Women's Bracketology 2/6

[ISU3PtLand]

Bracketology - Women's College Basketball Brackets and Predictions - ESPN

Charlie Creme has us as a #9 seed playing #8 St. John's in the first round.

 

[clonomaniac]

How is this possible?

 

[Buster28]

How is this possible?

We keep winning and improving our RPI after a dismal Big 12 start. How is it not possible?

 

[clones26]

and that has us playing Stanford in the 2nd round against Taylor Greenfield..yikes on the Ogumlike sisters.

 

[benman82]

I'm sure it also helps that we are hosting two rounds

 

[jaretac]

I'm actually not too surprised. The Big 12 is the best womens basketball conference in america so that earns us some points. Last week he had 8 of 10 teams making the tournament. I think with the way we have been playing lately we can say we are at least as good as 7th place and I think we will end up around 5th place. I literally could see us wining our next 7 games, however it is more likely we will win 6 of our next 7.

@MU
@Tech
KU
OU
MU
@OkState
KSU

I think we beat MU both home and away. Tech really isn't very good. KU we took to 2 OT at Kansas. OU will be a tough game, but it is in Hilton. OkState we just beat by 21. KSU we beat by 9 on the road.

 

[mred]

Looks like only 2 of 4 projected 1 seeds are hosting (I'm counting UConn here), none of the projected 2 seeds, and only 2 of the 4 projected 3 seeds. That means if we are seeded 6 through 11, there may actually be a lot of different possibilities for opponents this year.

Bracketology has us not playing in the DSM region. We aren't guaranteed that region, but I imagine we'll be put there if possible.

 

[twistedredbird]

Personally, I am hoping for a 12 seed, against a 4/5 seed TN. Pat Summit is done this year, and I think one of the biggest travesties of ISU WBB is that we have never played TN and Summit.

Who knows, maybe we will keep on a hot win streak, and reach the level of a 5-7 seed. I personally just hate the 8/9 seed. Would rather be a 10-12.

 

[ISU3PtLand]

I wish Jerry Palm was still doing a women's bracket projection. He was a lot better than Creme at knowing where the committee was going to put teams. Palm actually put thought into the process whereas Creme just kinda seems to make a "guess".

I have a hard time believing that the committee would ship Baylor all the way to Norfolk, Virginia when Little Rock is a lot closer with no "home" teams (Arkansas plays in Fayetteville, not Little Rock).

 

[mred]

If we got 8/9, there is a good chance we'd get Stanford (like the bracketology shows). If those four end up as the actual 1-seeds, Notre Dame is hosting, Baylor is a conference foe, and the committee wouldn't dare move UConn out of Connecticut even though they aren't technically hosting (Fairfield is).

 

[Buster28]

Personally, I am hoping for a 12 seed, against a 4/5 seed TN. Pat Summit is done this year, and I think one of the biggest travesties of ISU WBB is that we have never played TN and Summit.

Not that we haven't had our opportunities: We choked in the 2nd round against BYU in 2002 when we played them (an 11 seed) as a 3 seed. BYU lost to Tennessee at Hilton in the regional semi-final. We also were set up to meet in 2009 at Bowling Green in the 4/5 second round match-up. Ball State came along and bounced the Vols in what had to have been the funnest women's game I've seen in person not involving Iowa State.

A side note: when we were in northern California, we went to Sacramento to see Brittany Wilkins while she was with their WNBA team several years back. They had an autograph session after the game which we stuck around for. Brit was at the same table as Kara Lawson, so I got to talk to her. I told her how much we'd wanted to play them in Hilton in '02. She said they felt the same way, that they all (Tennessee's team) wanted to experience what this "Hilton Magic" was they kept hearing about. Then she said with a smile, "all you had to do was win." I responded, "yeah, tell me about it!"

 

[Sloup]

This is good to see. Iowa State and Bill Fennelly have a good reputation, so I think we might be riding that a little bit, but we'll have the tournament quality resume before the Big XII tournament.

 

[mred]

Not that we haven't had our opportunities: We choked in the 2nd round against BYU in 2002 when we played them (an 11 seed) as a 3 seed.

Obviously we should have been able to win that game, but BYU was on a huge tear. They smoked the 6 seed in the first-round game and they gave Tennessee a real game in the third round.

EDIT: They beat 6-seed Florida 90-52. They beat us 75-69. They then lost to Tennessee 68-57. BYU lead the Tennessee game by 9 late in the first half before the Vols went on a run. BYU fought to within 6 with 3 minutes left but Tennessee held them off.

 

[Buster28]

RealtimeRPI has us at #48 with a 25 SOS, good for sixth best in the Big 12.

Here's how it shakes down as of today (Monday 2/6):

RPI, Team, SOS

1 Baylor 5
7 Texas A&M 3
11 Kansas State 2
17 Oklahoma 17
34 Kansas 28
48 Iowa State 25
52 Texas Tech 66
55 Oklahoma State 33
65 Texas 32
92 Missouri 20

They have us projected to go 4-4 over the last eight games, losing all four road games. IMO: highly unlikely we don't come out above .500 over these final eight.

 

[NYCy]

RealtimeRPI has us at #48 with a 25 SOS, good for sixth best in the Big 12.

Here's how it shakes down as of today (Monday 2/6):

RPI, Team, SOS

1 Baylor 5
7 Texas A&M 3
11 Kansas State 2
17 Oklahoma 17
34 Kansas 28
48 Iowa State 25
52 Texas Tech 66
55 Oklahoma State 33
65 Texas 32
92 Missouri 20

They have us projected to go 4-4 over the last eight games, losing all four road games. IMO: highly unlikely we don't come out above .500 over these final eight.

Ha - I literally just logged in to update everybody on our newly minted Top-50 RPI ranking, but I see you beat me to it! :smile: I agree REaltimRPI's prediction we'll lose all our road games is wrong. We beat K-State on the road and we sure as heck aren't going to lose to Mizzou on the road. I think we have a great chance to finish the conference 11-7 (only loss the rest of the season being Baylor) and in 4th or 5th place. I'd hope that would make us a 10-11-12 seed to avoid the dreaded 8-9 seed matchup with a 1-seed in the second round (which basically means you have no shot at the Sweet 16).

 

[Buster28]

Ha - I literally just logged in to update everybody on our newly minted Top-50 RPI ranking, but I see you beat me to it! :smile: I agree REaltimRPI's prediction we'll lose all our road games is wrong. We beat K-State on the road and we sure as heck aren't going to lose to Mizzou on the road. I think we have a great chance to finish the conference 11-7 (only loss the rest of the season being Baylor) and in 4th or 5th place. I'd hope that would make us a 10-11-12 seed to avoid the dreaded 8-9 seed matchup with a 1-seed in the second round (which basically means you have no shot at the Sweet 16).

Sorry! Didn't know how long it had been posted today. :smile:

If we keep winning, we'll be above an 8 seed for sure. We're already a 9 in the current Bracketology. If we can win enough to sneak into 4th place or so, we'll be in pretty good shape for a decent seed, especially if we can take a game or two in KC. It all comes down to execution. Do we win and help ourselves or do we let some slip away that we shouldn't have and tumble back into a less-than-desireable seed?

Agree that the 8/9 slot is one best to avoid, although we did benefit from a 1 seed going down in 2009. Duke lost as a 1 in the second round at 9 seed Michigan State. We made it to the Elite 8 after that thrilling comeback against the Spartans in the final 90 seconds in Berkeley. Still, I don't want us to be the ones set up to have to hope we can knock off a 1 seed to advance out of Ames.

 

[CycloneRulzzz]

Not that we haven't had our opportunities: We choked in the 2nd round against BYU in 2002 when we played them (an 11 seed) as a 3 seed. BYU lost to Tennessee at Hilton in the regional semi-final. We also were set up to meet in 2009 at Bowling Green in the 4/5 second round match-up. Ball State came along and bounced the Vols in what had to have been the funnest women's game I've seen in person not involving Iowa State.

We also had another chance to play them back in the early days of Olson and Grimm. We lost to Rutgers in Ames and a trip to knoxville would of been the reward.

 

[CycloneRulzzz]

Also a picture of Pop is on the ESPN WBB page.:smile:

 

[twistedredbird]

Personally, I am hoping for a 12 seed, against a 4/5 seed TN. Pat Summit is done this year, and I think one of the biggest travesties of ISU WBB is that we have never played TN and Summit.

Not that we haven't had our opportunities: We choked in the 2nd round against BYU in 2002 when we played them (an 11 seed) as a 3 seed. BYU lost to Tennessee at Hilton in the regional semi-final. We also were set up to meet in 2009 at Bowling Green in the 4/5 second round match-up. Ball State came along and bounced the Vols in what had to have been the funnest women's game I've seen in person not involving Iowa State. A side note: when we were in northern California, we went to Sacramento to see Brittany Wilkins while she was with their WNBA team several years back. They had an autograph session after the game which we stuck around for. Brit was at the same table as Kara Lawson, so I got to talk to her. I told her how much we'd wanted to play them in Hilton in '02. She said they felt the same way, that they all (Tennessee's team) wanted to experience what this


cool story. thx 4 sharing. of course a couple years ago I think we would have beaten TN if they had not lost to Ball St. we would have matched up real well that year. even though I have been a real big TN fan since before BF era, I am not a Lawson fan.

 

[mred]

and we sure as heck aren't going to lose to Mizzou on the road

Missouri on the road can be hard. Baylor blew them out, but their other conference home games:

Texas Tech - 6 point loss
Kansas - 10 point loss
OSU - 4 point loss
Oklahoma - 3 point loss

On the flip side, their closest conference road loss is 18 points @ Texas.

I remember some coach talking very frankly two or three years ago about how hard it can be to play there partially because the extreme lack of crowd attendance and enthusiasm gives the game a weird vibe.

Attendance (nat'l rank)
Iowa State 9789 (2)
Tech 7708 (7)
Baylor 7688 (8)
Oklahoma 6865 (10)
Texas A&M 6220 (13)
Kansas State 4013 (20)
Texas 3944 (22)
Oklahoma State 2618 (46)
Kansas 2204 (56)
Missouri 1809 (75)