We Need More Cowbell, More Women's Bracketology, and Resume Based Metrics
Women's College Basketball Bracketology 2/11
With SNL’S 50th Anniversary Coming this Weekend…We need more Cowbell.
But we also need more Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament Bracketology. As of today, I could only five websites constantly putting out Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament Bracketology and there is an uneven amount of Men’s Basketball NCAA Tournament Bracketology out there to Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament Bracketology.1
Third and likely it will be coming in upcoming years - we likely need more resume based metrics for Women’s NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Along with neutral courts this might actually help out mid-majors in NCAA women’s basketball and foster some future Cinderella runs.
The Women’s Selection Committee will be using the Quadrant System for the first year this year and the 2024-25 season marks the fifth year that the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee has utilized the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) to assess and rank teams. 2
In my latest bracketology, Minnesota and Iowa State both have zero Quad 1 wins but avoid the First Four. Part of that it is much harder to achieve a Quad 1 win in women’s basketball (home 1-25, neutral 1-35 and away 1-45) vs the men’s basketball (home 1-30, neutral 1-50, and away 1-75). These metrics are unique to women’s basketball but hurt the best mid-majors in NET as George Mason, South Dakota State, Fairfield, Princeton, Montana State, and James Madison all are missing Quad 1 wins. Richmond has a Quad 1 win over Oklahoma State but has two Quad 2 wins that would be a Quad 1 wins if they judged by the men’s metrics in a win at Fairfield and a neutral site win over Columbia.
Along with NET ranking the Women’s Selection Committee uses a Team Value Index they do not publish for the public. The NCAA does publish a team’s record vs the Top 100 which we can assume is close to the Team Value Index and can be used as possible resume based metric. With the lack of a resume based metric like WAB (Wins Above Bubble) metric for Women’s NCAA Tournament (I wouldn’t be surprised if the NCAA add one in a couple of years like they did with NET) - i did try to incorporate Torvik WAB for Women’s Basketball and KPI for Women’s Basketball as a resume based metric in my selections3.
Looking at these resume metrics: mid-major teams like South Dakota State, Richmond, James Madison, Princeton, and Columbia likely all deserve consideration for at-large berths (4 of the 5 are in the bracket as the automatic berths right now). A case could also be made for Montana State, Belmont, UNLV, Fairfield, Norfolk State, and even Quinnipiac (5 of these 6 are in as automatic berths- Fairfield and Quinnipiac are both in the MAAC so only Fairfield is in). As of now most bracketologists are only seeding South Dakota State and Richmond with some leeway in terms of not winning their conference tournaments and making the NCAA Tournament as both teams have impressive out of conference wins…Richmond has a Quad 1 win over #20 Oklahoma State while South Dakota State has a Quad 2 win (because of the small metrics it does not count as Quad 1) over #24 Creighton.
These mid-majors are taking advantage of Significant Wins..something the NCAA Women’s Basketball Selection Committee has been flagged to prioritize.4
By prioritizing significant wins - it does make for some great out of conference matchups as the #1 seeds in women’s college basketball sorts themselves out with out-of-conference play. This season: UCLA beat South Carolina, South Carolina beat NC State and Duke plus SEC foes Texas, LSU, and Tennessee, Notre Dame beat Texas, UConn, and USC.
Because of the strength of schedule of the top teams- the race for the #1 seeds becomes pretty clear and will get clearer this week as you have three games that would be #1 vs #2 seeds if the NCAA Tournament started today: UCLA at USC, UConn at South Carolina, and LSU at Texas.
But it isn’t just the race for a #1 seed. The Top 16 teams (Top 4 seeds in each region) in the Women’s Tournament have home-court advantage per NCAA.com analysis since Women’s Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1994 the Top 4 seeds in each region usually make the Sweet 16 (#1 seeds usually make the Final Four).
In the last 3 years only five teams5 have made the Sweet 16 who were not a Top 5 seed (A Top 20 team as rated by the committee) compared to 12 teams who were not a Top 5 seed on the men’s side and made the Sweet 16
For this year’s bracketology the gap between last #2 seed (8th overall) and #7 seed (21st to 24th overall) is very close (21st to 24th overall) and will be decided over the next month…right now there could be as many as 21 teams fighting for the last 9 spots (8th to 16th) where they can host the first two rounds.
The Contenders for Hosting :
6 Big 12 Teams: First place is still up for grabs as six teams came into the week with only one game between first place and sixth place.
6 SEC teams (Kentucky, Ole Miss, Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt) all teams behind the Big 3 in the SEC standings (South Carolina, Texas, LSU) and their record against one each other will likely determine their seeding and if they host a home game.
5 ACC Teams have 10 to 14 wins vs Top 100 ranging including NC State, Duke, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and Florida State. In the case of NC State they have now passed Duke (who has 14 wins vs Top 100 teams) in the ACC standings after a win against them last week and they are certainly playing their best basketball of the season right now. NC State has won six straight after losing at Cal with North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame coming up in an eight day span if they continue winning the Wolfpack could get a #2 seed or #3 seed like they did last season when they made the Final Four.
4 Big Ten Schools (Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, and Maryland). Ohio State is reeling after back to back losses to UCLA but after a 20-1 start to the season they will get a chance to face 5 Big Ten teams who will likely make the NCAA Tournament in their final six 6 regular season games so could move up the seed line and secure two home games. Iowa is sneaking up the seed line this week (#7 seed) after 3 straight Quad 1 wins (USC, at Minnesota, at Nebraska) and will have a big week next week hosting Ohio State and UCLA.
Here is the bracket and and one final note -the strength right now of #14 seeds (Norfolk State, Gonzaga, SE Louisiana, UTSA)…if they were playing on a neutral court in Round 1 - I do think you would see the first upset of #14 seed over a #3 seed in NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament History
ESPN’s Charlie Creme has been doing it for years but it makes sense ESPN has Women’s Tournament and Creme is doing bi-weekly updates on Tuesday and Friday.
The Athletic, Autumn Johnson on NCAA.com, CBS Sports, and Her Hoop Stats all have weekly updates usually published on Tuesday.
Just Women’s Sports have featured bracketology in past seasons but I was unable to find any updates for the 2025 NCAA Tournament as many of their articles on 2024-2025 season have been features on teams, players, and conferences.
BracketMatrix has collected anywhere from 90 weekly to 227 (preseason/before NCAA Tournament) bracket predictions for Men’s NCAA Tournament...With some quick math that would mean for every one person doing a women’s tournament bracketology about 18 people (daily/weekly) to 44 people (preaseason/before tournament) are doing a bracket for the men’s tournament.
They have been using NET since 2018-2019 season for men- so NET was only used for one more men’s NCAA Tournament since 2020 Men’s and Women’s Tournament was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. The creator of NET has acknowledged it was tweak after the first two years it was used on the men’s side (beta testing).
Despite being part of the men’s basketball selection committee…Torvik and KPI are not officially part of the women’s basketball selection committee. NCAA has created their own WAB (Wins Above Bubble based on Torvik and ESPN SOR) this year for Men’s College Basketball. Other metrics like KenPom, ESPN’s BPI/SOR do not exist in any public form for women’s basketball like they do for men’s college basketball.
Committee asked to prioritize the following factors in selection
- Bad Losses
-Common Opponents
-Competitive in Losses
-Early performance versus late performance (Last 10 games)
-Head to head
-NET Ranking
-Observable Component
-Overall Record
-Regional Rankings
-Strength of Schedule
-Significant Wins
2024 (#7 Duke)
2023 (#8 Ole Miss, #9 Miami*)
2022 (#10 South Dakota, #10 Creighton*)
*Made Elite Eight
The best chance for first round upsets usually come from #12 seed over #5 seed or #11 seed over #6 seed where neither team has home court advantage. A #14 or #15 seed have never won an NCAA Tournament game and #16 seed has only one win over #1 seed. (#16 Harvard over #1 Stanford in 1998)