In a historic vote Wednesday at the NCAA convention in Nashville, the organization approved a plan to pay women's basketball teams for making the NCAA Tournament. Men's basketball teams have been reaping the benefits of the same revenue sharing plan for many years.

South Carolina Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley only needed one word to convey her sentiment on the NCAA approving payment for women's basketball tournament teams.

Beginning with the 2025 NCAA Tournament, women’s college basketball will finally receive financial “units,” just as the men’s teams have for years. Units are multi-million dollar payments the NCAA awards to conferences based on the number of games a given team plays in the March Madness tournament.

The organization approved “performance units” for women’s teams participating in March Madness after years of only paying men’s programs.

Women’s basketball teams finally will be paid for playing games in the NCAA Tournament each March just like the men have for years under a plan approved Wednesday at the NCAA convention.

That reduced the number of SEC teams in the top quarter of the bracket to six. Auburn and Tennessee are still Nos. 1-2 overall and are joined in the top 16 by the Crimson Tide, Wildcats, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.

The NCAA announced Wednesday that it has created a $15 million women's basketball fund to reward conferences for their teams making and advancing in the

Now, so-called performance units, which represent revenue, will be given to women's teams playing in the tournament. A women’s basketball team that reaches the Final Four could bring its conference roughly $1.26 million over the next three years in financial performance rewards.

Women’s basketball teams will be paid for playing games in the NCAA Tournament each March just like the men have for years under a plan approved Wednesday at the NCAA convention