New Orleans begins countdown to next month’s Women’s Final Four

NEW ORLEANS – LSU’s magical College Football Playoff championship season ended more than seven weeks ago in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

The SEC Gymnastics Championship will be returning to New Orleans next year and NCAA Men’s Final Four is returning in two years.

The 2024 Super Bowl is also on the horizon for the Crescent City, but the wait for the next major sporting event in New Orleans is much shorter than all of that.

It’s one month and counting.

That’s all the time that’s left until the NCAA Women’s Final Four tips off in the Smoothie King Center.

The NCAA and local hosts the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation, the Allstate Sugar Bowl, Tulane University and the University of New Orleans marked the occasion Tuesday by announcing all the events leading up to the championship.

This will be the fourth time that New Orleans has hosted the women’s semifinals and championship game, breaking a tie with Indianapolis and Tampa Bay as the most frequent host.

The semifinals will be held at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Friday, April 3 and the championship game will be played at 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 5.

Tickets are available starting as low as $37.50 for a single-session ticket and $75 for all sessions. Go to NCAA.com/WBBTickets for details.

A series of free events will take place throughout the city for a few days leading up to the Final Four.

Ancillary events such as TourneyTown at the Morial Convention Center will begin Thursday April 2. The USA Women’s Basketball National Team will make an appearance there. A free concert in Champions Square is set for Saturday evening, April 4.

For information on this and other events, visit NCAA.com/WomensFinalFour.

As for the basketball, the NCAA on Monday gave an indication of the teams from which the Final Four participants are most likely to come.

The NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee picked South Carolina, Baylor, Oregon and Maryland as the No. 1 seeds in the second of two top-16 early reveals.

Baylor, coached by Tickfaw, La., native and former Louisiana Tech star Kim Mulkey, is the defending national champion.

The 64-team field for the NCAA women’s tournament will be released on Monday, March 16 during the ESPN Selection Show at 6 p.m. CST.

The NCAA rankings had Louisville, UConn, Stanford and UCLA as the No. 2 seeds. The No. 3 seeds were Northwestern, NC State, Mississippi State and Gonzaga and the No. 4 seeds were Iowa, Arizona, Oregon State and DePaul.

New Orleans previously hosted the Women’s Final Four in 1991 (in Lakefront Arena), 2004 and 2013.

In 1991, Tennessee defeated Virginia in overtime for the championship, UConn beat Tennessee for the title and in 2013 UConn defeated Louisville.

2020 NCAA DIVISION I WOMEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP IMPORTANT DATES:

March 16 – ESPN Selection Show. ESPN, 6 p.m. CT
March 20-23 – 2020 DI Women’s Basketball Championship 1st and 2nd Rounds
Campus sites of top-16 seeds
March 27-30 – 2020 DI Women’s Basketball Championship Regional Rounds
March 27 and 29 – Dallas (Moody Coliseum) and Greenville, S.C. (Bon Secours Wellness Arena)
March 28 and 30 – Fort Wayne, Ind. (Allen County War Memorial Coliseum) and Portland (Moda Center)
April 3 and 5 – 2020 NCAA Women’s Final Four, Smoothie King Center, New Orleans
April 3 – National semifinal games, 6 p.m. CT, ESPN
April 5 – National championship game, 5 p.m. CT, ESPN