UConn was awarded the No. 1 overall seed in the women’s NCAA Tournament on Sunday and enters March Madness needing six more victories to complete the seventh undefeated season in school history.
The Huskies (34-0) are looking for their 13th national title and trying to become the first team to repeat as champion since the program won four in a row from 2013-16. UConn is joined by UCLA, Texas and South Carolina as the other No. 1 seeds.
UConn, which is led by stars Sarah Strong and Azzi Fudd, opens the tournament at home against 16th-seeded UTSA and will play in the Fort Worth Regional. If seeds hold, the Huskies could face No. 2 Vanderbilt, which is coached by former UConn great Shea Ralph. This is the 23rd time UConn has earned a No. 1 seed and first since 2021.
UCLA (31-1) was just behind the Huskies as the second overall seed in the tournament. The Bruins have won 25 straight games in dominant fashion after its lone loss against Texas on a neutral court.
“The debate was pretty close the whole time between the two teams,” said NCAA selection committee chair Amanda Braun. “Went to a committee vote, watched a lot of UCLA and UConn — the vote went to UConn. The observable component, the way we watched UConn win throughout the year. UCLA did a lot of winning as well. The committee felt the observable component gave UConn the edge."
UCLA reached the Final Four last year before losing to UConn. Cori Close’s team ran through the Big Ten and has an experienced group led by center Lauren Betts looking to win the school’s first NCAA championship.
The Bruins will try to win the first women’s national championship for the Big Ten Conference since 1999. The Bruins are one of 12 Big Ten teams in the field. That matches the record they set last season for most teams in the tournament. The SEC has 10, the ACC nine and Big 12 eight.
Other tops teams in UCLA’s region are No. 2 LSU, No. 3 Duke and No. 4 Minnesota.
The Longhorns (31-3) earned the third No. 1 seed after winning the SEC Tournament title. They beat South Carolina in two of the three meetings this season. Texas will play in Fort Worth Regional 3. Other top teams in Texas’ region are No. 2 Michigan, No. 3 Louisville and No. 4 West Virginia.
The Gamecocks (31-3) are the No. 1 seed in the Sacramento Regional 4 and have been a No. 1 seed for six consecutive seasons. They will be joined by No. 2 Iowa, No. 3 TCU and No, 4 Oklahoma.
The College of Charleston won the Colonial Athletic Association to make the tournament field for the first time in school history. The Cougars are a 14-seed and are the lone first time entry in the field. Last season, there were six newcomers.
BYU, North Dakota State, Utah and Texas A&M were the first four teams left out of the field.
For the second consecutive year, teams in the women’s tournament will be financially compensated, in a similar fashion to the men’s field, for each round they play. “Units” are what the NCAA calls its tally of wins, automatic qualifiers and at-large bids that determine how much conferences are paid. A unit is money paid to conferences when one of its teams appears in the NCAA Tournament.
This year, the NCAA is giving teams that reach the championship game and the one that wins the title extra units. That extra compensation was added to the overall pool and doesn’t decrease the overall value of the units.
The top 16 seeds in the 68-team field will host first- and second-round games, with the regional rounds being played at two neutral sites for the fourth straight year. Fort Worth, Texas, will host half of the Sweet 16 and Sacramento, California, will host the other eight teams.
The Final Four will be played in Phoenix on April 3 and the championship game is two days later.
For the first time the NCAA revealed the 16 host schools a day early. It gave schools an extra day to sell tickets, broadcast partner ESPN a head start to move its equipment to the locations and the NCAA more time to get its marketing materials to sites.
Tennessee kept its streak alive of reaching every NCAA Tournament since the first one in 1982. The 10th-seeded Lady Vols, who have lost seven consecutive games, only had 16 wins this season, the fewest for an at-large team since Oklahoma also had 16 in 2018. The seed is the lowest for the storied program since Tennessee was an 11-seed in 2019.
AP March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley reacts during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Texas in the final of the Southeastern Conference tournament, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
The team that went undefeated in the regular season, racked up more victories than anyone but Duke and Arizona — and fewer losses than any team at all — is anything but your run-of-the-mill basketball behemoth.
In fact, Miami (Ohio), despite that 31-1 record and maybe because of a little chip that's been placed on its shoulder, is one of those plucky underdogs that makes the NCAA Tournament what it is.
Welcome to March Madness with a twist.
While Duke (32-2) took the overall top seed on Selection Sunday, with Arizona (32-2), Michigan (31-3) and defending champion Florida (26-7) also on the top line, the RedHawks barely scratched their way into the bracket.
They are an 11 seed and have to play a First Four game against SMU on Wednesday. But after all the debate and hand-wringing that came with their single loss last week, which immediately turned them from sure thing into bubble team, they now enjoy the same privilege as the other 67 teams in the field.
They will have a chance to win and advance, with no selection committee, bracketologists or former coaches-turned-TV experts deciding their fate.
“I was very confident," Miami forward Eian Elmer said. "I think it’s hard to leave a team that’s 31-0 in a regular season out. It just wouldn’t look right for the sport, diminishing something like that, something that’s very rarely done.”
After the First Four, the full slate of games begins Thursday and Friday, with the national champion set to be crowned in Indianapolis on April 6.
The chair of the selection committee, Keith Gill, tried to explain how Miami of the lightly regarded Mid-American Conference ended up where it did. The RedHawks, he said, were not the last of the 37 at-large teams slotted into the field.
But, he said, they were ranked last of those 37 teams because once they got in, they were compared against other teams close to them, and things like their 339th-ranked strength of schedule and zero wins (in fact, zero games) against top-caliber, or Quadrant 1 opponents worked against them.
Other factors worked for them, including having the nation's second-ranked scoring offense, along with a “strength of record” in the top 30 and “wins above bubble” in the top 40 (each of those statistics would take a small pamphlet to explain).
“They have some really strong resume metrics that show their accomplishments,” Gill said.
For what it's worth, Miami is an 8 1/2-point underdog against SMU and a 2000-1 longshot to win it all, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.
Unlikely, indeed, but still better odds than the much-cited 9.2 quintillion-1 odds a person has of filling out a perfect bracket.
The favorite to win the national championship, according to BetMGM, is Michigan, which was listed at 13-4 shortly after the bracket came out, just a tad ahead of Duke, which was 10-3.
The Wolverines took a mini-hit in the seedings, dropping a notch to overall No. 3 after an eight-point loss to Purdue in the Big Ten title game. The Boilermakers are a 2 seed instead of a 3 with the win, heading to St. Louis to play tournament first-timer Queens.
The conference title did not do as much for St. John's, which stayed where it's been predicted most of the season — as a No. 5 — even after a 20-point win over UConn for the Big East title.
Last year, St. John's became the sixth team coach Rick Pitino had led to the tournament. This year, the Johnnies go again but they must travel to San Diego to face Northern Iowa in the first round.
“I said, ‘Don’t take it as a negative,’” Pitino said. “I’ve had teams go to a Final Four that first had to go to Portland and then Arizona from Louisville."
Among those left out were San Diego State, Indiana, Oklahoma and Auburn.
The Tigers had 16 losses but the nation's third-best strength of schedule. The snub drew predictable blowback from Bruce Pearl, their former coach and father of their current coach, who was working for CBS and said “they played the toughest schedule in the country and I don’t know if they were rewarded for it.”
Even with Oklahoma and Auburn left out, the Southeastern Conference led the way by placing 10 teams in the field of 68, four short of its record from last year.
The Big Ten followed with nine, the ACC and Big 12 with eight apiece -- an unsurprising result in an era of massive conference expansion and NIL compensation drawing top players to the biggest spenders.
The Gators are the defending champion, trying to repeat their back-to-back titles from 2006-07. Last season, Florida was part of an all-No. 1 Final Four -- the first time that had happened in 17 seasons.
Asked how the NCAA’s seeding principles played a role in moving teams around in the bracket, Gill pointed to the First Four meeting between NC State and Texas the committee would have liked to avoid because it is a rematch of a game they played in the Maui Invitational in November.
He said nothing about placing No. 2 seed Houston in the South, where it could play the regional final in its hometown — normally something the NCAA shies away from. The game could be against Florida in what would be a rematch of last year’s national championship game.
“If we have to run into that issue, there’s worse problems in the world,” Gators coach Todd Golden said earlier this week. But "I would enjoy somebody else in Houston (rather) than Houston.”
AP Sports Writers Mike Fitzpatrick and Joe Reedy contributed.
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Kentucky guard Collin Chandler (5) falls onto Florida forward Alex Condon (21) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the quarterfinal round of the Southeastern Conference tournament, Friday, March 13, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Arizona's Jaden Bradley celebrates after making the game-winning shot at the buzzer to defeat Iowa State during an NCAA college basketball game in the semifinal round of the Big 12 Conference tournament Friday, March 13, 2026, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
