The Northeast Conference women's basketball tournament is the conference championship tournament in women's basketball for the

Northeast Conference The Northeast Conference (NEC) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Teams in the NEC compete in Division I for all sports; football competes in the Division I Foo ...

. It is a single-elimination tournament that in its most recent 2024 edition involved 8 of the 9 then-current league schools, and seeding is based on regular-season records with head-to-head match-up as a tie-breaker. While the NEC lost two members after the 2023–24 season, with Merrimack and

Sacred Heart The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus () is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus Christ is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devotion to Christ is p ...

leaving for the

Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference The Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC, ) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I. Its current 13 full members are located in five Northeastern states: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachuse ...

, it gained two members at the same time with the impending addition of Chicago State and Mercyhurst. The tournament has been held since 1986, although the winner has only received the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA women's basketball tournament since

1994 The year 1994 was designated as the " International Year of the Family" and the "International Year of Sport and the Olympic Ideal" by the United Nations. In the Line Islands and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati, 1994 had only 364 days, omitti ...

. Between the 1987 and 1988, when the NEC was still called the ECAC Metro Conference, the tournament was known as the ECAC Metro Conference women's basketball tournament. The highest seeds face off against the corresponding lowest seeds, with the two remaining teams facing off in the Finals to determine the champion. Saint Francis has the most championships with 12. The next three schools in this category— Robert Morris (8), Mount St. Mary's, and Sacred Heart (5 each)—left the NEC between 2020 and 2024. No other program that will be an NEC member in the 2024–25 season has more than two.

History of the tournament final

Champions

* Before the 2019–20 season, each of

Long Island University Long Island University (LIU) is a private university in Brooklyn and Brookville, New York, United States. The university enrolls over 16,000 students and offers over 500 academic programs at its main campuses, LIU Brooklyn and LIU Post on Long I ...

's two main campuses (

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

and

Post Post, POST, or posting may refer to: Postal services * Mail, the postal system, especially in Commonwealth of Nations countries **An Post, the Irish national postal service **Canada Post, Canadian postal service **Deutsche Post, German postal s ...

) operated separate athletic programs, with only the Brooklyn campus (most recently branded athletically as

LIU Brooklyn LIU Brooklyn is a private university in Brooklyn, New York. It is the original unit and first of two main campuses of the private Long Island University system. Campus LIU Brooklyn is located at the intersection of Flatbush and DeKalb Aven ...

) being an NEC member. The merged LIU program inherited Brooklyn's NEC and Division I memberships, and also inherited the athletic history of the Brooklyn campus in all sports sponsored by that campus before the athletic merger. * Central Connecticut, Le Moyne, and Stonehill have not yet won an NEC tournament. Chicago State and Mercyhurst will play their first NEC seasons in 2024–25. * Bryant, Loyola Maryland, Marist, Merrimack, Rider, and UMBC never won the tournament as NEC members. * Schools highlighted in pink are former members of the NEC as of the next 2024–25 season.

References

{{NCAA women's college basketball tournament navbox

History of the tournament final

Champions

See also

References