The National College Women’s Bracket was announced on Sunday. The 11 team is set and play in the NCAA Tournament begins Thursday evening.
Ohio State, who lost the WCHA Tournament Championship game to Minnesota, retained their top spot thanks to their body of work over the course of the season and earned the top overall seed.
Yale losing their ECAC semifinal to Clarkson combined with the Gophers WCHA title elevated Minnesota to the second seed.
Colgate earned their third straight ECAC Tournament crown, which helped them take the third overall seed, while Yale ended up fourth.
Those four teams will each host a regional. OSU, Minnesota and Colgate will be host to regional semifinal contests on Thursday evening to determine the teams that will face the hosts in tournament quarterfinal matches on Saturday.
The bracket featured just one change from straight seeding based on the final Pairwise rankings. As a reminder, when the tournament field was expanded to 11 teams in December 2021, a line was added to the tournament field selection criteria that says “first-round conference matchups are avoided, unless it corrupts the integrity of the bracket.”
In this case, the first round game between the 8 and 9 seeds would have had Quinnipiac and Clarkson playing each other. To avoid that, this bracket switched 9 seed Clarkson with 10 seed Penn State.
There are no other changes needed and there isn’t another option for avoiding that conference matchup that fulfills the criteria and does not significantly affect bracket integrity.
So Quinnipiac and Penn State will play each other at 6 PM Eastern on Thursday for the right to face Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday at 5 PM Eastern on Saturday.
That puts Clarkson in the Minnesota region, facing Minnesota Duluth on Thursday at 7 PM Eastern. The winner will play Minnesota Saturday at 3 PM Eastern.
In the final region, Wisconsin will face Long Island University (LIU) at 6 PM Eastern. The winner will play Colgate on Saturday at 3 PM Eastern.
LIU won the NEWHA Tournament title and this is the first time that conference winner receives an autobid into the NCAA Tournament, so it’s a first-ever appearance for both. Penn State is also making its tournament debut.
View the bracket and find a printable version here.
