{"id":598478,"date":"2026-02-12T08:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T08:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/598478\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T08:09:11","slug":"south-carolina-womens-basketball-first-top-16-reveal-date-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/598478\/","title":{"rendered":"South Carolina women’s basketball: First Top 16 Reveal date announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valentine\u2019s Day will be even more dramatic after the NCAA announced the date for this season\u2019s first Top 16 reveal.<\/p>\n

The top 16 seeds will be revealed on College GameDay on Saturday night before the South Carolina-LSU game. South Carolina is expected to be a one seed, while LSU\u2019s seed is less certain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The date of the second top 16 reveal hasn\u2019t been announced, but it is normally in the last week of February. Selection Sunday is on March 15.<\/p>\n

For the last six seasons, the NCAA selection committee has held two top 16 reveals ahead of Selection Sunday (formerly Selection Monday).<\/p>\n

NEW! Message board for South Carolina Women\u2019s Basketball<\/a>! \ud83c\udfc0<\/p>\n

The reveals are considered a snapshot in time as if the season ended today. They are not rankings that the committee builds on for future rankings.<\/p>\n

Teams are seeded on an approximate S-curve, so the committee tries to pair the strongest 1-seed (1st overall) with the weakest 2-seed (8th overall). However, other bracketing rules (conference teams can\u2019t play each other in the first two rounds) prevent a true S-curve.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The selection committee considers 12 criteria: Bad Losses, Common Opponents, Competitive in Losses, Early Performance Versus Late Performance, Head-To-Head, Observable Component, Overall Record, Regional Rankings, Significant Wins, Strength of Schedule, NET, and WAB.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WAB, which stands for Wins Above Bubble, is a new component for the women\u2019s selection committee, but has already been used by the men\u2019s committee. According to the NCAA, WAB \u201cis results-based and goes beyond strength of schedule to show how a team actually did against that schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 GamecocksW newsletter: WBB coverage delivered straight to your inbox<\/a>!<\/p>\n

WAB applies specifically to bubble teams, so it doesn\u2019t mean much for South Carolina. South Carolina has been a one seed for each of the past five tournaments.<\/p>\n

The First Four games will be played on March 18-19. The first round is March 20-21, and the second round is March 22-23. All games are at the sites of the top 16 seeds.<\/p>\n

For the third consecutive season, there are two regional sites. Fort Worth and Sacramento are this year\u2019s hosts. The Sweet 16 is on March 27-28, and the Elite Eight is on March 29-30. The Final Four runs from April 3 to April 5 in Phoenix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valentine\u2019s Day will be even more dramatic after the NCAA announced the date for this season\u2019s first Top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544,465],"class_list":{"0":"post-598478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab","13":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116056645015968785","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}