Happy Tuesday, and welcome to week #4 of WNUR Sports’ Bracketology. 

Unfortunately, it’s been a tough couple of weeks on the hardwood for Northwestern women’s basketball. The ‘Cats were slated as high as a seven-seed just a few weeks ago, but losses to Indiana and Minnesota in the last couple of days have dropped NU out of the field of 64. Consequently, new this week will be a special section called “How far away are the ‘Cats?” Stay tuned.

Another wild week of women’s basketball brought lots of change to our bracket. For the first time since week #2, there is a change at the No. 1 seed line. Additionally, seven new teams made the bracket this week, while two mid-majors replaced two Big Ten teams as a couple of the last teams currently included in the field.

Before we reveal this week’s brackets, a weekly reminder of six ground rules to keep in mind:

1. Weekly projections are based off of team’s performance and résumé up to that week. Projecting future success is not the goal of this exercise.
2. This week’s brackets reflect games as of Monday, February 13.
3. Automatic bid-receiving conference champions (indicated between these guys on the bracket) are the team in first place of the conference at the time of that week’s bracketology update. 
4. Green and red arrows show a team’s week-by-week movement in our projections.
5. Unlike the men’s tournament, the women’s tournament features the opportunity for teams seeded one through four to host first-weekend games. Therefore, the difference between a four and a five-seed in the women’s tournament is a sizable one.
6.  Stanford will not be able to host first and second-round games because the Pac-12 Gymnastics Championship is slated to take over Maples Pavillion on March 18. The Cardinal is currently a three-seed in our projections, so a five, six, or seven-seed will likely be the beneficiary of the opportunity to host first weekend games in Stanford’s place. 

Now, onto this week’s update. We’ll begin, as always, with the Bridgeport region, headlined by 100-straight winning UConn:

Let’s head southwest to Lexington:

To Oklahoma City we go:

And lastly, to Stockton, which sees the Texas Longhorns making a two-seedline jump:

Bids By Conference:

SEC (8)

ACC (7)

Pac-12 (7)

Big 12 (5)

Big Ten (3)

American (3)

Big East (3)

Horizon (2) 

Colonial (2)

Ivy (2) 

Last Four In:

Elon

California

West Virginia

Harvard

First Four Out:

Indiana

Tulane

Iowa

Georgia Tech

How far away are the ‘Cats?

After its loss Monday night at Minnesota, Northwestern drops down to seven spots out of the tournament. In addition to the “First Four Out,” the ‘Cats are also currently behind Michigan State and Virginia Tech, who are fifth and sixth out of the field of 64 respectively. Thursday night’s game at Iowa is nothing short of a must-win for the Wildcats. 

Longest Travel:

1. NC State to Oregon State – Raleigh, NC to Corvallis, OR – 2879 miles
2. California to Maryland – Berkeley, CA to College Park, MD – 2805 miles
3. Gonzaga to Connecticut – Spokane, WA to to Storrs, CT – 2709 miles

Upcoming Impact Games (All times CST):

Kansas State @ West Virginia , 6 p.m. Wednesday

Florida State @ Virginia, 6 p.m. Thursday 

Michigan @ Indiana, 5 p.m. Thursday 

Northwestern @ Iowa, 7 p.m. Thursday (89.3 FM Evanston-Chicago and WNURSports.com)

Washington @ UCLA, 10 p.m. Friday

Texas @ Oklahoma, 1 p.m. Saturday

Mississippi State @ Texas A&M, 4 p.m. Sunday

Notre Dame @ Syracuse, 4 p.m. Sunday

 

See you next week!