2016 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament |
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2016 Women's Final Four logo
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Season | 2015–16 | ||||
Teams | 64 | ||||
Finals site |
Bankers Life Fieldhouse Indianapolis, Indiana |
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Champions | Connecticut (11th title, 11th title game, 17th Final Four) |
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Runner-up | Syracuse (1st title game, 1st Final Four) |
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Semifinalists |
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Winning coach | Geno Auriemma (11th title) | ||||
MOP | Breanna Stewart Connecticut | ||||
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The 2016 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament was played between March and April 2016, with the Final Four played April 3 & 5. The regional locations were four neutral sites: Bridgeport, Connecticut, Dallas, Lexington, Kentucky, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Final Four was played at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. This was the third time that Indianapolis hosted a Women's Final Four Basketball tournament; the prior times were in 2005 and 2011. Connecticut won their fourth consecutive national championship, defeating Syracuse 82–51.
This was the last Women's Final Four to be played on the then-current Sunday/Tuesday schedule. Starting in 2017, the Final Four will change to a Friday/Sunday schedule, which it was from its inception in 1982 through 1990, then again from 1996 through 2002.
The first two rounds, also referred to as the subregionals will be played at the sites of the top 16 seeds, as was done in 2015.
Regional Semifinals and Finals (Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight)
National Semifinals and Championship (Final Four and Championship)
Princeton became the first Ivy League team to ever receive an at-large bid in either the Division I men's or women's tournament. Notably, this came in the last season in which the Ivy League did not hold a postseason tournament.
Tennessee received a #7 seed, the lowest in program history.
Kentucky had (and earned) the chance to play all of its regional games in its home city. The subregional was held on the Kentucky campus at the women's primary home of Memorial Coliseum, and the regional was held at Rupp Arena, normally home to the Kentucky men's team but also an occasional home for the women's team, in downtown Lexington.