It’s time to pick your women’s NCAA Tournament bracket. We’ve got plenty of general advice on how to pick a bracket, but today I’m digging into the math for each women’s team in the field of 68 and their chances of winning each round.
The women’s tournament is more competitive every year, and this year my model predicts some upsets.
South Carolina is my favorite to win the tourney — nothing controversial there. But after that, my model diverges from the odds. BetMGM still has South Carolina, Iowa and LSU forming a clear top tier in odds to win the tournament outright. My model instead likes South Carolina, Texas, UConn and UCLA — much like The Athletic’s women’s college basketball team picked in our women’s tournament futures preview.
Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth explaining what you’re looking at. I created a college basketball model to project the outcomes of games. I take several metrics into account and adjust them for the opponent, and that creates a projection for each team on how likely they are to win a game against an average opponent. From there, I set up the bracket and simulate the tournament — all 67 of those games — one million times to get my projected odds. With this method, I can have odds for how likely it is for…
