The NCAA Tournament field for women’s college basketball is set.
We have 68 teams that punched their tickets to March Madness – 32 automatic qualifiers and 36 at-large selections chosen by the NCAA’s committee.
Our four No. 1 seeds are, in order: South Carolina, Indiana, Virginia Tech and Stanford.
And the last four teams to get in were: Purdue, St. John’s, Illinois and Mississippi State.
You can download For The Win’s official printable bracket here, and check out each team’s odds to win it all. But before we make our predictions on who is going to Dallas, let’s break down what the committee got right and wrong, and who the winners and losers are from Selection Sunday.
Winner: The ACC
There’s been a lot of talk this year about this being one of the worst season’s for men’s basketball in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But on the women’s side? It’s easy to argue that it’s never been better.
The ACC got eight teams into the tournament field, more than any other conference. What’s more, the conference’s biggest brands are back on top. Notre Dame and Duke will both host games.
Plus, the ACC Tournament winner – Virginia Tech – got a No. 1 seed and is looking like a team that could make the Final Four. The Hokies have won 11 straight games and look a bit unstoppable with Elizabeth Kitley and Georgia Amoore leading the way.
Louisville and N.C. State – two teams that carried the torch for the ACC last season – are back in the tournament field as No. 5 and No. 7 seeds. UNC is a No. 6 seed, Florida State, powered by likely National Freshman of the Year Ta’Niya Latson, is seeded seventh, and Miami rounds out the ACC’s entrants as a No. 9 seed.
It seemed possible that the ACC could get nine teams in, but Syracuse was left on the wrong side of the bubble. The Orange will likely be among the favorites to win the WNIT.
Speaking of the wrong side of the bubble…
Loser: Columbia, and the Ivy League
We should have gotten a two-bid Ivy League. And maybe we would have if Columbia had won the conference tournament, leaving Princeton to get an at-large bid. But the Ivy Tournament didn’t go down that way; co-regular season champion Columbia lost in the semifinals in overtime to Harvard and Princeton topped the Crimson to win the league’s automatic qualifier on Saturday.
It was widely believed that Princeton had a resume good enough to get in as an at-large bid, but one could easily make the case that Columbia did too.
I’ll clear out to let Lions’ coach Megan Griffith explain their resume:
"With every fiber in my being, I believe we are an NCAA Tournament Team."
🗣 @CUCoachG➡️ 23-5, 12-2 Ivy
➡️ @IvyLeague Champions
➡️ 13 Road Wins ➡️ Most in @MarchMadnessWBB
➡️ 7 NET Top 100 Wins
➡️ 6-1 on the road vs. NET Top 100 Teams#RoarLionRoar // #EDGE // #NCAAWBB pic.twitter.com/8CL1veyu3T— Columbia Women's Basketball (@CULionsWBB) March 11, 2023
Among the team’s that were on ESPN’s projected bubble heading into Sunday night, Columbia had the best winning percentage against NET Top 50 teams (50%) and NET Top 100 teams (63.6%). And only South Carolina, Villanova and Florida Gulf Coast have as many true road wins as Columbia does – and two of those road victories came against teams in the tournament field in Miami and Princeton. The Lions also beat UMass, the regular-season A-10 champs.
Simply put: Columbia should’ve been in the tournament field, and it’s a shame that they aren’t.
Columbia, Kansas, UMass and Oregon were the committee’s first four teams out.
Winner: West Virginia
Heading into Sunday night, a handful of bracketologists – including ESPN’s Charlie Crème – had West Virginia on the outside of the tournament bubble. But the committee put the Mountaineers in and gave them a No. 10 seed.
It’s a big accomplishment for first-year WVU coach Dawn Plitzuweit, who took the reins of the program over from longtime head coach Mike Carey. WVU went 19-11 overall this season and notched four wins over teams that cracked the tournament field this season – including two over Baylor.
WVU will face Arizona in the College Park, Maryland subregional.
While fans of the Mountaineers are happy, fans of Kansas probably aren’t. The Jayhawks – who went 1-1 against WVU this season – were snubbed from the field after also posting a 19-11 record.
Loser: North Carolina
While it was an overall good night for the ACC, North Carolina was left a bit disappointed after the Selection Show. Several bracketologists had UNC on the four-line and projected to host, but the committee gave the Tar Heels a No. 6 seed and sent them to Columbus, Ohio.
It was a bizarre decision by the selection committee. Consider UNC’s resume:
- Six wins against AP Top 25 teams, with three of those coming on the road.
- The 12th toughest schedule in the nation by NET rank.
- 14 wins against teams in the top 100 of the NET.
The Tar Heels went 21-10 overall and 11-7 in ACC play, but three of those ACC losses came when UNC was without two starters – Alyssa Ustby and Eva Hodgson – who are now back in the lineup. The Tar Heels have also been ranked in the AP Top 25 all season long and haven’t suffered a loss to a team lower than 100 in the NET. And UNC has four wins over teams seeded ahead of them: Iowa State, Notre Dame and Duke (twice).
Coupled with the fact that the UNC’s men’s team was left out of the tournament field, Sunday night was a little bit of a bummer for Tar Heels.
