When the NCAA Division I Choice Committee for the ladies’s basketball event meets this upcoming season, there shall be a brand new metric that committee members take into account when determining the place to position squads within the 68-team bracket.
It’s known as Wins Above Bubble — or just WAB — and it’s been a preferred metric used within the males’s recreation for a couple of years and was formally utilized by the boys’s choice committee final season.
In a Her Hoop Stats publication from 2021, author Calvin Wetzel laid out what the metric’s functions are: “It solutions the query, ‘What number of extra wins does Workforce A have than the variety of wins a bubble staff can be anticipated to have towards the identical schedule?’”
On its web site, the NCAA defined the metric this manner: “Wins In opposition to Bubble calculates the anticipated profitable proportion for a median bubble staff in every recreation of a staff’s schedule after which subtracts that whole from the staff’s precise variety of wins. For instance, if a median bubble staff was anticipated to win 19 video games towards Workforce A’s schedule, however Workforce A received 20, it could have a +1.0 WAB score. It’s the quantity of wins you have got minus the quantity of wins a median bubble staff would anticipate to have versus your schedule.”
Briefly, the metric will reward groups for enjoying towards — and beating — good groups.
And it’s a metric that Jackie Carson, the ACC’s Senior Affiliate Commissioner for Ladies’s Basketball, helps.
Carson stated she sat down with some members of the choice committee earlier this yr after Virginia Tech was one the First 4 Out of the 2025 NCAA Event.
“What do we have to inform our faculties? How do we have to schedule higher? ? So, I did a deep dive into that,” Carson informed SB Nation this week.
The Hokies, underneath first-year head coach Megan Duffy, went 19-13 and 9-9 in ACC play this previous season. They ranked forty seventh in NET, however had seven wins towards groups that ranked within the prime 100 in NET, which was greater than Washington and Columbia and the identical quantity as Princeton and Nebraska, all of whom acquired at-large bids to the event.
“I like (WAB), as a result of I feel that was slightly little bit of our argument,” Carson stated. “We’ve to beat faculties that we’re presupposed to beat and we now have to win video games that we’re presupposed to win, proper? However I additionally assume there’s one thing to be stated about, if we lose to somebody within the ACC, you’re nonetheless taking part in a stronger energy of schedule in comparison with another person in a unique league that’s beating staff (ranked) 275 (in NET). So, I like that there’s a brand new metric that rewards, you already know, who’re you taking part in? And what have they finished?”
Virginia Tech had three wins towards groups who made the NCAA Event throughout ACC play: Georgia Tech, Louisville and Cal.
“We had some implausible wins, after which we had a pair that slipped away from us, and people are all studying experiences,” Duffy stated earlier this month throughout a Zoom with reporters. “Expectations are excessive… With the group we now have, we’re going to set our bar excessive. I don’t actually actually know or care what which means relative to the event or the place we’re within the league. We wish to be on the prime.”
With Virginia Tech left on the bubble, eight groups from the ACC made the NCAA Event final season. The Hokies bolstered their roster within the offseason, including three transfers from fellow Energy 4 applications in Sophie Swanson (Purdue), Melannie Daley (Northwestern) and Kilah Freelon (Texas Tech). Duffy additionally brings again her prime two scorers from final season in Carleigh Wenzel and Carys Baker.
New expertise mixed with this new metric may assist the Hokies get again within the massive dance subsequent season.
