If there were few surprises around which teams made the field of 68 Sunday, the decision to include them – and especially where to place them – was not easy to come by.
NCAA Women’s Basketball Committee Chair Lisa Peterson said the growth of the game meant she and her colleagues had intense discussions leading up to seeding and placement of teams for the NCAA Tournament, which tips off Wednesday.
“This is my fourth year on the committee, and I’ve never been in a room that was so highly-debated,” Peterson said. “We went back and forth and revisited all of the teams that we put in the bracket…..There’s so much parity happening. And it makes it really exciting for the game.”
Peterson said the committee spent a lot of time on making sure each seed pairing would play out fairly, all the way to the winner of each regional.
“We also spent a lot of time on the last four teams in,” she said. “It was something that was debated over a couple of days, as we finished watching the rest of the tournaments play out.”
Undefeated South Carolina is the No. 1 seed in Albany regional 1, while Notre Dame is No. 2, Oregon State No. 3, and Indiana No. 4. The Hoosiers’ matchup with 13th-seeded Fairfield, who has lost only one game this season, could be contentious, as could…
