The Athletic has live coverage of Selection Sunday and the Women’s NCAA Tournament bracket reveal

The final full day of conference tournaments has come and gone, and wow, what a jam-packed slate. We ultimately came away without any upsets that would put a potential at-large bid in question, but we witnessed some great games and competition.

For the first time since 2002, Kent State is headed to the NCAA Tournament. California Baptist, in Year 6 as a Division I program, earned its first ticket to the Big Dance. Norfolk State matched last season’s win total and tied its program DI record with 26 wins this season after punching its ticket to the tournament as well, back for a second straight year. Fairfield won its 31st game of the season, outlasting Niagara in one of the most frenetic games of the past few weeks to secure its trip to March Madness.

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In the most anticipated game of the day, Princeton won the Ivy League championship comfortably, likely denying the possibility of the Ivy as a two-bid conference.

So on Selection Sunday, as we dive into our final Bracket Watch, a quick thank you for following along. We have a wealth of tournament coverage coming as the brackets are revealed (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) on the selection show. You…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

For the first time in program history, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi will make an appearance in the NCAA Tournament. It’s Year 12 for coach Royce Chadwick, at his fourth Division I head coaching stop, adding a remarkable note to a career that’s spanned over 40 years.

This is what March is all about. Teams can change the course of history for their program with a hot run when everything clicks into place for a shining moment.

Peeling back the curtains to the game, Lamar — Corpus Cristi’s opponent —- was coming off its best season since 2019 and looked on the brink of making its first NCAA Tournament in over a decade. It had won the Southland regular-season title, beating Corpus Christi twice in the regular season. Aqua Franklin has steadily built this program up, culminating in a breakout Year 5.

This, unfortunately, is also March.

One ball bounce or slip in focus can be the difference between the Big Dance and the end. It’s apt to remember that, because on one side, the games produce cheers and unforgettable memories, and the other side lacks the same picturesque quality.

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Mid-majors

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

As Conference tournament week winds down, the number of automatic qualifiers and at-large bids continue to dwindle. Though the bids won’t be doled out until Selection Sunday, looking at every resume case by case gives us a pretty good idea of who’s in, who’s out and a small gray area that’s up in the air: The Bubble.

Mississippi State provides us one of the most significant cases to delve into when looking at how the selection committee makes decisions, and in turn, how I build the bracket with that in mind.

I currently have the Bulldogs slated as one of the first teams projected outside the tournament, and they’re one of the teams that has tested my understanding of what the committee is looking at the most. Why? Let me explain.

Multi-bid conferences

What’s the NET…

(Editor’s note: This is part of the Bracket Central Series, an inside look at the run-up to the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments, along with analysis and picks during the tournaments.)

Power conferences understandably dominate discussion, particularly Bubble Watch talk, this time of year. All the teams fighting in the middle, yearning for resume-supplementing wins, provide some of the most notable matchups and storylines.

However, it’s worth pausing and noting some of the more under-the-radar seasons in the country, especially the programs that we are trending toward hearing about in March. I can think of few teams more deserving of that mention than Marshall.

The Thundering Herd are 20-6, a standout record on its own but even more notable when recognizing this is the first time since the 2016 season they have eclipsed the 20-win mark and just the second time since they left the Southern Conference in 1997. This is West Virginia native Kim Caldwell’s first season at the helm in Huntington. She led her alma mater, DII Glenville State, for seven seasons, including a national championship in 2022. In her first foray as a head coach at the highest level of collegiate basketball, something special is brewing.

Find it your local newspaper #WeAreMarshall

The SEC is closing in on being a billion-dollar conference: Revenues continued to go up in the most recent fiscal year and are expected to keep climbing amid a new TV deal, College Football Playoff expansion and the addition of Texas and Oklahoma.

The SEC announced Thursday that it distributed $741 million to its 14 schools in the 2022-23 fiscal year, meaning an average payout of $51.2 million. That’s up from the average payout of $49.9 million during the previous fiscal year.

That revenue comes mainly from television deals (CBS and ESPN up until this year),  football bowl games, the Playoff, the SEC Championship Game, the SEC men’s basketball tournament and NCAA championships.

The current fiscal year largely will feature the same sources of revenue, so the average payout may only go up slightly. But starting with the 2024-25 fiscal year, the new TV deal with ESPN will kick in, and it’s expected to be worth around $811 million. There will be the 12-team Playoff, which will pay out more in television and other revenue to all conferences. And the addition of the Longhorns and Sooners should help attendance and other revenue.

The SEC still would be short of the Big Ten, with its new $1.1 billion TV deal and addition of four schools (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington). But the…

It is overwhelmingly clear South Carolina is the best team in the country, but the question of who is second best has been difficult to answer all season. UConn held that spot in the AP poll — and these power rankings — at the start of the year, but proceeded to lose to NC State. Iowa took the Huskies’ place but fell to Kansas State that week. UCLA was next up, and the Bruins held the spot for a while, but the absence of Lauren Betts essentially has disqualified the Bruins.

Over the last month, the No. 2 team in the AP poll has been beaten five times. The Hawkeyes lost to Ohio State, UCLA lost to both Utah and Washington State, and Kansas State dropped two to Oklahoma and Texas this week. Presumably, Iowa will once again rise to second place after beating Northwestern and Maryland, but I think the voters are overlooking the team that was second in my rankings for most of January — NC State.

The Wolfpack have rebounded spectacularly from a down season in 2022-23 and look poised to capture a top seed in the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. Saniya Rivers and Aziaha James are as dynamic of a backcourt as there is in the country, and Zoe Brooks is just as aggressive getting to the rack when she comes off the bench. Mimi Collins and Madison Hayes provide…

After watching South Carolina pull off a double-digit comeback against LSU, I was struck once again by the depth of the Gamecocks’ talent. Six different players can realistically lead the scoring on any given night; there are defensive stoppers at every position and a bevy of long-range shooters; and there’s a multiplying effect of everyone’s individual output. Kamilla Cardoso’s seals inside, combined with Te-Hina Paopao and Bree Hall’s shooting, create room for Chloe Kitts and Raven Johnson to get to the basket. Johnson’s ball pressure at the point of attack allows Cardoso and Ashlyn Watkins to stay at home in the paint on defense. Everything works together, and the parts all seem relatively equally important.

But that got me thinking about teams where the balance isn’t as even. Teams that rely on superlative individual talent either because that star demands it, or because they don’t have the depth to play any other way. Those teams are more common, and unlike South Carolina — whose roster presents a whack-a-mole challenge to opponents — most teams run into the problem of how to perform when their stars are having an off night. Instead of focusing on the player of the year candidates this week, let’s take a look at some supporting casts that may be…

As college hoops swing into conference play, it’s time to revisit our transfer tiers ranking.

Our first installment of this series came out in late October, when we were just predicting the fits and potential performances of these transfer players within their new squads. Now, with about six weeks’ worth of hindsight, we’ve gone back to the drawing board to see where we were right and whom we might’ve missed. This round features seven entirely new players who’ve become key players for their teams as well as a new No. 1 and No. 2.

We’ll check back in midway through league play to see how these tiers continue to evolve with players stepping up and stepping into larger roles.

Editor’s note: Stats are updated through Sunday night’s games.

Thanksgiving lends itself to excess, and there was a buffet of options available on the basketball court this week – in all honesty, too much to consume if you had holiday obligations over the past few days.

It’s hard to know how much to read into these early tournaments when they take place oceans away during what most Americans consider to be vacation time instead of prime basketball-viewing season. One of the most shocking results of the week took place in Cancun between two teams (Green Bay and Washington State) who play in the northernmost areas of the U.S., more than 3,000 miles away from the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya.

But the basketball happened, and the results mean something now, even if the wins and losses won’t matter as much when March rolls around. So here’s our best attempt to digest the numerous developments of the past week with the inaugural ACC-SEC Challenge on deck.

Dropped out: North Carolina, Oklahoma

Almost famous: Duke, Oklahoma, UNLV, Alabama

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The Gamecocks, who are once again the comfortable choice for the top team in the rankings, just posted the highest win margin of the Dawn Staley era. They beat Mississippi Valley State by 82 points while holding the Devilettes to six or fewer points in all four quarters. For all the deserved plaudits about…

If the hope was that two weeks of basketball would have given a clearer picture of the hierarchy in women’s college basketball this season, that has not been the case. In fact, most of my conversations since Nov. 6 have featured some variation of, “Wait, is Team X good?”

Aside from South Carolina at the top — stop me if you’ve heard that before — every other projected contender has taken its lumps. While the Gamecocks roll through their opposition, most teams around the country need some time to figure out new rosters and systems. Growing pains were expected, like LSU and Virginia Tech integrating new transfers, or Maryland and Indiana dealing with the graduations of WNBA first-round picks.

Nevertheless, on the whole, the quality of play around the country has been better than expected. But given my regional biases, and the fact that this is the final year of the Pac-12 as we know it, these inaugural rankings will focus out west on the conference that is in the midst of an epic going-away party.

Almost Famous: Duke, Princeton, Maryland

Is the promise of Stanford’s frontcourt being realized?

The Cardinal had an embarrassment of riches at the forward positions last season, but there were too many options for any individual players – other than Cameron Brink – to…