Bruins to Host WBIT First Round Matchup with Middle Tennessee Thursday Night

INDIANAPOLIS – After reaching its eighth conference tournament championship game in 10 seasons, the Belmont University women's basketball team has received an at-large bid to the 2025 Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT). The Bruins have been selected as the No. 3 seed in the upper right quadrant of the WBIT bracket and will host familiar mid-state foe Middle Tennessee in the first round Thursday evening.
 
Tipoff from the Curb Event Center in the Music City is set for 6:30 p.m.
 
Belmont will make its second consecutive WBIT appearance after also earning an at-large bid last March in the inaugural year of the NCAA postseason tournament.
 
The Bruins have earned a national postseason bid in 12 of 13 seasons dating back to Belmont's 2012-13 campaign. Reaching six of the previous eight NCAA Tournaments, the Bruins participated in the 2023 and 2014 WNIT and competed in the 2013 Women's Basketball Invitational (WBI).
 
Last season, Belmont won its third national postseason game in four years with a 77-59 road victory at Ball State in the first-ever WBIT game. The Bruins also faced Ball State in the opening round of the 2023 WNIT in Muncie, Indiana.
 
Belmont won back-to-back NCAA Tournament First Round games in 2022 (Oregon - Knoxville, Tennessee) and 2021 (Gonzaga - San Marcos, Texas).
 
Thursday will be the first-ever national postseason game the Bruins have hosted in their NCAA era.
 
After its first-round win over the Cardinals last year, Belmont traveled to top-seeded Penn State for the WBIT second round.
 
The Bruins hosted the Blue Raiders in non-conference play on Dec. 7 and earned a 65-52 triumph behind junior guard Emily La Chapell's career-high 26 points and senior forward Kendal Cheesman's 6-for-11 marksmanship from beyond the arc. Thursday night will be the 36th all-time meeting between the two programs with Middle Tennessee holding a 19-16 lead in the series. Belmont is 5-4 against the Blue Raiders since joining the Division I ranks and eighth-year head coach Bart Brooks is 5-1 versus Middle Tennessee.
 
Playing the fourth-most difficult non-conference schedule in the nation, the Bruins' early December win over the Blue Raiders was Belmont's best non-conference victory. On selection Sunday, Middle Tennessee held an NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking of No. 53. The Bruins are ranked No. 60 in the NET.
 
Belmont (22-12) went 15-5 in Missouri Valley Conference play and earned the No. 3 seed for the 2025 Credit Union 1 MVC Tournament in Evansville, Indiana, where the Bruins reached the championship game before bowing out to top-seeded regular season co-champion Murray State Sunday afternoon. In 13 of the last 14 seasons, including each of the last 10, Belmont has posted a top-three conference finish.
 
The Bruins are one of only eight teams in the country to have won 20-plus games for 10-straight seasons – UConn, South Carolina, Baylor, Iowa, NC State, South Dakota State and Florida Gulf Coast are the others.
 
The Blue Raiders (26-8) won their third-straight Conference USA regular season championship and fourth in the last five seasons but fell to Liberty in the CUSA Tournament title game Saturday. Middle Tennessee went 16-2 in CUSA action.

The second round of the WBIT will be held on Sunday, March 23 and the quarterfinals next Thursday, March 27. The national semifinals will take place at historic Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis on Monday, March 31. The WBIT will conclude with the championship game on Wednesday, April 2.
 
The WBIT committee seeded only the top half of the 32-team field. The remaining 16 teams were placed into the bracket by the WBIT committee as close to their area of natural interest as possible.
 
The MVC leads all conferences with four at-large selections. Missouri State (25-8) and Drake (22-11) will also host first-round games, while Northern Iowa (17-16) visits Florida in the opening round of the WBIT.
 
The winner of second-seeded Arizona (19-13) and Northern Arizona (26-7) would be Belmont's second-round opponent in the upper right quadrant of the bracket.
 
Preliminary rounds of the WBIT will be broadcast on ESPN+, while the semifinals will be on ESPNU and the championship game on ESPN2.
 
Additional WBIT information can be found at NCAA.com/WBIT.

How to Follow
Follow Belmont women's basketball on social media - @BelmontWBB on X, formerly Twitter, @belmontwbb on Instagram and Belmont Women's Basketball on Facebook - for complete coverage of the Bruins. Stay up to date with all of Belmont's athletic programs via the official app of the Belmont Bruins, available both in the Apple App Store and on Google Play.