AMHERST, N.Y. – After winning their second consecutive East Coast Conference tournament championship, and third in four years, the Daemen University women's basketball team returns to the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Championship for a fourth straight season. The regional tournaments begin later this week across the country, and the full 64-team NCAA tournament bracket was announced late this evening in a
selection show broadcast on NCAA.com.
The
tournament field is broken down into eight regions, consisting of eight teams each. Daemen is one of 23 conference champions to earn an automatic qualifying bid to the tournament. The Division II Women's Basketball Committee selects the remaining 41 at-large bids.
Daemen comes into the East Region as the No. 6 seed and will face the No. 3 seed Jefferson University Rams of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference in a quarterfinal matchup on Friday, March 10. The contest will be held at the Laska Gymnasium on the campus of Assumption University in Worcester, Mass. As the top seed in the East, Assumption will host the entire regional tournament. Additional first round matchups include No. 1 Assumption of the Northeast-10 Conference taking on No. 8 Dominican (NY) of the CACC, No. 4 Le Moyne of the NE-10 taking on No. 5 Bentley of the NE-10, and No. 2 Southern New Hampshire of the NE-10 taking on No. 7 St. Thomas Aquinas of the ECC. As a whole, four teams will represent the NE-10, two teams represent the CACC and two teams represent the ECC in the East Regional.
Game times, ticket and broadcast information for the East Region Championship will be announced later this week.
Daemen comes into their fourth straight regional tournament boasting a 20-4 record. After winning their fourth straight ECC regular season title with a 13-3 record in conference play, the Wildcats went onto win the ECC tournament championship over the weekend at Lumsden Gymnasium. Serving as the No. 1 seed in the tournament, Daemen topped No. 5 seed Staten Island 64-52 in the semifinals to advance to their fourth straight title game. In the championship game on Sunday, the Wildcats put together a big second half to take down No. 2 seed St. Thomas Aquinas in a 66-51 victory. The Wildcats have won 10 straight games heading into the East Region tournament, and over the course of the last 10 victories, have beaten their opponents by an average of 18.9 points per game. The Wildcats are the first team to win four consecutive ECC regular season titles since St. Rose (1997-2000). Daemen was also the first team to repeat as tournament champions since Queens College won back-to-back ECC tournament championships in 2015-16.
Since becoming an official NCAA Division II member in the 2015-16 season, Daemen has brought national attention to Western New York and now return to the "Big Dance" for a fourth straight season. Daemen was set to face Stonehill in a NCAA East Regional quarterfinal matchup on March 13, 2020 before the NCAA Division II Women's Basketball Tournament was cancelled in its entirety due to the start of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Daemen then hosted the 2021 NCAA East Regional in Lumsden Gymnasium and punched their ticket to the Elite Eight held in Columbus, Ohio with wins against Georgian Court (73-54 on March 13) and again Roberts Wesleyan (58-40 on March 15) for a fifth and final meeting in the abbreviated 2020-21 campaign. The Wildcats then saw their season end with a 66-49 loss to the eventual national champion Lubbock Christian on March 23, 2021 but finished with a stellar 14-3 record. Daemen came into the 2022 NCAA Division II Tournament as the No. 8 seed, and after upsetting top-seed Southern New Hampshire in the first round of the East Region, the Wildcats made their way back to the regional championship game. Daemen fell to No. 7 seed Pace in a 67-65 heartbreaker to end the 2021-22 one game shy of advancing to their second straight Elite Eight, and finishing off the season with a 22-5 record.
A full opening-round preview will be posted to
daemenwildcats.com later this week.
Winners of the eight regional tournaments will advance to the Elite Eight which is slated for March 20 & 22 at the St. Joseph Civic Center in St. Joseph, Missouri. The 2023 NCAA Div. II National Championship will be held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX on April 1.
Regional Schedule (all played at Laska Gymnasium, Assumption University, Worcester, Mass.)
Friday, March 10 – First Round games
12 p.m. Game No. 1. – TBA
2:30 p.m. Game No. 2 – TBA
5 p.m. Game No. 3 – TBA
7:30 p.m. Game No. 4 – TBA
Saturday, March 11 – Regional Semifinals
5 p.m. Game No. 5. (Winner Game No. 1 vs. Winner Game No. 2)
7:30 p.m. Game No. 6. (Winner Game No. 3 vs. Winner Game No. 4)
Monday, March 13 – Regional Championship Game
7 p.m. Game No. 7. (Winner Game No. 5 vs. Winner Game No. 6)
Daemen University features the premier NCAA Division II athletics program in the Buffalo-Niagara region, sponsoring 17 intercollegiate teams. For the latest information on Daemen Athletics, follow the Wildcats via social media on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, or sign up to receive customizable news alerts, e-mail newsletters and weekly schedule alerts.
Follow the Daemen women's basketball program on Twitter and Instagram at @DaemenWBB.
