West Virginia guard Sydney Shaw (5) during an NCAA college basketball game on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, in Lawrence, Kan. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)

MORGANTOWN — The NCAA women’s basketball tournament is heading back to Morgantown. The official word came down Saturday, as announced on ESPN.

No. 12 West Virginia (27-6) is one of the 16 regional hosts for the opening two rounds of the tournament that begins in full on Friday. The Mountaineers, likely a No. 4 seed, will find out at 8 p.m. Sunday during the selection show which team they will face in the first round and when.

“No. 1, I want it for the state, I want it for the community and I want it for the program, for college women’s basketball, because I think it will be an electric environment for the other teams coming in to play and, obviously, for our team,” WVU head coach Mark Kellogg said earlier in the week.

The last time the WVU women’s program was in this position, Rosemary Kosiorek was just putting the Mountaineers on the national radar with 20- and 30-point games one after the other back in 1992.

The NCAA tournament field was just 48 teams back then. WVU received a first-round bye and then hosted Clemson in the second round.

It’s been a 34-year climb since to get back to that spot, a journey that saw former coach Mike Carey first bring the program back to national relevance. In 2013-14, Carey guided the Mountaineers to as high as No. 5 in the country and led WVU to its only 30-win season. The NCAA held first-and second-round games at predetermined sites that season. The practice of moving the early games to on-campus sites didn’t begin until 2015.

Since then, WVU has been close to hosting, but was never quite able to build enough momentum until this season.

WVU went 4-3 against AP Top 25 opponents this season, with all four wins coming against teams who were ranked in the top 15 at the time. It survived a semifinal scare against Colorado in the Big 12 tournament and then went out and knocked off defending champ TCU, 62-53, in the finals.

At last, WVU had joined the ranks of programs such as UConn, South Carolina and UCLA as teams who will only have to travel across town to play in the NCAA tournament, as opposed to crossing states or time zones.

“I don’t want to overdo it and make it seem like there’s so much pressure, that we have one chance and that it may or may not happen again in history, but I understand it,” Kellogg said. “I know this is big and think it will be a magical moment.”

How magical? That’s when Kellogg’s eyes began to light up a little bit. In his three seasons at West Virginia, the program continued to take steps to reach this point, as well as continuing to build enthusiasm from around the state.

The Mountaineers set a season attendance record last season, averaging 4,147 fans per home game. They fell just short of that this season, averaging 3,962.

To host a NCAA tournament, Kellogg’s hopes are to create an atmosphere in the Hope Coliseum like never before.

“I’m interested to see how many show up,” Kellogg said. “Will there be 6,000 to 8,000; 10,000 to 12,000? 14,000? I think the place is going to be packed, but I don’t know that. I just feel like, when you see a football weekend or when you see a men’s game; we’ve said that we want people in the upper bowl for the regular season.

“I want to challenge everybody. Come on, now let’s go Mountaineer fans. We talk about being Mountaineer fans and that we have so much support, we know we worked really hard to try and get this and if we do, it is program defining, athletic department defining, this is women’s basketball defining. It’s all those things. We’re growing a brand, we’re growing women’s basketball, these kids have earned the right for us, so let’s take advantage of it.”