After her team lost to Michigan in the second round of the Big Ten Conference basketball tournament last week, Gophers coach Dawn Plitzuweit said she hoped her team — not in the running for a berth in the NCAA tournament — would find itself in a postseason tournament.
Until this year, that meant the WNIT.
Well, the WNIT is still around, but has been pushed down in the pecking order by the newly-established Women's Basketball Invitational Tournament, a 32-team event created by the NCAA.
The tournament was established so the NCAA — which also runs the men's NIT — could provide the same postseason opportunities to women than it does men.
That means after the NCAA field is announced Sunday night, the 32-team WBIT field will be announced, followed by the Women's NIT, which is a separate entity.
The Gophers (16-15) would be eligible for the tournament. The field is chosen by a panel that includes five former head coaches and three current athletic administrators. First-, second- and quarterfinal games are played at home sites. The semifinals and finals will be played at Hinkle Fieldhouse on the Butler campus in Indianapolis.
Any regular-season champion of a Division I conference that does not make the NCAA field is an automatic qualifier for the WBIT, with the rest of the selections being at-large.
Teams not chosen for the WBIT could end up in the 48-team WNIT field.
