Before the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee issues its ticket to the NCAA’s March Madness tournament, we want to understand what they’ll be discussing in the recruiting room.
The DI Women’s Basketball Committee uses a list of 12 criteria.
- A bad loss
- Common competitors
- Competing at a loss
- Early performance and late performance
- To the head
- Observable component
- Total record
- Regional rankings
- Important victories
- Schedule robustness
Then the final two criteria are metrics: the NCAA Evaluation Tool, known as NET, which the committee has used since the 2021 championship, and a new one this year – Wins Above Bubble, or WAB.
NET is a prediction tool based on who you played, where you played, how well you played, and your game results. In four of the five years the NET has been introduced, the No. 1 team on qualifying Sunday has won the national championship.
WAB was added this quarter to supplement the NET measure. It doesn’t count wins, losses, or team efficiency, and it only measures the quality of your resume based on results. WAB is results-based and goes beyond strength of schedule to show how a team performed against that schedule. Each match is assigned a value between 1 and -1, and this cumulative total determines the team’s ranking.
As described in the NCAA’s principles and procedures for this year’s bracketsWAB shows how many wins a team has won compared to the average number of wins a bubble team has against the same schedule. WAB uses the NET as the basis of the opponent’s strength. A “bubble team” is defined as a team ranked 45th in the NETbased on research from recent women’s basketball seasons.
A lot can change between now and Selection Sunday, and it’s important to remember that both metrics are part of the criteria the committee will use to make its decision.
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