"think they would claim the change from something that costs you money vs. something you will earn money from offsets the reduction in number of teams"
I'd love to watch NCAA officials make this claim to the basketball players and fans who will no longer get to engage in postseason WBB. While you may be right I would guess there's no one with the kind of courage in the NCAA to publicly make this kind of inane and insulting claim to the basketball community. While the NCAA is a very effective monopolist the officials who comprise that organization lack any semblance of courage or morality.
I suspect we would agree that the NCAA is pursuing their efforts to monopolize the collegiate athletic experience.
We would further, I suspect, agree that the monopolist benefits their organization in this case the NCAA and neither the consumer (fans) nor the employees(players) in that market. After all this monopolist opposed NIL, transfer and other compensation to athletes resulting in the current chaos.
I'm not sure there's a conundrum as those athletes who in the current WNIT world get to perform in the postseason and fans who have the opportunity to enjoy this performance will lose these opportunities after the elimination of the WNIT by the NCAA monopoly results in a 50% reduction in their opportunity to continue a postseason experience. Monopolists always seek to restrict output in order to maximize their profit.
It will be interesting if the WNIT does continue to try to offer these opportunities in the postseason in the face of the power of the NCAA. I would expect the power of the NCAA will be too great for the WNIT to continue to offer these postseason experiences for WBB players and fans.