The 2020 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament was scheduled to be played in March and April 2020, with the Final Four played Friday, April 3 and Sunday, April 5 to determine the champion of the

2019–20 NCAA Division I women's basketball season The 2019–20 NCAA Division I women's basketball season began in November 2019 and concluded prematurely on March 12, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2020 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament was scheduled to end at Smoothie Ki ...

. The Final Four was planned to be played at the

Smoothie King Center Smoothie King Center (locally referred to as SKC) is a multi-purpose list of indoor arenas, indoor arena in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is located in the Central Business District, New Orleans, Central Business District, adjacent to the Caesars ...

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, with the

University of New Orleans The University of New Orleans (UNO) is a Public university, public research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. First opened in 1958 as Louisiana State University in New Orleans, it is the largest public university and one of t ...

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

and the

Sun Belt Conference The Sun Belt Conference (SBC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference that has been affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA's NCAA Division I, Division I since 1976. Originally a non-football confe ...

serving as hosts. This is the fourth time that New Orleans has been selected as a women's Final Four location (previously, in 1991, 2004, and 2013) and third time at the Smoothie King Center (previously named New Orleans Arena); the 1991 Final Four was contested at the

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had planned to nationally televise all 63 games of the women's tournament for the first time ever. However, on March 12, the NCAA announced that this tournament was canceled due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. It was the first time the tournament had been canceled since its creation in

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Tournament procedure

Pending any changes to the format, a total of 64 teams will enter the 2020 tournament. 32 automatic bids shall be awarded to each program that wins their conference's tournament. The remaining 32 bids are "at-large", with selections extended by the NCAA Selection Committee. The tournament is split into four regional tournaments, and each regional has teams seeded from 1 to 16, with the committee ostensibly making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The top-seeded team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, etc. (meaning where the two seeds add up to 17, that team will be assigned to play another). The selection committee will also seed the entire field from 1 to 64.

2020 NCAA tournament schedule and venues

The first two rounds, also referred to as the subregionals, were to be played at the sites of the top 16 seeds, as was done from 1995 to 2004 and since 2016. Regional semifinals and finals (Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight) * March 27–30 **Dallas regional,

Moody Coliseum Moody Coliseum is a 7,000-seat multi-purpose arena in University Park, Texas (an inner suburb of Dallas). The arena opened in 1956. It is home to the Southern Methodist University Mustangs basketball teams and volleyball team. It was also home ...

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

(Host: SMU) ** Fort Wayne regional,

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Fort Wayne, Indiana Fort Wayne is a city in Allen County, Indiana, United States, and its county seat. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is west of the Ohio border and south of the Michigan border. The city's population was 263,886 at the 2020 census ...

(Host: Purdue Fort Wayne) ** Greenville regional,

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(Host:

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) ** Portland regional,

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(Host:

Oregon State Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant research university in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate degree programs and a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees through all 11 of the universit ...

) National semifinals and championship (Final Four and championship) * April 3 and April 5 **

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

(Hosts:

, and

)

Coronavirus impact

On March 11, 2020, the NCAA announced that both men's and women's NCAA Tournaments would take place without fans due to the

COVID-19 pandemic in the United States On December 31, 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The first American case was reported on January 20, and United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health and Human Services Secreta ...

. This was followed up, on March 12, by an announcement cancelling the tournaments.

Subregionals tournament and automatic qualifiers

Automatic qualifiers

The following teams had automatically qualified for the 2020 NCAA field by virtue of winning their conference's tournament. All conference tournaments that had not been completed were cancelled, the majority of which without naming an automatic qualifier. :''Teams marked with a † received automatic bids after their conference tournaments were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.'' ;Notes

References

{{2019–20 NCAA Division I championships navbox NCAA tournament NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament

NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament The NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament, sometimes referred to as Women's March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 women's college basketball teams from the Div ...