The Southern women's basketball team learned its path in the 2026 NCAA Tournament on Sunday.
The No. 16 seed Jaguars will play a First Four game against fellow No. 16 seed Samford, champions of the Southern Conference Tournament. The game is part of the NCAA Region 4, and it will be played at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, South Carolina, at 6 p.m. Thursday on ESPN2.
The winner of the game will advance to face top-seeded South Carolina on Saturday.
The NCAA Tournament appearance is the eighth for Southern (19-13) and marks the first time it has made the tournament in consecutive seasons. Last season, the Jaguars won their First Four game 68-56 over UC-San Diego before losing 84-46 to No. 1 seed UCLA.
Southern's resume was good enough for the Jaguars to have hopes they would be rated higher than a First Four seedin. The Jaguars defeated Power Four schools Arizona and Houston on the road during its pre-conference schedule, but neither of them earned NCAA berths.
"It really doesn't matter," Southern coach Carlos Funchess said. "To me, it's just an honor to be in the NCAA Tournament. The kids are going to have a great time โ we're going to make sure they do โ and we're going to go out and play as hard as we can."
Southern played its way into the NCAA Tournament by winning three games in three days last weekend at the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament. The Jaguars were seeded fourth after going 12-6 during the regular season, but they played like champions in the tournament.
The key moment came in the semifinals, when Jocelyn Tate's last-second shot lifted Southern to a 51-49 semifinal win over top seed Alabama A&M. The Jaguars overwhelmed Alabama State 73-56 in the championship game.
"The big thing was just getting our team chemistry going," Funchess said. "I knew we had the talent to win it all. It was all about getting the team to come together at the right time, especially in the tournament, and winning three games. I never doubted our talent."
Coming together meant overcoming a mental block at the free-throw line. The Jaguars ended the regular season with close road losses at Alabama State and Alabama A&M, when they shot a combined 40% from the free-throw line.
Samford (16-18) finished sixth in the Southern Conference regular season. The Bulldogs defeated the conference's top three teams โ Wofford, East Tennessee State and Chattanooga โ on their way to the tournament title.