The Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT) is a women's national

college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...

tournament inaugurated in 2024. It is operated in a similar fashion to the men's college

National Invitation Tournament The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) is an annual men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Since 2023, all rounds of the tournament are played at various sites across the country whi ...

(NIT) and is run by the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

(NCAA). The similarly-titled

Women's National Invitation Tournament The Women's National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) is a women's national college basketball tournament. It used to feature both a preseason and postseason version played every year, but the preseason tournament was last held in 2023. It is operate ...

(WNIT) is unaffiliated with the NCAA.

Format

The NCAA announced the creation of the WBIT on July 17, 2023, with the first edition held in 2024. The WBIT supplies an additional 32 funded opportunities for postseason play, providing gender parity to men's college basketball, which has the NCAA-owned NIT. The existing non-NCAA postseason tournaments, the

and

Women's Basketball Invitational The Women's Basketball Invitational (WBI) is a women's college basketball tournament created in 2009 by Sport Tours. The inaugural tournament occurred at the conclusion of the 2009–10 NCAA Division I women's basketball season. Selections for ...

, are "pay-to-play" events where teams must pay a fee to the event sponsor, in addition to travel costs. The "first four out" of the NCAA tournament will be the top four seeds of the WBIT. All regular season champions who were not otherwise invited to the NCAA tournament, and are eligible for NCAA-sponsored postseason play, are automatically selected for the WBIT, similar to the rule in the men's NIT prior to 2024. The top eight schools host first and second-round games. Only the top 16 teams are seeded, with the remaining 16 teams placed as close to their schools as possible. Unlike the NCAA tournament, geographical considerations for each team on a given seed line are considered, so that the No. 2 seeds are placed as close to the No. 1 seeds, and so forth. The higher seeded school will be able to have home court advantage until the final four round, which is held at a designated site. For the first two iterations of the tournament, this site was Hinkle Fieldhouse at

Butler University Butler University is a private university in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1855 and named after founder Ovid Butler, the university has over 60 major academic fields of study within six colleges in the arts, business, communic ...

Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...

, which also hosted the semifinals and final of the

. The 2026 and 2027 semifinals and final will be held at

Wichita State University Wichita State University (WSU) is a public research university in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate degree programs in more than 200 areas of study in ...

Charles Koch Arena Charles Koch Arena is a 10,506-seat multi-purpose arena in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is located on the southeast corner of 21st and Hillside on the campus of Wichita State University in northeast Wichita. The arena is home to the Wic ...

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the List of cities in Kansas, most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397, ...

Postseason WBIT champions

Footnotes

References

External links

* Postseason college basketball competitions in the United States Recurring sporting events established in 2024 College women's basketball competitions in the United States College basketball competitions {{Basketball-competition-stub

Format

Postseason WBIT champions

See also

Footnotes

References

External links