January 18 Update: The Six Chart Toppers This Year

The Baylor Lady Bears have become the sixth team to top the College Women's Hoops S-Factor at some point this year. The five others are Connecticut, Stanford, South Carolina, Notre Dame, and Seton Hall.

Now in:
Kansas State
Villanova
Hofstra
Bryant

Now out:
North Carolina State
Northwestern
Elon
Robert Morris

Still out:
South Florida
Duke

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 8
(1) South Carolina
(3) Kentucky
(4) Mississippi State
(5) Florida
(6) Missouri
(7) Tennessee
(8) Georgia
(9) Texas A&M

Pac 12: 7
(2) Stanford
(2) Arizona State
(2) Oregon State
(3) UCLA
(3) Washington
(4) USC
(5) Utah

Big Ten: 6
(3) Ohio State
(4) Maryland
(5) Purdue
(6) Michigan State
(7) Iowa
(8) Rutgers

Big 12: 6
(1) Baylor
(1) Texas
(4) Oklahoma
(5) Oklahoma State
(9) West Virginia
(9) Kansas State

ACC: 5
(2) Notre Dame
(6) Louisville
(7) Florida State
(8) Syracuse
(8) Miami (FL)

Big East: 4
(6) St. John's
(9) Seton Hall
(10) DePaul
(11) Villanova

Atlantic 10: 2
(7) George Washington
(10) Duquesne

West Coast: 2
(10) BYU
(10) San Diego

American: 1
(1) Connecticut

February 20 Update: Seven Number Ones

Today Baylor becomes the seventh team to be rated number one by the S-Factor this season. Here is the list of women's college basketball teams that the S-Factor has rated in first place this season:

1. Notre Dame (4 weeks)
2. Maryland (2.5 weeks)
3. Kentucky (2.5 weeks)
4. Louisville (1 week)
5. Tennessee (0.5 weeks)
6. Baylor (0.5 weeks)
7. Minnesota (!)(0.5 weeks)

There have only been two teams to top the AP poll this season, and neither of them are represented on this list. South Carolina has come close in the S-Factor, having been ranked 2nd for one week and 3rd for 5.5 weeks. But the S-Factor has not been so kind to the American Athletic Conference's Connecticut, which has only ascended as high as 5th place for a half-week and has spent most of its time in 9th or 10th place (2 weeks apiece).

In 2014 there were five teams that traded the first place ranking all season (Notre Dame, Connecticut, Stanford, Tennessee, and Louisville snuck in there once). In 2013 there were only three (Connecticut, Stanford, and then Brittney Griner's Baylor from Christmas to Selection Monday).
 
Now in:
Kansas State
Colorado State
Stephen F. Austin

Now out:
Tulane
Fresno State
Lamar

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 9
ACC: 8
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 6
PAC 12: 5
American: 2
Atlantic 10: 2

January 27 Update: Some Stuff Happened

Back from vacation and still catching up. Baylor lost to Kansas? What?

New charts are in the tabs above. They look like this:

Now in: 
USC
St. Joseph's
DePaul
Oklahoma
Dayton
Rutgers
Georgia Tech
Central Michigan
Colorado State
Green Bay
Liberty
Central Arkansas
Robert Morris

Now out:
Nebraska
Oregon State
Marquette
Michigan State
BYU
Washington State
Creighton
George Washington
Fresno State
Winthrop
St. Francis (NY)
Cleveland State
Stephen F. Austin


Conferences with multiple bids:
ACC: 8
SEC: 6
Big 12: 6
Big Ten: 6
Pac 12: 4
American: 3
West Coast: 3
Big East: 2
Atlantic 10: 2
MAC: 2

Line Change in Automatic Bids

Texas A&M had yet another great game this weekend against Baylor at home in front of the largest crowd ever to witness a women's basketball game in College Station. This time though, the Aggies fell short by a score of 63-60. Odyssey Sims, the superstar freshman guard for Baylor, led the way with 25 points including the go-ahead bucket with 26 seconds left. Brittney Griner was held to "merely" 17 points and 12 rebounds. Baylor's win improved their RPI enough to move the Bears back into a predicted number 1 seed in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor.

Elsewhere in the country. this weekend saw ten conference leaders losing games, which led to seven new automatic bid placeholders.

1. In the Atlantic Sun, Campbell College took North Florida to two overtimes but couldn't pull off the win.

2. In the Big Sky, Montana beat in-state rival and conference leader Montana State in a revenge match from the previous week, when the Bears lost to the Bobcats at home.

3. In the Big South, former conference leader Gardner Webb lost to UNC Asheville by a point.

4. In the Big 10, former conference leader Michigan State was upended by Iowa.

5. In the MAC, Toledo emerged from a difficult week with the conference lead, after beating former conference leaders Kent State and Bowling Green.

6. In the Missouri Valley conference, Missouri State's loss to Creighton on Thursday stripped the Bears of the conference lead.

7. In one of the strangest results of the week, TCU, a team that was cruising towards an automatic bid, lost two games to the two teams with the worst records in the Mountain West; New Mexico and Air Force.

8. In the Patriot League, Navy lost to Colgate (Colgate's best win of the season), but Navy still retains the presumed automatic bid.

9. In the Southland Conference, McNeese State suffered their first loss of the conference season to Central Arkansas, but retains the conference lead.

10. Middle Tennessee State was tripped up by the Golden Panthers of Florida International, which means UA Little Rock now has the lead in the Sun Belt Conference.


Now in: Arizona State, Wyoming, Radford, East Tennessee State, Toledo, UA Little Rock, Northern Iowa
Now out: Northwestern, TCU, Gardner Webb, Campbell, Kent State, Middle Tennessee State, Missouri State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
Big Ten: 7
ACC: 7
Big 12: 6
SEC: 5
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2

If Womens Basketball Was Like Boxing

Bet you didn't know there was a title fight last night. 17th-ranked Miami had won 17 in a row coming in to last night's game against 22nd-ranked Florida State, but the Hurricanes lost in Tallahassee 66-59. If collegiate women's basketball worked like boxing, Florida State would now posess a number one seed.

To make this boxing analogy work, let's say that a title belt is equivalent to a #1 seed in the tournament. And let's assume that the top four teams in the preseason AP poll got to have the #1 seeds. These belonged to UConn, Baylor, Stanford and Tennessee on November 1st. Furthermore, let's say that every single game played is like when someone challenges a champion for his title. When Connecticut beat Baylor on November 16th, Connecticut assumed control of the 2nd #1 seed (let's call this the WBO belt). But when Connecticut lost to Stanford on December 30th, they gave up both their own belt (WBA, let's say) and the WBO belt.

If you follow this analogy, the #1 seeds today would be: Stanford, Stanford, Stanford and Florida State. See the chart below.

Because Smokin' Joe Tennessee's first loss was to Georgetown Foreman, and Georgetown's first loss after that was to Miami Ali, and Miami's first loss after that was to Florida State last night, Florida State now has the last #1 seed.

Obviously this has no bearing in reality. Washington State, worst BCS-conference team in the nation, briefly held the #1 seed when they beat Cal (who beat Arizona State, who beat DePaul, who beat Stanford). I guess they would be the Leon Spinks of womens basketball.



Now in: Southern University
Now out: Alabama A&M

Conferences with multiple bids:Big East: 9
Big Ten: 8
ACC: 7
SEC: 5
Big 12: 5
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2

Polar Bears

Last night 1,486 devoted Jayhawk fans made the trek through a snowstorm to watch Kansas get walloped by Baylor 76-37 inside Phog Allen Fieldhouse. The number 1 team in the land was unchallenged; Baylor made Kansas look bad both offensively and defensively. Not only did Kansas have no answer for Brittney Griner (who does?), but they also had no answer for anyone else on Baylor's team. This loss kicks Kansas out of the presumed at-large bids according to the College Women's Hoops S-Factor.

As I'm posting this in the afternoon, I already know there is going to be at least one game that messes with the S-Factor tomorrow. Arizona State just lost to Washington State. Arizona State is the weakest of the four Pac-10 teams projected by the S-Factor to make it into the tournament, and Washington State is one of the weakest major conference teams (second only to Oregon State). A loss to the Cougars certainly hurts Arizona State's chances at making the field of 64, although it remains to be seen if it hurts them that much.


Now in: Missouri State, Houston, Army
Now out: Vanderbilt, Kansas, American University

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 5
SEC: 4
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2
Conference USA: 2
Missouri Valley: 2

Ohio Stuff

The Big 12 had an exciting weekend as a conference. All twelve teams played in six games. Of those six games, four went to overtime. The two that didn't: Texas A&M and Baylor both blew out their opponents. Judging by the results so far in the first three rounds of Big 12 games, it's probably safe to say that anything can happen on any given day ... except for Baylor or Texas A&M losing, which probably won't happen unless they're playing each other.

Ohio State may have ended their long slump into mediocrity by beating Michigan State 67-53 and giving the Spartans their first conference loss and their first overall loss since Baylor way back in November.

Other big news in Ohio; Bowling Green lost to Kent State 44-43 in Mid America Conference action, Bowling Green's second loss of the season and the first since a rather fluky one point loss to the Purple Aces of Evansville at the beginning of the season. This means Bowling Green has lost by a combined two points in their two losses this season.

Now in: Kent State, St. John's, Ohio State, Charlotte
Now out: Bowling Green, California, LSU, Wisconsin

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 6
PAC-10: 4
SEC: 4
Atlantic 10: 3

Slouching Tigers, Rising Techsters

The first conference games for the Big 12 occured this past weekend, a very active weekend for almost every team. Iowa State started the conference season with arguably their hardest game, Baylor at Waco; the Cyclones lost. Texas failed to secure a win after leading Missouri by 12 points with under three minutes to go. And Texas Tech scored an important win over Kansas at Lawrence, propelling the Red Raiders up to a dubiously high 5-seed in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor.

One unusual game that had ramifications for many teams was on Thursday when LSU lost to South Carolina. The loss pushed the Tigers down out of the S-Factor-predicted at-large bids, but it also knocked LSU out of the top 50 in RPI.

Because of this, several teams that scored victories against LSU suddenly had a weaker strength of schedule. Tulane, most precipitously, dropped 28 spots in the S-Factor just because of the LSU loss (even though Tulane now has won 6 games in a row and is still slated in the S-Factor to get the automatic bid from Conference USA).

Ohio State and Northwestern, teams that have beaten LSU this year, dropped 15 spots and 5 spots respectively (although Ohio State's loss to Iowa on Saturday certainly doesn't help matters).

The biggest gainer from LSU's loss? Louisiana Tech. LSU had beaten the Lady Techsters earlier this year. It seems counterintuitive that an opponent that beat your team earlier in the year and now has a lower RPI than before can actually boost your team's ranking. But now instead of winning 2 out of 4 against top 50 teams, Louisiana Tech has won 2 out of 3. It's enough of a difference to lift Louisiana Tech 20 spots in the S-Factor. Sometimes the numbers are just crazy in Mid-Majoropolis.



Now in: California, Purdue, St. John's
Now out: LSU, Arizona, Texas

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 10
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 5
PAC-10: 5
SEC: 4
Atlantic 10: 2

The Problem with RPI (and the S-Factor)

Charlie Creme, resident women's bracketologist for ESPN, has published his first guess of the season. His number one seeds are Connecticut, Duke, Tennessee and Baylor, which I would agree are the obvious top four teams in the nation right now. The College Women's Hoops S-Factor, however, does not agree with Creme, putting 6 teams in front of Baylor, the #1 team in the nation right now according to the most recent AP poll. It is entirely a strength of schedule issue, a flaw that appears more in RPI numbers than in real life.

Let's compare Texas A&M with Baylor. Both Baylor and A&M have only one close loss so far, to elite teams (Duke, Connecticut) at the home arena of those teams. They've played similar numbers of top 50 teams (Texas A&M: 5, Baylor: 4) and have similar winning percentages in those games.

But humans and computers diverge in two key ways. Humans love Baylor because they have a huge marquee win to their credit (over Tennessee), while Texas A&M's biggest victory has come at the expense of Michigan, a team with much less cachet than the legendary Lady Vols. Computers, however, don't recognize "cachet" unless you program it into them. Computers prefer Texas A&M because they have played only two games to sub-100-ranked teams, while Baylor has played 9 such games. Baylor's schedule has included great teams and terrible teams, while Texas A&M's schedule has mostly been full of pretty good teams.

A team that plays 10 mediocre teams will have the same strength of schedule as a team that plays 5 great teams and 5 terrible teams. If both teams win every game, computers would rank the two teams equally. But Team B beat 5 great teams! They should be much higher ranked than Team A, according to a human's analysis.



Now in: (same as yesterday)
Now out: (same as yesterday)

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 10
ACC: 7
Big 12: 7
Big Ten: 6
PAC-10: 5
SEC: 3
Atlantic 10: 2

DePaul beats Stanford

Tara VanDerveer has to wait for her 800th win, as DePaul shut down previously-undefeated Stanford last night. As a result of this quality victory, DePaul shoots up to fourth place in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor and a #1 seed, much the same way Baylor's win over Tennessee a couple of days ago shot Baylor to a #1 seed temporarily. As of now, the S-Factor gives three of the four #1 seeds to Big East teams, a scenario that almost certainly won't happen. But the Big East is the only major conference to have played some conference games, which gives every team in the conference an advantage in the S-Factor. Can't wait 'til January when the rest of the conferences start their regular season!

Conferences with multiple teams:
Big East: 10
Big 12: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 6
PAC 10: 4
SEC: 3