Welcome back to Bracket Breakers, where we are excited to keep extending our search for upsets in the NCAA women’s tournament. This year, the potential Cinderellas on the women’s side are more interesting than ever, with more bracket-breaking weapons in their arsenals. Today we’re breaking down which of those teams has the highest chance to beat an overdog in Friday’s first-round games.
As on the men’s side, our statistical model Slingshot, developed with help from the Furman University Mathematics Department, begins by estimating the strength of all D-I teams according to their scoring margin per 100 possessions, adjusted for strength of schedule. We then adjust those basic power ratings for how strongly teams carry traits associated with successful tournament teams of the past.
For underdogs, these characteristics generally include factors that widen the variability of a team’s play, such as shooting lots of threes and working to force turnovers. For favorites, it’s just the opposite: higher seeds cruise to wins when they cut risks and avoid chaos. Then we estimate matchup results.
Before we continue, two observations and one caveat. First, as we’ve mentioned, while parity is increasing in the women’s game, and there are more viable contenders for the…
