The Missouri Valley Conference women's basketball tournament, currently promoted as Hoops in the Heartland, is an annual

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

tournament A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concen ...

which features the women's basketball teams of each of the

Missouri Valley Conference The Missouri Valley Conference (also called MVC or simply "The Valley") is the fourth-oldest collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. The conference's members are primarily located in the Midwestern Unite ...

member universities. The tournament determines which MVC team receives an automatic bid to the

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 ...

. First held at the end of the 1982–83 basketball season, the tournament was originally conducted by the

Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference The Gateway Collegiate Athletic Conference was a women's-only college athletic conference which operated in the midwestern United States from its inception in 1982 to its absorption by the Missouri Valley Conference in 1992. History The Gateway C ...

, a women's sports conference formed in that school year by six MVC members plus four members of what is now known as the

Summit League The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States, from Minnesota in the east, to the Dakotas, Nebraska and Colorado to the West, and Mis ...

. In 1985, the Gateway took on football as its only men's sport. Following the 1991–92 school year, the MVC absorbed the women's side of the Gateway (which by that time had eight MVC members) and spun off its football side into what is now the

Missouri Valley Football Conference The Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC), formerly the Gateway Football Conference, is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern United States. It participates in the National Collegiate A ...

. The MVC maintains all historic records of Gateway women's sports.

Tournament champions by year

Tournament championships by school

* Schools highlighted in pink are former members of the MVC *Belmont, Indiana State, UIC, and Valparaiso have never won the MVC Tournament.

References

{{NCAA women's college basketball tournament navbox

Tournament champions by year

Tournament championships by school

See also

References