Arch Madness Coming to St. Louis for Women’s Basketball, Too
(ST. LOUIS) — The Missouri Valley Conference made it official Monday, and while it wasn’t exactly a secret, the announcement still carries some real significance for basketball fans across the league. The MVC unveiled a new postseason tournament format that will apply universally to both men’s and women’s programs — a 10-team field that grants first-round byes to the top two seeds and, yes, leaves the last-place finisher at home when the bracket is set.
That last part has ruffled some feathers.
There’s a contingent of Valley faithful who genuinely believe every team deserves a seat at the postseason table, no matter how the regular season went. With respect, that’s a tough argument to make with a straight face. Nobody wants the conference’s worst team punching a ticket to the NCAA Tournament on the strength of a few hot days in St. Louis. A Cinderella story is compelling when a scrappy mid-tier squad catches fire. It’s a lot less charming when the glass slipper belongs to a program that spent the winter losing by 20. The conference’s decision-makers made the right call.
But the headline here — the genuinely exciting development — is what this format means for women’s basketball.
For years, the MVC Women’s Tournament has been held the weekend after Arch Madness wrapped up, in a separate city that didn’t draw the same crowd or the same buzz. The math for fans was brutal: make the trip to St. Louis for the men’s tournament, come home, then turn right around and hit the road again for the women’s bracket — possibly in some corner of the Midwest buried under a late-season snowstorm. For most working fans, that equation doesn’t balance. Most folks can only pick one tournament to attend.
No more.
Beginning with the new format, both tournaments will share the same week, the same city, and the same arena. St. Louis, which has hosted Arch Madness and made it one of the best mid-major events on the college basketball calendar, will now bring that same energy to the women’s game. One trip. One hotel. One week of back-to-back sessions featuring the best basketball the Missouri Valley has to offer — men’s and women’s alike.
This is a genuine win on multiple fronts. Student-athletes on the women’s side get a bigger stage in a proven tournament city. Fans who’ve had to choose between the two events now don’t have to. And the MVC presents a unified, professional postseason product that raises the profile of the entire conference.
It’s the kind of structural change that’s easy to overlook in the dawn of summer, but the people who follow Valley basketball closely will feel the difference immediately — and so will the players.
