Despite LSU winning the NCAA title last April as the lowest-seeded women’s college basketball champion since 1997, seeding matters. While not always the case — LSU was a No. 3 seed — a team’s seed often helps ensure more favorable matchups and geographical placement within the NCAA tournament bracket.
So how can teams maximize their seed? By playing a good schedule and succeeding against it. Nonconference schedules are the part coaches and athletic directors can control. All the debates in February and decisions in March about seeds often revert to what teams did with that control.
Bottom line: If teams schedule well, they generally get rewarded by the NCAA selection committee.
So, which teams’ slate of nonconference games will likely help them come March? And which teams will wish they had added a marquee game or two?
Schedules that should help
The top of this list is regular domain for the Huskies, who have had the NET ranking’s No. 1 nonconference schedule each of the last two years. That should be the case this season, too. Seven of UConn’s first 10 opponents appeared in the latest women’s Bracketology. The highlights: vs. UCLA in the…
