Postseason NIVC Tournament Overview
The National Invitational Volleyball Championship will be an annual tournament involving 32 of the nation's top women's Division I Volleyball teams. All games, including the semifinals and championship, are hosted by participating schools. Every round is single elimination.
 
Format
The Postseason NIVC features 16 first-round games (potential play in games in each quad based on overall team numbers), followed by 8 second-round games, 4 third-round games, two semifinal games, and the championship. The championship game will be streamed by the host school. The event offers 32 automatic berths, one to each established conference, and 8 to 16 at-large berths. Not all conferences will have an AQ therefore; we will offer additional at-large berths to teams that meet the criteria to receive an invite to the tournament. The NIVC field and bracket is announced late on the evening of the NCAA Tournament selections.

​2024 Postseason NIVC
The tournament is a single-elimination event with all games played at sites of host schools. The NIVC is committed to offering deserved opportunities to women’s Volleyball programs, and the Postseason NIVC featured a full 32-team bracket in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.  The tournament was not held in 2020 due to COVID-19. The NIVC offers teams an opportunity to get in more practices, to experience playoff-atmosphere games, to play in front of passionate fans and to use their NIVC success as a springboard to the next season.

2024 Dates 
The field will be announced after the NCAA selection on Dec. 1, 2024.
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• Selection – Dec. 1 
• Round 1 & Super 16 – Dec. 4-8 (4 team quads - 8 host sites)
• Great 8 – Dec. 9-12 (4 host sites)
• Fab 4 – Dec. 12-14 (2 host sites)
• Championship – Dec. 15-18 (1 host site - on campus) 

Selection and Bracketing Process
The NIVC committee uses three stages in this order to implement the final bracket: 1) Select teams; 2) Group teams according to team strength and geographic location; and 3) Bracket the selected teams.

Selection Day
The field will be announced after the NCAA Selection Show on Dec. 1, 2024. All information will be disseminated via the website at www.womensnivc.com.

Selecting Teams: Automatic Berths
Thirty-two (32) spots in the Postseason NIVC will be offered to the best teams available in each of the nation’s 32 conferences, after the NCAA Tournament committee makes its picks.

1. A team that is offered an automatic berth by the NIVC shall be the team that is a.) the highest-finishing team in its conference’s regular-season standings, and b.) is then not selected for the NCAA Tournament. The team’s overall record is not a criteria. For the automatic qualifying berth, the NIVC believes that a team’s conference record is a more fair comparison among teams within their own conference, and that the conference record should pre-empt overall records among teams from the same conference. The automatic qualifying team is rewarded with the AQ spot for its in-conference play.
2. Should a conference’s automatic qualifier team decline the NIVC invitation, then the conference forfeits its AQ spot and that berth goes into the at-large pool.
3. In the event of a tie among teams under consideration for the NIVC automatic berth, the NIVC will abide by conference bylaws that have been set up specifically to address a tie-breaking situation in that specific conference.
4. In the event of a tie among teams with identical conference records and there are no specific bylaws to address it, the NIVC will recognize the conference tiebreaker, and select the team with the best seed for its conference tournament.
5. Multiple-division conferences receive one NIVC automatic berth. The qualifying process is the same as that for single-division conferences. However, if a conference designates more than one top seed (i.e. a No. 1 seed for each division), then the conference office shall determine, before its conference tournament begins, a seeding order for NIVC purposes.

Selecting Teams: At-large Berths
The remaining team slots in the Postseason NIVC will be filled by the top teams available. Any team from a Division I conference, or a Division I independent team, will be considered. Any team considered for an at-large berth must either have an overall record of .500 or better, or must be top 120 NCAA RPI. Overall record includes conference tournament games.

1. The NIVC committee will utilize the NCAA RPI to select at-large teams.
2. The Rating Percentage Index, commonly known as the RPI, is a quantity used to rank sports teams based upon a team's wins and losses and its strength of schedule. It is one of the sports rating systems by which NCAA volleyball teams are ranked. In its current formulation, the index comprises a team's winning percentage (25%), its opponents' winning percentage (50%), and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents (25%). The opponents' winning percentage and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents both comprise the strength of schedule (SOS). Thus, the SOS accounts for 75% of the RPI calculation and is 2/3 its opponents' winning percentage and 1/3 its opponents' opponents' winning percentage.
3. The NIVC committee will take the NCAA’s RPI ranking as of November 26, highlight all the teams the NCAA has selected then highlight the 32 automatic berths through each conference for the NIVC. They will start with the first school with the highest RPI not highlighted and continue through the list until the remaining spots are filled.

     4.  Factors not taken into consideration at any time during team selection are host bids, location of school, attendance history, NIVC history, ability to host, etc.

Tiered Grouping Procedures
The Process 
After the NIVC committee chooses the 32 teams adhering to the above-mentioned selection process, the teams are grouped into tiers. The system is used to establish teams’ strengths to assist in the bracketing process. 

The committee groups the 32 teams using a combination of tools, including the ranking systems and other criteria listed in the selection process. 
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This is a general placement of what is considered a distribution of the field strength. 

The Bracket Process
Bracket guidelines

1. The NIVC will bracket similarly the NCAA tournament with an emphasis given to geographical pairings.
2. The committee makes every attempt to distribute the top schools evenly across the bracket.
3. First-round pairings are determined initially on team strength (i.e. a top tier team plays a bottom tier team; a middle tier team plays a middle tier team) and then may be adjusted with consideration to school location, conference, and prior meetings among teams, among other factors. See below for details.
4. Teams from the same conference will not meet in the first round or second round if possible,
5. Rematches of regular-season games shall be avoided, if possible, in the first round.
6. Some pairings are dictated by schools’ ability to host. For example, two schools that cannot host will not be paired with each other.
7. Factors can preclude teams from being placed in their natural grouping when it comes to bracketing games. These factors include travel issues, school location, facility availability, lodging constraints, previous games with NIVC opponents, etc.
8. The committee strives to achieve competitive balance within each quadrant of the bracket, as well as tries to limit teams’ travel and missed school days.

​How the host schools are chosen 
The host site for each match is selected by the NIVC committee based on several factors such as fan base, host bids, facility availability, tournament seed, travel constraints, etc. A team's desire or ability to host has absolutely no bearing on that team being chosen for the 32-team field.