Women's NCAA tournament 2023: Why Stanford is the final No. 1 seed

The South Carolina Gamecocks, Indiana Hoosiers, Virginia Tech Hokies and Stanford Cardinal are the No. 1 seeds in the 2023 women's NCAA tournament bracket.

Nailing down which team would be the final 1-seed was likely one of the most difficult decisions for this season's NCAA women's selection committee. The Gamecocks and Hoosiers were locks, and the Hokies weren't far behind, but three teams — the UConn Huskies, Iowa Hawkeyes and the Cardinal — were in the running to join the trio on the top line.

In the NCAA's final reveal on Feb. 23, the committee's top 16 seemed to lean toward recent success over full body of work. At Bracketology headquarters, we wondered whether that trend would continue on Selection Sunday.

Here's a look at why Stanford got the nod for the No. 1 seed, and how the top-16 seeds — and the right to host early-round games — came into focus.

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Résumé, not recent success, won the night for Stanford. The Cardinal had more wins against the top 50 of the NET than any team in the country expect South Carolina. That key metric and the fact that the Pac-12 was the highest-rated league in the country carried the day for Stanford over UConn and Iowa.

Questions lingered about how Stanford finished the season — a loss to Utah in the regular-season finale and giving away a comfortable fourth-quarter lead before falling to UCLA in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals — but the committee elected to look at the broader picture to reward Stanford.

UConn's résumé is better in a couple of key areas — top-25 NET wins and strength of schedule — but the Huskies struggled in a more pronounced way in February than Stanford did. Both teams lost