The Sweet 16 in the women’s NCAA Tournament is almost entirely built of the top four seeds in each region. Only three teams (No. 5 Colorado, No. 5 Baylor and No. 7 Duke) won on the road in the second round to advance to the Sweet 16. My model projects the likelihood of upsets now that we’re in the tournament’s second week.
South Carolina is, of course, the overwhelming favorite. The Gamecocks won the national title in 42.4 percent of my simulations. They made the Final Four more than 70 percent of the time.
My projected favorite in the other regions are Texas, UConn and UCLA. UConn is only the No. 3 seed in Regional 3 in Portland, but No. 2 Ohio State lost in the second round and my model does not rate USC as highly as its No. 1 seed.
UCLA is the favorite in Regional 2 in Albany ahead of No. 1 seed Iowa. The Hawkeyes are a strong favorite against Colorado in the Sweet 16, but would be an underdog in my model against either UCLA or LSU in the Elite Eight. That region is balanced among the top three teams with Iowa, UCLA and LSU all making the Final Four in more than 25 percent of my simulations.
Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth explaining what you’re looking at. I created a college basketball model to project the outcomes of games. I take several metrics into account and adjust them for the opponent, and that makes a projection for each team on how likely they are to win a game against an average opponent. From there, I set up the bracket and simulated the tournament — all 15 remaining games — one million times to get my projected odds. With this method, I can have odds for how likely it is for every team to reach each round of the tournament.
Full projections for the 2024 NCAA Tournament
Below is the percentage chance each team has of winning a game in the round listed. South Carolina’s 70.8% chance below E8 is the chance the model projects the Gamecocks to have of winning in the Elite 8 and thus make it to the Final Four.
| team | champ | f4 | e8 | s16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
42.4% |
53.8% |
70.8% |
88.2% |
|
|
13% |
20.5% |
49.8% |
71.5% |
|
|
11.4% |
29.5% |
49.6% |
75.1% |
|
|
7% |
19.5% |
35.1% |
53.6% |
|
|
5.3% |
10% |
20.4% |
71.2% |
|
|
5% |
15.2% |
29% |
46.4% |
|
|
3.8% |
7.8% |
26.8% |
65.3% |
|
|
3.4% |
12.2% |
27% |
66.3% |
|
|
3.2% |
11.4% |
24.6% |
56.8% |
|
|
1.5% |
6.4% |
16.2% |
43.2% |
|
|
1.4% |
3.4% |
13.7% |
28.5% |
|
|
0.7% |
2% |
9.7% |
34.7% |
|
|
0.6% |
3.2% |
9.6% |
24.9% |
|
|
0.5% |
2.7% |
8.9% |
33.7% |
|
|
0.5% |
1.5% |
5% |
28.8% |
|
|
0.3% |
1% |
3.8% |
11.8% |
(Photo of Tessa Johnson: Eakin Howard / Getty Images)
