Regular-season conference champions that do not also win their league tournaments or earn at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament receive automatic berths in the WNIT. The field has been expanded from 48 to 64 teams for the first time this season.
First-round WNIT games will be played March 17-19. Second-round contests are slated for March 20-23. With a single-elimination format, it takes six victories to win the event. All WNIT games are hosted on campus sites.
The WNIT bracket will be unveiled late on the evening of March 15, a few hours after the NCAA Tournament field is announced.
The 64 schools in the WNIT this year will be comprised of 31 squads that receive automatic bids and 33 that receive at-large berths. Each Division I conference receives an automatic bid. The top-finishing team in the regular-season standings that is not chosen for the NCAA Tournament receives its conference's automatic bid.
The Panthers (23-10) will be making their first national postseason appearance since losing to Colorado in the 1988 NCAA Tournament. Eastern won its first regular-season conference championship this season and advanced to the OVC Tournament title game for the third year in a row.
The Panthers opened their 2009-10 season in the 16-team Preseason WNIT for the first time. Eastern dropped its opening-round game at third-ranked Ohio State, which went on to win the Preseason WNIT as well as the Big Ten Conference regular-season title. The Panthers were placed in the Little Rock, Ark., consolation pod, where they lost to UTEP and defeated Northern Colorado.
