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For the first time in 12 years, the UConn women’s basketball team won’t be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Instead, the Huskies are the second seed in the Albany Regional, with Louisville taking the top seed.
UConn will play CAA champions Towson in the first round. Assuming the Huskies handle business, UConn will play the winner of No. 7 Rutgers and No. 10 Buffalo. As a top-four seed, the Huskies will host the first two rounds of the tournament on-campus at Gampel Pavilion.
After Louisville and UConn, the other top seeds in the Albany Regional are No. 3 Maryland and No. 4 Oregon State. Other notable teams in the bracket are No. 6 UCLA and No. 11 Tennessee, who will play each other in the first round.
If the Huskies were to reach the Final Four, Notre Dame or Stanford would be potential national semifinals matchups.
One other team from the AAC made the tournament as UCF snuck in as a No. 12 seed in the Portland Regional. Overall, UConn played seven NCAA Tournament teams during the regular season and complied a 7-2 record against those teams (the Huskies played UCF three times).
The three other No. 1 seeds are Notre Dame, who is the top overall seed and will play in the Chicago Regional, Mississippi State in the Portland Regional and Baylor in the Greensboro Regional.
Rhonda Lundin Bennett, chair of NCAAW selection committee, on making #UConn a 2 seed:
— TheUConnBlog (@TheUConnBlog) March 18, 2019
"We felt that it came down to strength of schedule, strength of conference..."
The bracket was mistaken revealed on ESPNU around 3:20 p.m. on Monday, which prompted ESPN to move the the entire Selection Show up to 5:00 p.m. The network released a statement on the error:
“In working with the NCAA to prepare for tonight’s Women’s Selection Special we received the bracket, similar to years past. In the midst of our preparation, the bracket was mistakenly posted on ESPNU. We deeply regret the error and extend our apology to the NCAA and the women’s basketball community. We will conduct a thorough review of our process to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. We will now broadcast the full bracket at 5 p.m. ET on ESPN2, and the regularly-scheduled show on ESPN at 7 p.m.”