An exciting tourney awaits, but where does UConn factor in?
As Selection Sunday nears, there has already been lots of debate among women’s basketball fans and bracketologists about how seeding for the 2023 NCAA Tournament field will play out. And it could matter more than ever this year.
Outside of the unanimous No. 1 team in the country, South Carolina, this season has been filled with parity and upsets. There have been 14 different teams ranked in the top five of Associated Press poll since the first release in October. Then the top seed was knocked before the title game in three of the four Power Five conference tournaments held last week (Big 12 is still ongoing).
“Until somebody beats South
Carolina, they’re still undefeated, they’re still the favorite, as they should be,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “In terms of everyone else … given some of the conference tournament outcomes, really hard to pinpoint who really has played for the last three weeks like you could say they’re pretty much going to be a championship contender. So everybody’s had their turn. Everybody’s looked the part, everybody’s looked the other way — which is a great sign for the NCAA Tournament, which means that more teams are in the mix, as it should be.
“… Where you’re seeded maybe is important, but whose bracket you’re in and you catch the wrong team at the wrong time — years ago, that didn’t matter as much because the favorites just kind of rolled through everybody. The talent has spread out a little bit more now and I think this might be one of the more exciting NCAA Tournaments in recent years.”
With all of this in mind, let’s take a look a how the selection committee determines the bracket, how qualifying factors differ from the men’s game and why that could matter now more than ever, along with the latest projections of how things could play out this Sunday. The Selection Show will air on ESPN at 8 p.m. on Sunday.
How does the committee determine the bracket?
The Division I Women’s Basketball Committee lists 14 points of criteria that factor into their seeding decisions (in alphabetical order): availability of talent, bad losses, common opponents, competitive in losses, conference record, early competition versus late competition, head-to-head, NET rankings, nonconference record, observable component, overall record, regional rankings, strength of schedule and significant wins.
NET rankings were the first thing mentioned by selection committee chair Lisa Peterson in an interview with NCAA host Autumn Johnson this week. Starting in the 2020-21 season, Division I women’s basketball went from using the RPI (rating percentage index) to the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) as its sorting tool for NCAA Tournament seeding.
The RPI, first used for the women’s tournament in 1984, consisted of three factors weighted as follows: a team’s winning percentage accounted for 25%, their opponents’ winning percentage accounted for 50% and their opponents’ opponent winning percentage accounted for 25%.
The new NET algorithm isn’t public, but it includes two factors: Adjusted Net Efficiency and Team Value Index. Adjusted Net Efficiency reflects the offensive and defensive efficiency of a team (points per possession and opponent points per possession), strength of opponents and locations of the games. The Team Value Index “is the results-oriented component of the NET, ranking more highly those teams that played and beat other good teams, factoring in opponent, location of the game and winner.”
This move came two years after the NCAA did the same for the men ahead of the 2018-19 season. While the algorithm is similar to the men, it isn’t the same. According to the NCAA, it was developed by studying women’s basketball data exclusively over the past 10 years — though the sport has clearly evolved a lot since then.
There is one clear difference between the men and the women that could come under the spotlight with seeding decisions this season: the use of the quadrant system. The quadrant system organizes a team’s quality of wins and losses based on game location and the opponent’s NET ranking.
Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
Quadrant 4: Home 161+, Neutral 201+, Away 241+
While the men’s NET rankings online list quadrant wins/ losses and that is used as a major determining factor for NCAA Tournament seeding, that isn’t the case for the women. According to an article on NCAA’s website explaining the men’s NET rankings, “The number of Quadrant 1 wins and Quadrant ¾ losses will be incredibly important when it comes time for NCAA tournament selection and seeding.” But no such distinction is made for the women.
Several coaches across the sport have expressed confusion with that and what the NET rankings actually are since the system was implemented ahead of the 2020-21 season. It was a topic of discussion in the SEC last year. And even one of the most notable coaches in the sport, a Hall of Famer with 11 national titles to his name, isn’t clear on how it all works.
“Right now, I have no idea what the NET actually is,” Auriemma said. “So I don’t know how you determine that we’re No. 2 NET ranking, I don’t know what that means. And I’ve asked a bunch of people and they have no idea what it means. If you ask me quad one, quad two, quad three, quad four wins, I would tell you I understand that. So next year, or in the very near future, that’s what we’ll have on the women’s side. It just takes us a little while to catch up sometimes.”
Also of note, the regional round (Sweet 16, Elite Eight) of the NCAA Tournament will utilize a two-host format for the first time this season. Eight teams will compete at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina, and eight will play at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. The Final Four will be held at American Airlines Arena in Dallas.
How might seeding play out?
South Carolina was projected as the No. 1 overall seed in both of the committee’s top 16 reveals in February. The Gamecocks (32-0) remain a lock for that spot following a undefeated regular season capped off by the SEC Tournament championship. But beyond that, there are a lot of questions.
Bracketologists have suggested that Indiana (27-3) is easily the second No. 1 seed and the last reveal on Feb. 23 had the Hoosiers as such, with Stanford (28-5) and Utah (25-4) also on the one line.
However, both the Hoosiers and Cardinal have lost two of three games since then. Indiana lost at Iowa on a buzzer-beater to end the regular season and was knocked off by Ohio State in the semifinals of the Big Ten Tournament. Stanford lost at Utah and was eliminated by UCLA in the Pac-12 semifinals. Meanwhile, the Utes were a surprise to be there in the first place and then lost in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 Tournament to unexpected eventual champion Washington State.
ACC Tournament champion Virginia Tech (27-4), Big East regular-season and tournament champion UConn (29-5) and Maryland (25-6) are all possible contenders for one of the final spots on the one-line as well.
“We’ve started looking at the seeding, and as you can imagine it’s been very difficult,” Peterson said. “Just looking at the one line, I think we have maybe one unanimous decision, which we’ll leave at that — teaser. But it’s been just a lot of work, a lot of talking because of what’s been happening in the game this year.”
The Huskies were the fourth No. 1 seed behind South Carolina, Indiana and Stanford, in the NCAA Committee’s first top 16 reveal on Feb. 9, at which point they held a 21-4 record. After picking up two wins over two top-20 NET teams against Creighton (No. 18) and at Villanova (No. 12), followed by a loss at home to St. John’s, they dropped to a No. 2, seventh overall in the second reveal. Maryland and LSU (28-2) jumped past them.
Entering Selection Sunday, UConn is tied with South Carolina for the most Quad 1 wins of any team in the country (15), has more wins against top 25 NET teams (11) than anyone in the country and is second in the NET.
“We’ll see what the committee does,” Auriemma said. “You shouldn’t even give it the time of day. And a lot of people study this stuff, man, all year round coaches, you know, they schedule for it. God bless them, they’re smarter than me. They schedule for it and they’re very good at scheduling just the right teams so that their rating is really, really high, and then they’re gonna get ass beat in the NCAA Tournament because they’re really not that good.
“But I don’t know anything about that stuff. I just look at Sunday and I’ll watch on the screen and that’s what we’re gonna play. That’s the honest to God truth. I’m not withholding any information, that’s it. That’s how it’s been for me forever.”
The latest bracketology from ESPN’s Charlie Creme has the one seeds as South Carolina in Greenville Regional 1, Indiana in Greenville 2, Virginia Tech in Seattle 3 and Stanford in Seattle 4. He projects the two seeds as Utah in Greenville 1, UConn in Greenville 2, Maryland in Seattle 3 and Iowa in Seattle 4.
Regardless of where the Huskies fall, Auriemma is a lot more optimistic about their ability to make a 15th consecutive Final Four following their Big East Tournament championship run.
UConn had 10 players available for all three games after only having that many in one other instance this season. The Huskies won their first two games by an average margin of 29.5 points and then led Villanova — currently projected to host as a four seed — by 25 points in the third quarter en route to a 67-56 victory.
“The first 30 minutes of the game, I would say we did everything we needed to do to beat pretty much anybody that we played. And then the last 10 minutes, we did exactly what you need to do to get beat by about 30 different teams in this country. So going forward, you take those 30 minutes and you go, ‘Okay, how do we build on those?’ And our players understand it. So I like (that) our upside is we can play to the last weekend of the season.
“Every team has issues going into the tournament, ours are kind of minor compared to what they could be. … What’s it going to take in the NCAA Tournament — you gotta play defense, you gotta rebound and you gotta get great shots. And we pretty much did a lot of that these three days, and we did it really, really well.”