Women’s games are getting closer
Upsets still few and far between at NCAA tournament
This spotlight season for women’s college basketball isn’t merely creating brighter stars and bigger ratings. It’s also producing closer games.
The average margin of victory in NCAA Tournament women’s games this year has been 15 points. That average had hovered between 16.2 and 17.2 for each of the previous four women’s tournaments, contributing to the appearance that the sport lacked competitiveness.
“I think there’s a little bit more parity than we’ve had in the past maybe because of the (transfer) portal,” North Carolina State coach Wes Moore said Tuesday.
“But I just think it’s a great time.” The average 2024 men’s tournament game has been decided by 14.4 points, an increase from previous years. So the difference in victory margin between the women’s tournament and the men’s tournament is only six-tenths of a point per game.
That’s a big change from recent years. Women’s tournament games had an average scoring margin that was anywhere from four to five points greater than the men in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The 2020 tournament was called off because of the pandemic.
The top 16 women’s seeds play at home for the first two rounds while all men’s games are at neutral sites.
This year, the top 16 seeds in the women’s tournament all won their first-round games by double-digit margins.
The NCAA has been hesitant about moving away from homecourt sites for the first two rounds of the women’s tournament because of attendance concerns.
Ole Miss pulled off a stunning second-round victory last year by beating top-seeded Stanford on its home floor but this year lost its second-round game at Notre Dame.
“I’m not an advocate for homecourt games,” Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said afterward.
“We’ve got to figure out how to be a top-four seed, top 16, so we can have the home-court advantage, or if you’re going to go in someone’s place and knock them off like we did last year, you need to have all cylinders clicking.”
A look at the numbers:
For all the excitement the NCAA women’s tournament has produced this year, it hasn’t generated many surprises. Only three lowerseeded teams won in the first two rounds: No. 11 seed Middle Tennessee knocked off No. 6 Louisville on a neutral site in the round of 64, while No. 5 Colorado won at No. 4 Kansas State and No. 5 Baylor won at No. 4 Virginia Tech in the round of 32. Last year, seven lower seeds won games in the round of 64 alone, though no higher-seeded teams lost on their home floors.
Every team that reached the Final Four had at least one close call. Iowa was tied with West Virginia with just over two minutes left in their second-round game. South Carolina was clinging to a twopoint lead over Indiana in the closing minutes of a regional semifinal. UConn led Syracuse by only two points with a couple of minutes left in their second-round game. North Carolina State watched its 20-point lead over Tennessee shrink to two in the fourth quarter before pulling away for a second-round victory.
The women’s tournament doesn’t have any Cinderella stories to rival North Carolina State’s march to the men’s Final Four as a No. 11 seed. All the women’s teams to reach the Sweet 16 were seeded fifth or better in their respective regions. Aside from North Carolina State, the lowest-seeded men’s team to advance beyond the first weekend was Clemson, which got to a regional final as a No. 6 seed.