On Selection Sunday, Missouri women's basketball's hopes of dancing in the NCAA Tournament were shattered. The Tigers will not be on the floor for a third consecutive season, while it was touted by ESPN as one of the final four teams to be finalized in the coming weeks.
While coach Robin Pington and her team will likely focus on playing in the women's national invitational tournament, other teams in the Southeast Conference are preparing their own dancing shoes. Eight of the 68 teams are coming from the SEC, with South Carolina being the top seed in the Greensboro area.
Despite falling in Kentucky at the SEC Tournament Championship on March 6, Gamecock still holds one of the four number one spots. They will face either Howard or UIW. Also number 6 seed for Greensboro is Georgia, led by guard-forward duo Ky Morrison and Jenna Staty. Georgia will also play the winner of the play-in game between Dayton and DePaul.
Tennessee and Ole Miss are seeded fourth and seventh, respectively, in the Wichita area. Volunteers will face 13 seeds and winners of the Mid-America Conference in Buffalo. Forward Shakira Austin and her rebel squad will take on Summit League champion and 10th seed South Dakota.
Although it didn't have a stellar season all around, Kentucky ended up in the strongest possible way, receiving an automatic bid that won the SEC tournament. The sixth-seeded Wildcats will play 11-seeded Princeton in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Florida will join the 10 seeding in that region, a surprisingly low seeding for a team that was once the number 15 in the country. After losing to Missouri at the end of the regular season and losing by 10 points to Ole Miss in the quarterfinals of the tournament, the Gators' seeding collapsed. They will play UCF.
Moving north, three-seed LSU and 10-seed Arkansas are the last two teams in the SEC to form the tournament. LSU, similar to Tennessee and Georgia, were a no-brainer going on Sunday. It will clash with Jackson State.
The Razorbacks' defeat eventually put the nail in the Tigers' coffin for a place in the tournament. It was in the air if nine teams from the conference would have made it, and things got more grounded after Missouri lost in overtime to Arkansas 61-52 in the second round. Even though the Tigers were still pitched as a bubble team, they were cut short by their return to March Madness.