With the recent introduction of the new WBIT tournament and the changes being made to the WNIT tournament, the chances of Cal making the upcoming postseason has just improved (slightly).
In summary:
1. The NCAA has just announced that it is sponsoring the new postseason WBIT 32-team tournament, a second-tier tournament for teams that don't make the regular NCAA tournament. "Sponsoring" means the NCAA will pay for the tournament, theoretically a big improvement over teams having to essentially pay their own way into the WNIT.
2. In response, the WNIT announced that they will carry on but with a smaller 48-team field (down from 64).
3. The 8-team WBI tournament has not made any announcement about continuing, but it's been many years since a power conference team has been desperate enough to play in this tournament so realistically this has not and will not be a postseason avenue for Cal.
In other words, for teams like Cal the entire postseason field has just been expanded by a net total of 16 slots. This would have made no difference in Charmin's first four seasons but if you are hopeful about the upcoming season, the margin of error for making the postseason has just increased a bit. Neither the WBIT nor the WNIT have announced their new selection criteria but it seems very possible that one or both will not require a .500 record, yet another increase in the margin of error.
As a practical matter this may only result in an increase of maybe one additional Pac-12 team making the postseason, but that may be all the help Cal needs. And of course hope springs eternal that with the influx of solid additions from the transfer portal, Cal can make all these developments irrelevant and simply play their way into the NCAA tournament (the real one with 68 teams).
In summary:
1. The NCAA has just announced that it is sponsoring the new postseason WBIT 32-team tournament, a second-tier tournament for teams that don't make the regular NCAA tournament. "Sponsoring" means the NCAA will pay for the tournament, theoretically a big improvement over teams having to essentially pay their own way into the WNIT.
2. In response, the WNIT announced that they will carry on but with a smaller 48-team field (down from 64).
3. The 8-team WBI tournament has not made any announcement about continuing, but it's been many years since a power conference team has been desperate enough to play in this tournament so realistically this has not and will not be a postseason avenue for Cal.
In other words, for teams like Cal the entire postseason field has just been expanded by a net total of 16 slots. This would have made no difference in Charmin's first four seasons but if you are hopeful about the upcoming season, the margin of error for making the postseason has just increased a bit. Neither the WBIT nor the WNIT have announced their new selection criteria but it seems very possible that one or both will not require a .500 record, yet another increase in the margin of error.
As a practical matter this may only result in an increase of maybe one additional Pac-12 team making the postseason, but that may be all the help Cal needs. And of course hope springs eternal that with the influx of solid additions from the transfer portal, Cal can make all these developments irrelevant and simply play their way into the NCAA tournament (the real one with 68 teams).