Women’s college basketball Bracket Watch: Is Louisville in the field? Can Big 12 develop depth?

(Editor’s note: This article is part of the Bracket Central series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s & women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

We spend so much of the late summer and early fall dreaming about the possibilities and promises of college basketball nonconference play. Plans are devised to miss an hour of work to catch the second half of an unexpectedly tight game between a ranked power conference team and a frisky mid-major. Thanksgiving meals are timed so as not to miss the few solid college basketball games happening that day.

Somehow, it’s the second week of January. Some teams have already played five conference games, and that means it’s prime overreaction season. Did this one loss in November seal a team’s fate in the Bubble? Could an upset in December have pushed my favorite into a top 16 seed and hosting the first weekend? Should I plan a trip to Cancun to drown the miseries of our season, or am I making calls for someone to watch my dog as I make the 4 1/2-hour drive to watch my alma mater?

Basketball, it rocks.

First and foremost, I’m stoked to be back and starting another year of Bracket Watch (and eventually Bubble Watch). I learned so much last year and have fine-tuned how to best tap into what the selection committee is honed in on. A reminder: This is a projection of what I think the NCAA selection committee will do based on all given information, not me saying “this is what should happen because I think so.”

Secondly, so much of doing this details the what and why of the selection committee’s decisions. Each team sheet, Quad win and NET ranking allows us to decipher the criteria to make it to the NCAA Tournament and how teams are seeded. Here are my first projections for the 2025 bracket:

Seeding criteria and evaluation

Speaking of seeding, let’s talk about the NCAA selection committee criteria as well as some tweaks for consideration this season.

The committee evaluates and compares teams with these factors: bad losses, common opponents, competitiveness in losses, early performance versus late performance, head-to-head outcomes, NET rankings, observable components, regional rankings, significant wins and strength of schedule.

The committee ushered in the use of quadrants over their summer meetings, which was the most significant change for this season. What does that entail?

To put it in simplest terms, quadrants are a way to separate and weigh games depending on where they were played, who they were played against, and the expected winning percentage against an opponent’s NET ranking.

It’s also worth noting that the committee has moved away from splitting records, voting this summer to solely look at overall records as opposed to conference records versus nonconference records. While this sounds incredibly impactful, I do think it’s worth pointing out that this is more about streamlining how details appear on a team sheet to make it easier to dissect in conversation and debate.

What should we make of the Big 12?

Much has been made about who the nation’s best power conference might be, but one of the better questions: What on earth do we make of the Big 12?

Make no mistake, the Big 12 is still a good conference, but the lack of depth compared to the three other conferences is noteworthy this season. Teams that entered the conference this season were devastated by the transfer portal:

• Arizona returned just 45.7 percent of its minutes played from last season.

• Arizona State lost three of its top five scorers to the portal.

• Eight Colorado players entered the transfer portal, returning one starter from last season’s Sweet 16 squad.

• Utah lost arguably its best player in program history to the WNBA Draft, but it’s had a surprisingly pleasant start to the season.

This is all to point out that losing Oklahoma and Texas — both capable of a second-weekend run or further — was astronomical for the league. That sounds obvious, but watching the way it’s impacting the conference has been interesting.

Colorado has impressed with the way it has come together as a group. The Buffaloes appear to be a real threat to make the tourney again after returning less than 30 percent of last season’s scoring.

Protected the home court last night 🦬

We do it again on Saturday vs Kansas #GoBuffs pic.twitter.com/xKVhfcwtJi

— Colorado Women’s Basketball 🦬 (@CUBuffsWBB) January 9, 2025

However, this is still a bit of a step down when looking at conference hierarchy. Instead of solid Colorado and Utah teams making up the middle of the league, they make up more of the upper third. Two of the top teams in the upper third with hosting potential were removed and weren’t immediately replaced. It also hurts that Iowa State struggled in nonconference as much as it did. The Cyclones can absolutely make a turn in league play, but losing poorly in big-time games damages their potential as a tournament team.

Zoom out and evaluate the conference: Even after TCU and Utah beat Notre Dame, who has the next-best marquee nonconference win?

Kansas State’s defeat of Creighton was a resume-builder, but strength of schedule is a looming question for the Wildcats. It’s a large reason why we see a dominant 16-1 team on the No. 3 line.

West Virginia certainly looks like it could be worthy of hosting in March, and it proved so in a close, competitive loss to Texas. But the 201st-ranked nonconference strength of schedule does the Mountaineers no favors here.

If we see the Big 12 enter into a no-man’s land in February, when everyone’s beating everyone and TCU and Kansas State lose multiple times, the Big 12 will be in a tough spot when it comes to seeding. Without stacked wins in November and December against top teams to boost strength of schedule and the NET, the conference is at a slight disadvantage compared to the other three power conferences.

Louisville is still an NCAA Tournament team

Despite a shaky start, it turns out that talk of Louisville’s demise was premature and exaggerated.

Coach Jeff Walz had the Cardinals playing a top-flight schedule matching up with the best of the best, as is typical for his program. It’s difficult to succeed when half of your rotation is true freshmen. While it was certainly jarring to watch Louisville crawl out to a 6-5 start to the season, including blowout losses to UConn and NC State, it was to be expected with so much youth.

Back-to-back 3️⃣’s from @taj__roberts ❗️

💻 ACCNX#GoCards pic.twitter.com/fWhSGSxI7Q

— Louisville Women’s Basketball (@LouisvilleWBB) January 10, 2025

It’s too easily forgotten that the Cardinals had very good Kentucky and Oklahoma teams on the ropes until the final minutes. Those games don’t award any sort of relief — for the program or for fans — but it’s really hard to be this young and succeed.

Their last three games, taking down Boston College, Wake Forest and Miami, have been significant in establishing the baseline, which was essential in reinforcing that they’re not a bottom ACC team. This weekend’s matchup with Georgia Tech is a huge opportunity to add a signature win, but Louisville is already in the field given its strength of schedule and flashes of strong play.

More on my methods

When ranking teams, I counted the automatic qualifier as the team with the best conference record, best overall record and highest NET ranking. This early in the season, with few conference games played, I wanted a way to set up the AQ that made sense across the board, so each of the three settings is used to make it uniform for how each conference’s automatic qualifier is selected.

At the moment, I wouldn’t expect many mid-majors to play spoiler. With the realignment of power conferences, and many promising mid-majors taking losses early, expect to see fewer mid-majors make the field outside of automatic qualifiers. We’re already starting to see some mid-majors that ranked highly in the NET (due to a strong schedule and significant wins) start to drop in the NET as the power conference teams’ seasons have hit full speed. We’ll see what happens as the season progresses, but I suspect it will be tough for many mid-majors to make it as at-larges.

Need to freshen up on some bracket glossary terms and see how they apply?

Competitive in losses: Playing games tight, even in a loss, is so crucial to maintaining how evaluators feel about your tournament capability. Let’s take Ole Miss as an example, which has multiple close losses this season, including wire-to-wire games with USC (a likely one seed), UConn (a surefire hosting team) and tournament-worthy NC State. Winning is important to climb, but losing competitively is essential to not dropping significantly.

Early performance versus late performance: While this isn’t a significant factor at the moment, it’s worth looking backward to remember how key this is for the committee. It’s not that the early season doesn’t matter, but there is a clear weight on how well a team finishes the year. Remember how Nebraska, 14-8 early in February last season, wound up a No. 6 seed after spending much of the year on the bubble, largely due to an 8-3 finish in conference play and a solid Big Ten championship run.

NET ranking: Let me add the official definition for the NET from the NCAA. The NCAA evaluation tool for women’s basketball is the contemporary sorting tool used to measure a team’s quality and help evaluate a team’s resumes for selection and seeding in the NCAA Tournament. NET ranking is determined by who you played, where you played, how efficiently you played and game results.

It’s essential to note how many of these aspects of evaluation leak into the NET overall. Margin of victory is perhaps the most impactful part of the NET every season. Kansas State has won by double digits 16 times this season, contributing heavily to the Wildcats maintaining the top point differential in the country, which points directly to their efficiency.

Observable component: This is a really fun way for the committee to say “eye test,” which will always be a part of breaking down and understanding tournament teams. It’s certainly an intangible, as what every person sees can vary, and quite literally is in the eye of the beholder.

Regional rankings: The selection committee has five regions in which its 12 members’ affiliated schools are located (East, Midwest, Southeast, South, West). Each region has a coaches’ regional advisory committee that ranks that region during the season.

Significant wins: Using last season’s Nebraska squad again, perhaps no team in the field saw a bigger boost to its tournament resume than when the Cornhuskers beat Iowa in Iowa City. Laying claim to one of just four regular-season Iowa losses had significant staying power for bolstering them in March.

Strength of schedule: Expect more leeway to be given to teams that really tested themselves with their schedules. Think of last year’s Arizona team that played the nation’s second-hardest strength of schedule, helping the Wildcats make the tournament despite a losing conference record.

The Bracket Central series is part of a partnership with E*TRADE.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Photo of Jayda Curry: Erica Denhoff / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.