Selection Sunday is one of the most important dates in sports. Here’s more info on where and when to watch for both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments.
There might not be a more stressful day for a college basketball fan than “Selection Sunday”, where the fate of your team (if you’re on the bubble) is in the fate of a dozen men and women on a committee. Someone has to end up snubbed and there are always interesting seeds and selections for certain teams.
The day starts at noon, with 5-6 respective conference tournaments on the men’s and women’s side to find out the final autobids for the Big Dances. And usually, at 6:00 pm ET, the brackets on the men’s side are announced.
Selection Sunday date and time for men
Officially, the time hasn’t been released but barring an unforeseen announcement, the Selection Show will be on CBS, at 6:00 pm ET on March 12th. It’ll take about 20-25 minutes for all 68 teams to be shown and for the brackets to be fully out.
New format for the women’s Selection Show
In the past, the Selection Show for the Women’s NCAA Tournament has always been the next day on ESPN around 8:00 pm ET. This time around, it’ll be on the same day as the men’s on March 12th. The time will be the same at 8:00 pm ET., which means that fans of teams on each side will know the outcome by the end of Sunday night.
Personally, I think it’s a good move to have it all on Sunday to allow the discussion and bracket speculation to all occur on Monday, the lone day when there’s no news or games before what’ll be a sprint of postseason games on both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournament sides.
March 12th is just a little over a month away but time tends to fly in February for college basketball fans. If you’re a fan of a team on the bubble it’ll be an agonizing day but we wouldn’t have it any other way.