| Gender: | Women's |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Division: | III |
| Teams: | 64 |
| Finalfourarena: | Oosting Gymnasium (semifinals) American Airlines Center (final) |
| Finalfourcity: | Hartford, Connecticut (semifinals) Dallas, Texas (final) |
| Champions: | Transylvania |
| Titlecount: | 1st |
| Runnerup: | Christopher Newport |
| Gamecount: | 1st |
| Semifinal1: | Smith |
| Finalfourcount: | 1st |
| Semifinal2: | Rhode Island College |
| Finalfourcount2: | 1st |
| Coach: | Juli Fulks |
| Coachcount: | 1st |
The 2023 NCAA Division III women's basketball tournament was the tournament hosted by the NCAA to determine the national champion of Division III women's college basketball in the United States for the 2022–23 season. It featured 64 teams.
During the 2022–23 academic year, the NCAA organized many events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX, federal legislation outlawing sex discrimination in higher education. As part of this celebration, the NCAA scheduled the women's basketball championship games of all three of its divisions at the site of the 2023 Division I Final Four.[1] Accordingly, the championship game was held on April 1, 2023 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. The national semifinals were played at Oosting Gymnasium at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut on March 18.
This scheduling also created an unusually long break in the tournament. Normally, the national championship game is played one or two days after the semifinals, but this year's final took place 14 days after the semifinals.[1]
The first and second rounds took place at campus sites from March 3–4, 2023. Teams were sent to one of 16 locations, each hosted by one team from the group of four.
The third and fourth rounds (sectional semifinals and finals) also took place at campus sites from March 10–11, 2023. Teams were sent to the home arena of one of the four teams remaining in their sectional bracket.
The national semifinals and finals were held at predetermined sites: the former at the Oosting Gymnasium at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 18,[2] and the latter at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
The national championship was played on April 1, 2023, in Dallas, which was also the host of the 2023 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament Final Four.
A total of sixty-four bids were available for the tournament: Forty-four automatic bids—awarded to the champions of the 44 NCAA-recognized Division III conference tournaments—and 20 at-large bids.
While this is the first season for the newly established Collegiate Conference of the South, its conference tournament champion will not be eligible for an automatic bid until 2024.[3]
This was also the final year that the Colonial States Athletic Conference and United East Conference receive separate bids; the two conferences will merge ahead of the 2023–24 season, consolidating their bids into one, although the name and legacy of the combined conference have not yet been announced.[4] It was also the final year for the New England Collegiate Conference as an all-sports league. After steady losses of membership in recent years, it had only four members in the 2022–23 season. All four would join other conferences for 2023–24 and beyond.
| At-large Bids | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qualifying school | Record | Conference | |||||
| Babson | 23–5 | NEWMAC | |||||
| Baldwin Wallace | 22–5 | OAC | |||||
| Berea | 26–2 | CCS | |||||
| Chicago | 21–4 | UAA | |||||
| Eastern Connecticut State | 22–5 | Little East | |||||
| Elizabethtown | 22–4 | Landmark | |||||
| Emory | 17–7 | UAA | |||||
| Hardin-Simmons | 23–3 | ASC | |||||
| Ithaca | 23–4 | Liberty | |||||
| Johns Hopkins | 21–6 | Centennial | |||||
| Marietta | 20–7 | OAC | |||||
| Mary Washington | 22–6 | Coast to Coast | |||||
| Stevens Tech | 22–5 | MAC Freedom | |||||
| SUNY New Paltz | 23–4 | SUNYAC | |||||
| Trine | 21–6 | MIAA | |||||
| Trinity (CT) | 21–6 | NESCAC | |||||
| Wartburg | 21–6 | American Rivers | |||||
| Washington St. Louis | 17–8 | UAA | |||||
| Wisconsin–Eau Claire | 20–8 | WIAC | |||||
| Wisconsin–Oshkosh | 19–8 | WIAC | |||||
Source[5]
When sectional hosts were announced on March 5, there was some controversy as three of the four hosts were placed in the state of Massachusetts and all four in the Eastern Time Zone. Most of the controversy came when Tufts, with its 21–6 regular season record, was granted hosting rights over 26–1 Trinity (TX), with top seed Christopher Newport unable to host due to the men's sectional being held at CNU the same weekend. Three teams would have to travel via air regardless of where the pod was placed, an unusual occurrence for a Division III sectional. D3sports.com's Pat Coleman observed "[Division III] Texas teams get screwed so often [''by the NCAA''], in every sport. This was a chance for a makeup call that was sorely missed, and it's an example Texas teams can point to and say, even when the number of flights is equal, we still get screwed."[6] Further analysis by Coleman showed a long-standing NCAA policy to deny sectional hosts in Texas or the larger Region 10 (which also includes the states of Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington). Since the sectional concept was introduced to the men's and women's tournaments in 2000, there had been 84 sectionals in each tournament through the 2023 editions. On the women's side, no Region 10 school had hosted a sectional since 2014, and the previous Region 10 host had done so in 2008, meaning that only one of the past 56 sectionals had been held in Region 10. The perceived snubbing of Region 10 was even greater in the men's tournament; only one sectional had been held in Region 10, with none since 2004.[7]