There was no question about the No. 1 overall seed for the women’s tournament. (Who else but the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks?) But plenty of bracket drama was in store beyond that on Selection Sunday.
Let’s start with the second regional in Albany. There at the top, you have the one-seed Iowa Hawkeyes, two-seed UCLA Bruins and three-seed LSU Tigers. That’s both teams from last year’s national championship game—each has since graduated some of its talent, yes, but they’ve both shown a clear ability to move beyond those key losses—bookending a program that had its own case for a top seed for most of the year in UCLA. Then you have the four-seed Kansas State Wildcats, who delivered the first loss of the season to Iowa, and the five-seed Colorado Buffaloes, who delivered the first loss of the season to LSU. All in one region! That’s an awfully dense concentration of talent. If you were expecting Caitlin Clark & Co. to return to the Final Four or Angel Reese to run it back with LSU or Lauren Betts to make a deep run with UCLA? You can only pick one. It’s going to be a tough road out of this regional.
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“It just ended up working out that way based on where you can put teams,” said committee chair Lisa Peterson. “If you look at the overall balance of the different regions, there wasn't a drastic difference. But I can completely see where those first four [seeds in Albany 2], it looks that way.”
Then look at the fourth regional in Portland. Three of the four No. 1 seeds in the bracket were more or less obvious: South Carolina had been unquestionable for weeks in Albany 1, Iowa sealed its spot by winning the Big Ten tournament for Albany 2, and the USC Trojans did the same with the Pac-12 tournament for Portland 3. But that fourth one in Portland? It had once seemed likely it would belong to the Stanford Cardinal. But that was thrown into doubt with a conference tournament loss to USC. There was a case to be made that the Pac-12 was strong enough this year to merit two No. 1 seeds. But there was stiff competition here from the Texas Longhorns, who’d made a remarkable run through the Big 12, even without their injured point guard Rori Harmon.
The committee ultimately gave Texas that last No. 1 seed and Stanford the corresponding No. 2.
“This was one of the most highly debated things we did,” Peterson said. “You definitely want to make sure you get that one-line right.”
It mostly came down to recent play, including their respective conference tournaments, she said. Texas is 9–1 in its last 10 games; Stanford is 8–2. Texas won the Big 12 tournament by beating three NCAA tournament teams; Stanford fell in the Pac-12 tournament finals and beat only one NCAA tournament team. But the conversation was so close that it was like “trying to slip a piece of paper between teams,” Peterson said.
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Here are some more takeaways from Selection Sunday:
