Upsets can be rare in the women’s NCAA tournament. Last year, only one lower seed won a game in the first round, when No. 11 seed Middle Tennessee knocked off No. 6 Louisville.
The 2023 women’s NCAA tournament produced four such upsets. There were five in 2022. The second round gave us one last year and two the year before that.
Where will those upsets occur this year? Part analytics and part eye test, Giant Killers forecasts March upsets over the first two rounds of the women’s bracket. We define an upset as any seed separated by three lines. A No. 10 over a No. 7 counts just like a No. 6 beating a No. 3 in the second round.
Here are 10 games we project to end in an upset over the tournament’s first four days, listed in order of most likely to occur, with ESPN BPI projections noted where the data is available.
Note: Because the first First Four isn’t played until Wednesday and Thursday, the Giant Killers model takes all possible matchups into consideration.
Upset chance: 32.6%
First round: 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday, ESPN2 (Storrs, Connecticut; Spokane 4)
Two years ago in the NCAA tournament, the Jackrabbits beat USC in an 8-9 game. In 2019, they reached the Sweet 16 as a…
