Louisville joins South Carolina, Stanford and NC State in securing No. 1 seeds in NCAA women's basketball tournament

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The Iowa Hawkeyes earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA women's basketball tournament despite losing in the Big Ten tournament title game, while the Louisville Cards remained a No. 1 seed despite losing in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament quarterfinals.

After its loss to Miami in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, Louisville appeared to be at risk of sliding to a 2-seed, as the Bears went on a tear in the Big 12. The Bears fell to Texas in the Big 12 tournament championship game on Sunday, keeping them on the 2-line and bumping the Longhorns up to a No. 2 seed.

The other top seeds were South Carolina and NC State, and they will play in the regionals in North Carolina, Washington and Connecticut. South Carolina is the top seed.

The top seed in the Bridgeport Regional was the University of Connecticut, who played without their reigning national player of the year in the 19 games she missed due to a knee injury. The last time the University of Connecticut did not play in a regional was when they traveled west to Omaha, Nebraska, in the year of the no regional in the Northeast. The women's basketball championship committee revealed their third midseason reveal, and it showed that the University of Connecticut was in the Greensboro Regional.

Kentucky, which upset the top seeds in the SEC tournament, including South Carolina, to win the conference title, is a No. 6 seed in the Big Dance.

The SEC and ACC each have eight representatives in the NCAA tournament, while the Pac-12, Big Ten and Big 12 each have six. The Missouri Valley Conference, American Athletic Conference, West Coast Conference and Atlantic-10 each have two teams.

The cancellation of the 2020 tournament, as well as the 2021 tournament held entirely in the San Antonio area, has led to the return of 16 different schools for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.

The teams that moved out of the top 16 were reshuffling of the seeds. Iowa State, Michigan and LSU fell to the 3-line after losing in their conference tournaments. Indiana's run to the Big Ten tournament final bumped it up to a 3-seed, while Arizona and Maryland's early tournament losses dropped them to 4-seeds.

The First Four games of the women's championship will be held on Wednesday and Thursday at top-16 host sites before the rest of the field takes the floor on Friday and Saturday. The teams that will participate in the First Four this week are among the teams that received at-large bids.

The Final Four will be held in Minneapolis on April 1 and 3.