tournament starting in 2024 which will be owned and funded by the NCAA.
The NCAA released branding for the tournament, which highlights orange in alignment with other NCAA women’s basketball branding, including the March Madness logo. The WBIT logo also will feature blue to tie in to the NCAA’s primary branding. Later this summer, the NCAA will identify a selection committee of women’s basketball stakeholders and NCAA members to administer the tournament.
“Women’s basketball is at an all-time high with records being set for national championship and Final Four viewership and the tournament was the most viewed since 2009,” said Jamie Boggs, chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee and vice president of athletics for Grand Canyon. “This tournament will create an additional NCAA-funded postseason opportunity for women’s basketball, and it comes at a time when we are seeing tremendous growth in popularity for women’s basketball.”
The WBIT’s official announcement was teased last week when the women’s basketball committee announced on Friday that expansion of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament will not be done imminently. With the addition of the WBIT, 100 postseason NCAA-funded opportunities will be available for Division I women’s basketball teams, equal to that of men’s basketball through its two events (the 68-team championship and 32-team National Invitation Tournament). Details about the tournament’s format including the selection process, bracketing principles and host sites will be released later.
