![]() It's fun to banter back and forth."Ĭommittee members leave the room if their own school comes up in the conversation, while other members do their best to rank schools that might have never played each other before. "It's fun to be in a room with people who have similar interests and want to see women's basketball on the big stage. I feel like our committee was strong in that many of us were student-athletes or coaches," Shields said. "Everyone has a different perspective, and everyone has a different background. When she arrived in San Antonio before the 64-team bracket was finalized, Shields found a makeshift "situation room" with monitors ready for the committee to pull up info on any team in the nation. ![]() Shields is a former college basketball player at Central Florida and an assistant coach at Wichita State, the kind of experience that serves her well as the sports administrator for K-State Women's Basketball.īut when she wasn't working with the Wildcats this season, Shields was doing what college basketball fans across the country do every year, just for dozens of teams, with higher stakes. But it can still be a lot of late nights." "You can watch so many more games that way without watching the timeouts and halftime. "After my first year doing this, I figured out that if you plan ahead and tape the games, you can watch five games in five hours as opposed to five games in 10 hours," she said. But more often than not, she hit record every night and watched games on her own schedule. Living in Kansas, games on either coast generally don't start too late or too early for Shields to get to her couch. Two keys to watching something like 400 hours of college hoops without losing your mind? The central time zone and TiVo. That would be a lot of basketball if Shields had nothing else going on this season.īut as the Deputy AD at K-State, she's also been helping 16 varsity athletic programs in Manhattan navigate the pandemic and the day-to-day challenges that arise in big-time college sports. "I've watched over 200 games this year, and if you don't, you're really not prepared in the selection room." ![]() "I've got four primary conferences that I'm responsible for and then I'm the secondary committee member on three additional conferences," she said. It's a five-year commitment, basically requiring Shields to be as knowledgeable about women's college hoops as anyone in the country. Shields has represented K-State and the Big 12 since 2019. The 10-member committee features a cross section of schools both large and small. All 64 teams are then ranked, 1 to 16, which determines each matchup as they move through the tournament bracket. Here's where Shields comes in: 32 more teams receive "at-large bids" to the tournament, based on the opinion and the decision of a selection committee. There are 32 spots available for the champion of every conference tournament, from schools like Kansas State in the Big 12 to the liberal arts colleges that make up the Patriot League.įor one month, the Utah Valley Wolverines and the UConn Huskies are both six games away from a national title. It's the most egalitarian competition in sports. Every single one, in theory, could qualify for the NCAA Tournament. There are 354 women's college basketball teams that compete at the D1 level. "Until I got really immersed in the work, I had no idea what was ahead of me." "The number of games that we all watch, the hours you spend going through team sheets, all the data on teams," Shields said. But the important thing is, when Iowa tips off against Central Michigan on Sunday, Shields will have helped pick the teams for a tournament that, you know, is actually happening. ![]() This year, Shields is in San Antonio, preparing for a unique one-site tournament played entirely in Texas. That's how her first season as a member of the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament selection committee came to an end. "She said, 'You can go in and someone will help you book your flight home,'" Shields remembers. "They canceled it didn't they?" Shields asked. She took an elevator up to the conference room, walked in and saw the chair of the selection committee shaking her head. About a year ago, K-State Deputy Athletics Director Jill Shields touched down in Indianapolis and headed straight to the hotel where the NCAA Women's Basketball Committee would select the 64 teams for the 2020 tournament.
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