For Once, March Madness Appears Appropriately Named in Women’s Basketball ...Middle East

Parity and Division I women’s basketball aren’t necessarily synonymous, but this season, there appears to be a larger group of legitimate national championship contenders.

For the third straight week, the No. 1-ranked team in the AP women’s basketball Top 25 poll suffered a loss.

The difference for Texas on Sunday was it didn’t occur on the court, similarly to when UCLA fell to USC for the first time on Feb. 13 and Notre Dame did at NC State 10 days later.

The Longhorns lost a coin flip to South Carolina to determine which of those two teams would be the No. 1 seed in the SEC tournament this week.

The need for that type of tiebreaker (as a last resort) was a reminder how this isn’t the typical season with the calendar turned to March and the madness starting across conference tournaments, then into the NCAA women’s bracket.

Quite simply, there appears to be a larger group of legitimate national championship contenders. Conveniently, it’s occurring while women’s basketball enjoys unprecedented popularity.

Four teams have been No. 1 in the AP rankings this season – that’s the most since the 2020-21 season – and three of them – Texas, Notre Dame and UCLA – aren’t even the No. 1 seed in their respective conference tournament. South Carolina is the only one from the group.

This season has been so competitive that UConn, which has won a record 11 NCAA championships and advanced to the Final Four 23 times under the sport’s winningest coach, Geno Auriemma, hasn’t been No. 1 in the AP poll, although the Huskies’ recent hot stretch has made them first in TRACR, our net efficiency Team Rating Adjusted for Conference and Roster.

Since JuJu Watkins and USC handed UCLA its first loss, Division I women’s basketball has been dizzying. But the truth is, the top teams – a group of six have stood out rankings-wise – have basically been playing a round robin all season.

It’s been such a wild ride to the regular season finish line that 12 of the teams ranked seventh to 25th in last Monday’s AP Top 25 have suffered a loss since then. Extend back 18 days to the night of USC-UCLA I, and 20 of those 25 teams have suffered a defeat, many times beating up on each other.

Sorry Cinderella, D-I women’s basketball and parity aren’t necessarily synonymous. The NCAA has conducted a championship tournament since 1982, and it’s had at least 64 qualifiers since 1994, yet no team below a No. 3 seed has emerged as the winner.

Four times, the Final Four has been a group of only No. 1 seeds, most recently in 2018. It’s also good to be No. 1-ranked at the end of the regular season, as that team has gone on to sweep the conference and NCAA postseasons in three of the past five opportunities since 2019 (the 2020 NCAAs were canceled due to the pandemic). It includes South Carolina finishing 38-0 a season ago.

“I would expect what we’ve seen today,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey predicted about his conference tournament right before Sunday’s rare coin flip. “Close games, an upset or two, teams that are right on that cutline, that borderline or inside the bubble or outside the bubble know they have another opportunity against the highest level of competition …”

He may as well been talking about the rest of the season in women’s basketball – from the conference tournaments all the way through the Final Four, April 4-6 in Tampa, Florida.

Tighten the seat belt. The ride could be bumpier than usual.

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