PROVO, Utah — BYU women's basketball has been selected to compete in the first-ever Women's Basketball Invitational Tournament (WBIT) and will face the 4th-seeded Santa Clara Broncos on Thursday, March 21.
"We are really excited to extend our season and play in the first-ever WBIT," said BYU head coach Amber Whiting. "Playing in the postseason is always a goal for our program and we are excited for the opportunity to see how much better we can get in the next three weeks."
BYU's selection marks the 28th postseason appearance in program history and the first trip to the WBIT. The Cougars are 16-23 all-time in the postseason (NCAA & WNIT) and will travel to Santa Clara, California in search of win number 17. Seniors Lauren Gustin and Kaylee Smiler will lead the Cougars into the postseason after finishing their first year in the Big 12 with six wins in what head coach Amber Whiting dubbed "the best conference in the country".
The Cougars concluded the regular season with a record of 16-15 before falling to the Kansas Jayhawks in the second round of the Phillips 66 Big 12 Women's Basketball Championship. During the regular season, BYU notched wins over No. 18 Baylor, all three Big 12 Conference Newcomers (Cincinnati, Houston and UCF), Texas Tech and Wake Forest among others.
The NCAA announced the creation of its new 32-team women's basketball postseason invitational tournament that will be owned and funded by the NCAA upon recommendation from the 2021 Gender Equity Report. The WBIT will provide the opportunity, alongside the NCAA Tournament for 100 total women's basketball programs to compete in the postseason, with 68 making the NCAA Tournament field and 32 being selected to the newly founded WBIT.
The teams selected for the WBIT include the "First Four Out" of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship – as determined by the Division I Women's Basketball Committee – which will receive an automatic bid as the overall top four seeds. Regular season champions of any NCAA Division I conference who are not selected to the NCAA Tournament will also receive automatic bids to the WBIT.
The remainder of the field was filled with at-large selections as determined by the eight-member WBIT selection committee. All games of the WBIT will be broadcast on ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPNU or ESPN+.