The 2019 women’s NCAA tournament bracket was supposed to be revealed at 7 p.m. ET Monday night on ESPN. But more than three hours before the scheduled selection show, there was a leak. The culprit?

ESPN.

On an ESPNU re-airing of a Sunday night show breaking down the men’s bracket, the entire women’s field of 64 was listed in rotating eight-team chunks across the side of the screen:

Pictures of the bracket leak





In what can only be described as remarkable, the #NCAAW bracket was just on ESPNU by mistaken. I’ve managed to grab three sections of it if anyone else wants to help fill it out.



Spoiler: UCF & Tennessee are IN pic.twitter.com/xzpKpGpjdT — Blake DuDonis (@BlakeDuDonis) March 18, 2019

#NCAAW bracket (2/2)



They cut off before bottom half showed but in the Albany region:



6 UCLA vs 11 TN

3 MD vs 14 Radford

Sat

7 Rutgers vs 10 Buffalo

2 UConn vs 15 Towson pic.twitter.com/exlOV7Wlba — Blake DuDonis (@BlakeDuDonis) March 18, 2019

Had ESPNU on since I didn't see their bracket show last night. For a good 20 minutes they were revealing the entire women's tournament matchups on the bottom. Someone screwed up. — Tom Kakert (@HawkeyeReport) March 18, 2019

Video of the ESPN gaffe shows sections of the bracket rotating on the side of the screen every 10 or so seconds. Soon enough, social media users had pieced together the full bracket by hand.

ESPN acknowledges leak

A little after 4:30 ET – over an hour after the leak – ESPN and the NCAA all but acknowledged the mistake by announcing that the bracket reveal would be moved up from 7 ET on ESPN to 5 ET on ESPN2:

BREAKING: The NCAA DI Women's Basketball bracket will be officially revealed at 5 PM ET on ESPN2. #ncaaW pic.twitter.com/4O01SwEXKd — NCAA WBB (@ncaawbb) March 18, 2019

Shortly before the start of the rescheduled selection show, ESPN did acknowledge it by releasing the following statement:

“In working with the NCAA to prepare for tonight’s Women’s Selection Special we received the bracket, similar to years past. In the midst of our preparation, the bracket was mistakenly posted on ESPNU. We deeply regret the error and extend our apology to the NCAA and the women’s basketball community. We will conduct a thorough review of our process to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future. We will now broadcast the full bracket at 5 p.m. ET on ESPN2, and the regularly-scheduled show on ESPN at 7 p.m.”

The NCAA followed up with a statement of its own:

Official statement on the early reveal of the 2019 NCAA DI Women's Basketball bracket: #ncaaW pic.twitter.com/kwoQ4Bw0SZ — NCAA WBB (@ncaawbb) March 18, 2019

So the already-revealed bracket was re-revealed at 5 ET, and then re-re-revealed at 7 ET. Here it is in full:

Full NCAA tournament bracket

The bracket leak ruined Selection Monday

The leak, and subsequent adjustments, ruined the entire evening for all involved, in so many ways. Viewing parties were likely cancelled. There will be no raw emotion and tension captured on camera, no live reaction shots of bubble teams finding out they’ve received a bid.

Oregon star Sabrina Ionescu summed up the players’ perspective pretty well:

So @ESPNU is gonna leak the bracket and then proceed to ruin everyone’s selection show party by changing the time. 😂😂😂 Go ducks am I right 🐥 — Sabrina Ionescu (@sabrina_i20) March 18, 2019

Some schools, like Fordham, did their best to maintain the suspense of Selection Monday:

We’re good at keeping secrets (unlike some people 🧐), so our players will be genuinely surprised at 7 PM!



FANS: come out to Rose Hill to join our party, starting at 6:00 💃🏽#PoundTheRock pic.twitter.com/vys8rd9WaR — Fordham WBB (@FordhamWBB) March 18, 2019

But it clearly wasn’t the same.

Biggest bracket storylines

Putting aside the logistics of the leak and focusing on the bracket itself, there were two major newsworthy items: Tennessee is in, and UConn isn’t a No. 1.

The Lady Vols were in danger of missing the NCAA tournament for the first time ... ever. They were one of several teams in contention for the final few at-large spots in the field. And they got one. UCF, Auburn and Indiana got the other three. Arkansas, Ohio and TCU were left out, and are NIT-bound.