The NCAA finally speaks up about the UConn situation.

The NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee, in an effort to bring parity to women’s college basketball, has announced that, effective with the high school class of 2011, it will institute a draft for incoming freshmen who wish to obtain scholarships from Division I teams.

The draft, to be held the last Sunday in September of each year, will have two rounds and the top 50 schools in the final RPI from the previous season will participate. Any player chosen in the draft who does not sign a national letter of intent with the school that drafts her will be ineligible to play Division I basketball for two years.

“We just wanted to do something to make our tournament as exciting as the men’s tournament,” said Jane Meyer of the University of Iowa, the chair of the committee. “Look at their Final Four – they have two five seeds and just a single one, and eight of the teams in the Sweet Sixteen had five seeds or worse. You never have any idea who’s going to win there. The best we could do this year was a four seed, and we have two ones. Some years in our tournament, you might as well give the top eight seeds a bye to the Elite Eight, unless of course one of them is Ohio State. We wanted to fix that.”