Women's Bubble Watch: March Madness bracket predictions - ESPN

A chaotic final weekend of the regular season in the Power 5 conferences set up women's college basketball for what should be one of the most impactful Champ Weeks we've had in recent years.

The Pac-12 and SEC tournaments pit multiple bubble teams against each other in the first round, and the Pac-12, ACC and Big Ten tournaments will have big implications on No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. But all eyes are on the bubble, too, and which teams end up with at-large invitations from the women's NCAA selection committee.

Using the ESPN Analytics' Women's College Basketball Power index (BPI) — which represents how many points above or below average a team ranks — we're projecting the bubble. Along with team ratings, BPI generates Strength of Record (SOR), a measure of how impressive each team's record is given its schedule. We're using these tools, as well as the Strength of Schedule (SOS) the committee uses, to determine which teams look like locks to make the 2024 NCAA tournament, which squads should make the field (barring a lot of surprises among automatic NCAA bids) and which teams still have work to do to bolster their résumé in the conference tournaments.

We also have projections for how likely teams are to progress to each round of their conference tournaments.

Here is our current projection of the bubble:

Teams from expected one-bid conferences: 22
Locks: 27
The bubble: 38 teams for 19 available spots
Should be in: 11 teams
Work to do: 27 teams

Locks

NC State Wolfpack, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Virginia Tech Hokies, Syracuse Orange, Louisville Cardinals, Duke Blue Devils

Should be in

Florida State Seminoles, North Carolina Tar Heels

Work to do

Miami Hurricanes

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