Education in the selection, seeding and bracketing of the Division I women’s basketball championship will continue to evolve when 17 current head basketball coaches participate in a mock selection at the NCAA national office Thursday and Friday.

The NCAA Division I women’s basketball staff will conduct the “mock” session, with members of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee on hand to provide assistance.

Both the Division I men’s basketball staff and the women’s staff began conducting mock selections with national print and electronic media members in 2007 in an attempt to clarify the process that the 10-person men’s and women’s basketball committees experience each March when the championship brackets are constructed and announced.

This is the first time the mock committee will consist entirely of coaches and Women’s Basketball Coaches Association administrators.

Those scheduled to attend the event are:

• Geno Auriemma, Connecticut
• Melanie Balcomb, Vanderbilt
• Joanne Boyle, California
• Doug Bruno, DePaul
• Sherri Coale, Oklahoma
• Brian Giorgis, Marist
• Gail Goestenkors, Texas
• Shann Hart, IUPUI
• Sylvia Hatchell, North Carolina
• Rick Insell, Middle Tennessee State
• Wendy Larry, Old Dominion
• Felisha Legette-Jack, Indiana
• Joanne P. McCallie, Duke
• Curt Miller, Bowling Green
• Jeff Mittie, TCU
• Jennifer Rizzotti, Hartford
• Audra Smith, Alabama-Birmingham
• WBCA Chief Executive Officer Beth Bass
• WBCA consultant Betty Jaynes

The mock selection committee will have access to all the tools (“nitty-gritty” reports, game results, RPI calculations) and will follow the same principles and procedures the actual committee follows when it assembles the championship bracket. The exercise will give participants a taste of the nearly week-long process the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee goes through annually.  

The NCAA staff expanded the process last February when four active coaches (Coale, Bruno, Muffet McGraw of Notre Dame and Gary Blair of Texas A&M) attended a mock selection exercise during the season.

Because the exercise was so educational, the WBCA leadership and the NCAA women’s basketball staff collaborated to coordinate the summer session.

“The committee has always felt the value of adding transparency to the process,” said Jane Meyer, incoming chair of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee and senior associate director of athletics at Iowa. 

Meyer said coaches who have attended past mock selections have typically come away with a new perspective on what it means to be a committee member.

“This exercise shows them that selection is based upon an extensive array of factors, and the committee has much data at its disposal as part of the decision-making process,” Meyer said. “The process has many layers, but in the end, it identifies those teams deserving to be included in the field of 64.”

The coaches are in the middle of the July recruiting period and are coming to Indianapolis after being on the road for most of the last 10 days scouting prospects.

“I am so proud of the dedication and commitment that our coaches are putting forth,” said Bass, who will be attending her third mock selection. “They are going to be dog-tired, but they understand this is important.”

Coale, the current president of the WBCA, came away from the February session with a better understanding of the principles and procedures the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee applies when making its selections. She believes her peers will have the same type of experience.

“When the championship bracket comes out – and it usually has some twists or turns – sometimes coaches don’t understand the process and reach conclusions that have no factual basis,” said Coale, who guided Oklahoma to the 2009 Women’s Final Four. “For most of us, we’re involved with the development of our team and controlling those factors that enable us to control our own destiny. We don’t take the time to understand what the committee’s charge is. To fully understand it, you have to go through it.”

This summer’s exercise poses a different challenge since participants already know how the 2008-09 season finished. They’ll be asked to base their discussions on the results from the 2008-09 regular season and 2009 conference tournaments.

Bass believes the coaches will benefit by seeing all the variables that go into the selection, seeding and bracketing of the championship field. She said she has learned something each time she has gone through the process.

Coale said all of the coaches making the effort to be in Indianapolis rather than going back to their respective campuses shows how committed this group is to growing the game.

“We can’t go into this thinking that this mock bracket exercise will immediately change anything in our careers,” Coale said. “But hopefully it paves the way for the future of our sport and helps those who come behind us. Coming to do this mock exercise is a gesture of how valuable the game is for us, and how important it is for us to continue to be caretakers of the game.”