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Charlie Creme, ESPN.com
The Pac-12 is gone. USC and UCLA are in the Big Ten — and are the conference favorites. And Texas should be South Carolina‘s biggest challenge to a fourth consecutive SEC regular-season title.
Call 2024-25 the season of change in women’s college basketball. All of it will take some getting used to. None of it rolls off the tongue yet.
The ACC and Big Ten now have 18 teams. The Big 12 and SEC have 16. With a higher concentration of good teams in fewer leagues, expect the records for the number of NCAA tournament bids each conference receives to be broken. The percentage of teams advancing to March Madness from each conference will be the new standard.
The NCAA women’s basketball committee has also made changes to its selection criteria. Most notably, the committee will shift to the quad system that the men have used for seven years to measure the quality of a win or a loss. The quad system replaces NET top-25 and top-50 wins and sub-100 NET losses. The NET remains the basis for the rankings the selection committee uses, but they will be qualified differently.
Women’s Bracketology will cover these nuances all season long. Come back every Tuesday for weekly projections through December. We’ll offer multiple updates each week starting in January.
With opening day complete and the first Bracketology of 2024-25 out, this is a good time to look at four key questions that will impact the selection process right into Selection Sunday on March 16.
How will the quad system impact tournament selection?
Good wins are still good wins. That doesn’t change. The teams that win more games against quality opponents will be rewarded with higher seeds. But the quad system more specifically categorizes the quality of home, road and neutral site games.
In the past, teams that played road or neutral site games against quality opponents were rewarded in selection and seeding. Those teams will be easier to distinguish now with the quads.
It is important to note that quad 1, 2, 3 and 4 records are just one piece of criteria the selection committee reviews. Other criteria, such as NET ranking, head-to-head and competitiveness in losses, remain part of the process. But the term “quad 1 wins” will be referenced plenty as the season progresses.
It should also be noted that conference and nonconference record will no longer be included. The overall record will be the focus and the women’s basketball committee said the distinction is no longer needed.
How will the nonconference part of the season impact seeding?
It has the potential to be huge. There are so many games in November and December among teams that that will likely be vying for top seeds that we will be measuring the impact of those games throughout the season. UConn, USC and Notre Dame all play each other. If one of those three sweeps the other two, expect the 2-0 team to be a No. 1 seed in March. A team that goes 0-2 will have an uphill battle. For instance, if the Irish go 0-2 in those games, they better beat Texas — or a No. 1 seed isn’t likely to happen.
The reason UConn was a No. 3 seed a year ago was because the Huskies lost to NC State, UCLA, Texas, Notre Dame and South Carolina. If UConn went 3-2 in those games, a top seed would have been likely. UConn plays at South Carolina again this season in February. Depending on how those earlier games play out — the schedule also includes a visit from Iowa State — the trip to Columbia could determine the Huskies’ seed.
Nonconference win-loss records will impact the teams that get to host first- and second-round games as part of the top-16 seeds. Louisville, for example, will have a tough time recovering if the Cardinals don’t put up at least two wins in games against UCLA (a 66-59 loss Monday), Kentucky, Colorado, Oklahoma and UConn.
Maryland, another example, might only have two opportunities — against Duke and USC. The Terps better take advantage.
How does realignment change things?
Three conferences with double-digit bids? The SEC with 11 or 12? This is the biggest tangible impact realignment will have on college basketball. Let this serve as another reminder that there will be 31 automatic qualifiers and 37 at-large bids this season. (With the presumptive return of the Pac-12 in 2025-26, those numbers should go back to the traditional 32 and 36.)
The SEC looks to be the deepest conference, putting 11 of 18 teams in our preseason Bracketology (and two more among the First Four Out). Late-season games that impact the middle of the standings will have true impact on NCAA tournament seeding, and potentially even more on the last few spots in the 68-team field. Mississippi State at Vanderbilt and Auburn at Tennessee on Feb. 13 will be the biggest games of that night in the SEC — even if they are battles for 9th and 10th place.
The same scenario applies to the ACC and Big Ten. Pay less attention to where these teams are in their respective conference race and more on quad 1 wins, NET rankings and overall record.
Who are the mid-majors to watch?
Many will be calling for more mid-majors to make the NCAA tournament with the bigger Power 4 leagues knocking each other off at a higher rate and creating more mediocre conference records. The opportunity might be there, but don’t count on it happening. It will come down to which of the non-Power 4 programs have the most success in November and December.
We often discuss which conferences could end up as bid stealers during Championship Week. The teams to focus on are mid-majors who build good enough resumes to be considered at-large selections. These are generally teams from outside the Power 4 and the Big East that schedule Power 4 teams and win a game or two against them. Gonzaga did it last season by beating Alabama, Stanford and Arizona and taking Washington State to overtime. Although the Zags didn’t win the WCC tournament, they got an at-large bid and were a top-16 team and hosted first- and second-round games.
The teams to pay attention to this season, with the quality nonconference games they play in parenthesis are: South Dakota State (Creighton, Duke, Texas); Gonzaga (Stanford, Florida State); Drake (Creighton, Iowa, Iowa State); Middle Tennessee (Tennessee, Iowa State, Kansas State); and UNLV (Oklahoma, Baylor, Arizona).
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