NCAA Tournament: Bracket Procedure

Updated June 2025

This page will describe the steps the NCAA goes through over the course of the season leading up to selecting at-large teams, seeding, and forming the bracket for the NCAA Tournament.

WOMEN'S SOCCER COMMITTEE

The NCAA Division I Women's Soccer Committee is responsible for selecting teams to fill "at large" positions in the Division I Tournament bracket and for seeding teams within the bracket. The Committee also is responsible for assigning bracket positions to the 64 Tournament participants.  The Committee has 10 members.  The Committee membership consists of:

One member from each of the following conferences:  ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC

Three members from the 5 highest ranked conferences other than the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, and SEC

Three members from the remaining conferences

At least half the Committee members must be athletics administrators.  Members serve four-year terms, with September as the beginning month of each year of service.  A member may be re-appointed to the Committee if there has been at least a three-year gap since expiration of the member's previous term of service.  No person may serve more than two terms on the Committee.

Committee members as of June 2025 are:

Keri Mendoza, Chair, Cal Poly, term expirs August 2025

Duane Bailey, Louisiana Lafayette,  term expires August 2025

Nathan Fry, Harvard, term expires August 2025

Kris Pierce, South Florida, term expires August 2025

Jackie Wallgren, Chair beginning September 2025, Akron, term expires August 2026

Stephanie Ransom, Georgia, term expires August 2027

Ryan Higginbotham, TCU, term expires August 2027

Cathy Liggett, Fairleigh Dickinson, term expiers August 2027

Brandi Stuart, Penn State, term expires August 2028

One position vacant

Note: For the 2025 season, only Wallgren, Ransom, and Higginbotham will have been through an NCAA Tournament decision-making process.

In addition, there is a Regional Advisory Committee for each of the NCAA's five regions.  The RACs advise Committee members from their regions.  The Committee members appoint the RAC members.

GAME SCORE REPORTING SYSTEM

The NCAA statistics group manages the NCAA's game results collection system, including generating reports including RPI ratings and other information the Committee considers in the NCAA Tournament at large selection, seeding, and bracket formation process.  Schools' sports information directors upload their schedules to the NCAA statistics system before the season begins.  Once the season begins, schools enter game statistics, incuding results, into the statistics system daily, in most cases immediately after completion of the games.  The game results then go into the RPI database, resulting in daily updates to the RPI.  The deadline for uploading game results on the last day of the season is 6:00 pm Eastern time.

After the fifth weekend of the season, the NCAA publicly releases RPI reports daily.

COMMITTEE MEETINGS

Once the season is well underway, the Women's Soccer Committee and advisory committees have bi-weekly conference-call meetings. For each bi-weekly period, the advisory committees meet on Wednesday and the Women's Soccer Committee meets the next day, Thursday.

Starting with the 2025 season, it appears that each Regional Advisory Committee will prepare a national ranking of teams.  The RACs will rank a top 15 in their first meetings, a top 30 in their second meetings. and a top 45 in their final meetings before NCAA Tournament selection weekend.  For conferences that do not have teams within a RAC's ranking group, the RAC will identify their top teams and will indicate where the RAC believes those teams fit on a national scale.

Having the RACs rank the top 45 teams nationally in their final meeting before selection weekend makes sense, since the top 45 will include teams that are NCAA Tournament automatic qualifiers as well as teams that are candidates for at large positions.  Assuming the RACs will not all have the same top 45 teams, this will give the Committee a list of perhaps 50 to 55 teams in the RACs' combined list.  The NCAA RPI Top 57 teams historically have included 11 to 17 automatic qualifiers, with an average just above 14, which probably will be more than the number of automatic qualifiers likely to be in the RACs' combined list.  So this would give the Committee a list of perhaps 40 to 45 non-automatic qualifiers from the RACs' combined list as a starting point for at large selections, with the Committee of course being able to add teams if it believes the RACs as a group have missed some.

The likely schedule for the 2025 Women's Soccer Committee and Regional Advisory Committee meetings is as follows:

Wednesday, September 17:  Regional Advisory Committees

Thursday, September 18:  Women's Soccer Committee

Wednesday, October 1:  Regional Advisory Committees

Thursday, October 2:  Women's Soccer Committee

Wednesday, October 15  Regional Advisory Committees

Thursday, October 16:  Women's Soccer Committee

Wednesday, October 29:  Regional Advisory Committees

Thursday, October 30:  Women's Soccer Committee

The schedule does not provide for advisory committee meetings at which members can consider the results of games played during the last week of the season.  The Chairs of the advisory committees, however, have the option of calling meetings to receive additional advice if they wish to do so.

The 2025 schedule for the final bracket formation decisions and the Tournament itself will be as follows:

Saturday/Monday, November 8-10:  Women's Soccer Committee meeting.  This is not a conference call meeting, but rather is an in-person meeting in Indianapolis, site of the NCAA's national office.  Committee members arrive on Friday or Saturday and meet on Saturday through Monday until the bracket formation process is completed and the bracket announced. 

Monday, November 10, 4:30 pm ET, streamed on NCAA.com:  Public announcement of Tournament Bracket

Friday, November 14 to Sunday, November 16:  First round games

Friday, November 21: Second round games

Sunday, November 23: Third round games

Friday, November 28 to Saturday, November 29: Quarter-finals

Friday, December 5: College Cup Semi-Finals, CPKC Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri

Monday, December 8: College Cup Finals, CPKC Stadium, Kansas City, Missouri

RPI PUBLICATION DATES

The NCAA publishes its interim RPI rankings (but not the detailed rating numbers from which it derives the rankings), at the NCAA.com website, starting on the Monday following the fifth weekend of the season.  Thus the first 2025 RPI publication date is Monday, September 15.

In addition, the NCAA simultaneously publishes detailed RPI reports.  These include ratings as well as rankings and various other team data breakdowns.  They are accessible at the NCAA's RPI Archive.

Once the last of the regular season games, including conference tournament games, are completed, the NCAA produces "Selection" reports.  These are the final reports that the Women's Soccer Committee uses in making its at large selection and seeding decisions.  These reports are available at the RPI Archive on Bracket Monday.   In addition, after the NCAA Tournament, the NCAA will issue "Final" reports that include results from the NCAA Tournament games.  In addition, as soon as the regular season (including conference tournaments) is over, final rankings and ratings that should be identical to the "Selection" rankings and ratings also will be available at the College Women's Soccer Schedule webpages and I will publish them at the RPI and Bracketology for DI Women's Soccer Blogspace.

SELECTIONS PRINCIPLES AND PROCEDURES

There are written Selections Principles and Procedures that govern the Committee's seed, at large selection, and other bracket formation process during the final weekend of the season.  The Principles and Procedures include rigorous rules that make sure Committee members don't participate in and are not present for discussions about teams for which they have conflicts of interest and also don't vote for those teams when votes are required.  The Principles and Procedures also outline the step-by-step process the Committee goes through to arrive at its final decisions.  The Principles and Procedures for Division I women's soccer are not available on-line.  In the meantime, however, the Principles and Procedures for women's basketball are available as an appendix to their 2020 Pre-Championship Manual.  Some of their step-by-step process is different than for women's soccer, but the rules for preventing conflicts of interest are the same.  For those interested, I've attached the 2020 women's basketball Principles and Procedures at the bottom of this page.  Simply double click on the icon to open up the document.

In my opinion, after carefully reviewing the Committee's decisions each year since 2007 and comparing them to the applicable criteria, for at large selections in particular, the Committee works very hard to use only the applicable criteria and to apply them fairly.  The Committee once in a while has made a decision with which I disagree, but in almost every case I can find a legitimate criterion-based reason for the decision.  So if the Committee has made a decision with which you don't agree, it's very unlikely it's because of Committee bias or serious error.  Rather, it's most likely because the Committee, after reviewing the data and applying the criteria, simply has reached a different conclusion than you.