Early reveal spoils selection suspense

Baylor, Notre Dame, Mississippi State and Louisville are the No. 1 seeds in the women’s NCAA Tournament, which was revealed Monday ahead of schedule due to an ESPN error.

Baylor is the No. 1 overall seed, playing in the Greensboro (N.C.) Regional and opening against No. 16 Abilene Christian on Saturday.

The big bracket news was that UConn, ranked No. 2 in the AP poll, slid to a second seed. The last time the Huskies weren’t a No. 1 seed was 2006.

UConn (31-2) is in the Albany Region with Louisville, which won a home game against UConn 78-69 on Jan. 31.

“We did have considerable discussion about UConn, as well as the entire 1-line,” Rhonda Lundin Bennett, the chair of the NCAA women’s basketball committee, said on ESPN.

“We felt that it came down to strength of schedule, strength of conference, as well as how they were playing down the stretch. We really felt that teams that went on to that 1-line were stronger in those categories.”

She added that UConn — which has won 11 national titles under coach Geno Auriemma since 1995 — was the top No. 2 seed. UConn’s other loss this season was to Baylor, which is 31-1.

UConn is looking to advance to the Final Four for the 12th consecutive year.

“I don’t think it matters one way or another,” Auriemma said. “We’ve lost national championships being a No. 1 seed and we’ve won national championships being a 2 or 3 seed if I’m not mistaken.”

Tennessee snuck into the field as an 11th seed — its lowest in school history — but it did maintain its streak of making every NCAA Tournament since

the event began in 1982.

The bracket was mistakenly revealed in graphics on ESPNU before the network’s scheduled selection show.

When viewers shared the information on social media, ESPN moved up its show two hours to 2 p.m.

While many college teams invited fans to join them for what would have been watch parties but became more general celebrations after the brackets were revealed, Oregon, Oregon State, Princeton, Radford and Rice were among the programs that canceled their events Monday. One father of a 9-year-old girl complained online that his

daughter was left “crying” because she had been so excited about “getting autographs and meeting players” from Oregon.

“Thanks for ruining her day,” the father wrote.

“This is a terrible mistake!!!” former Old Dominion and WNBA star Ticha Penecheiro said on Twitter. “The early release of the bracket completely ruins the experience for teams and fans. And airing it 2 hours earlier doesn’t fix it!!!”

The episode reminded some of a similar situation in 2016, when the entire NCAA men’s tournament bracket was leaked online after only half of it had been unveiled on CBS’s Selection Sunday show. At the time, some applauded the unidentified source of the leak for sparing them the trouble of sitting through CBS’s twohour telecast.

In the case of Monday’s error, the NCAA’s network partner was clearly at fault, as women’s pairings began appearing during an ESPNU show centered on the men’s tournament that aired four hours before the women’s selection show was set to begin. At various points during the ESPNU telecast, women’s matchups were appearing on one part of the screen while men’s matchups were shown elsewhere, and images revealing the women’s tournament were posted online.

Towson coach Diane Richardson, whose team is in the NCAA Tournament for the first time, was in the middle of her weekly radio show when she was informed that the bracket had been revealed early.

“I wanted the players to see that and see our name flash on the board and be surprised and happy at the same time,” Richardson said. “That took away from it.”