On Thursday, we started looking for potential Cinderellas in the Women’s NCAA Tournament, and our statistical model got off to a pretty good start if we do say so ourselves.
Only two first-round matchups in our top 10 list took place on Friday. In one of them, Mississippi State was the third-most likely longshot to pull an upset (with chances of 40.3%), and the Bulldogs upended Creighton, 81-66. In the other, we warned you the implied gap on betting lines between Michigan and UNLV was closing so fast that the underdog Lady Rebels were actually looking overvalued, and Vegas lost by a dozen.
Beyond Mississippi State, three other teams defeated higher-seeded foes on Friday, setting up a first installment of seven giant vs. killer matchups (where opponents are separated by five or more seeds). Now, this is where the power of chalk in the women’s game really begins to show. Even for the Bulldogs or a successful double-digit seed such as Princeton, the reward for first-round success is often a nearly impossible follow-up.
Our colleague Austin Mock estimates that of the Sunday underdogs, only three have a 20% or greater chance of winning. In two of those cases, women’s Goliaths have been pretty severely overseeded.
