Which of the recent undefeated NCAA women’s basketball champions has faced the most difficult path to perfection?
As Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks try to join this historic list of nine Division I national champions with perfect records, it’s worth considering the opposition each faced. Not all undefeated seasons require the same kind of excellence to sustain.
Last March, ESPN’s Michael Voepel ranked the undefeated champs, which also factors in level of dominance. Here we’re solely considering the quality of the teams faced along the way and the location of those games.
Because my metric of choice, Massey ratings, began in 1997-98 — the year Pat Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols became the third NCAA D-I team to finish undefeated — we’re going to start with them and rank South Carolina’s schedule to date alongside the seven perfect champs since then — with apologies to the 1985-86 Texas Longhorns and 1994-95 UConn Huskies.
Specifically, we’re looking at the chances a typical undefeated team would have won every game on that season’s schedule. So, which team…
