Women’s basketball bracketology: Top 16 seeds becoming clearer

Just a few weeks remain in women’s college basketball’s regular season. Projections on the top of bracket are getting clearer as the same teams keep popping up.

Some shuffling will occur in the final weeks of February and in the Power 4 conference tournaments, but teams are beginning to solidify positioning for hosting rights as top 16 seeds.

Barring a wildly impressive run from LSU, Michigan or Vanderbilt, the top four is pretty much locked in with UConn, UCLA, South Carolina and Texas. And realistically, the Bruins are the only team capable of challenging the Huskies for the overall No. 1 seed simply because of the sheer amount of Quad 1 victories they will have if they continue to win in the Big Ten. Currently, UCLA has 13 Quad 1 victories while the Huskies have six. UCLA could have have triple the Quad 1 wins UConn has by the time the dust settles on conference tournaments.

Elsewhere in the top 16, Duke and Louisville are established as the best in the ACC. The only other team in the conference with a real chance of hosting is North Carolina, and it would likely require the Tar Heels beating the Blue Devils at least once, win the rest of their regular season games and make a significant run in the ACC Tournament.

In the Big 12, where there’s no clear frontrunner, TCU has the best resume for hosting rights at the moment, but the Horned Frogs have suffered recent losses to Texas Tech and Colorado. Two big games loom that will shape the Big 12’s NCAA Tournament picture, with TCU facing Baylor on Wednesday night and West Virginia on Sunday.

Here’s USA Today Sports’ projection of the top 16 seeds in the women’s NCAA Tournament as of Wednesday, Feb. 11:

1. UConn

2. UCLA

3. South Carolina

4. Texas

5. LSU

6. Michigan

7. Vanderbilt

8. Louisville

9. Duke

10. Ohio State

11. Iowa

12. Michigan State

13. Oklahoma

14. TCU

15. Maryland

16. Ole Miss

In the hunt: Kentucky, Baylor, West Virginia, North Carolina

Bubble Watch

Last Four Byes: Mississippi State, Syracuse, Villanova, Virginia

Last Four In: Richmond, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Utah

First Four Out: Stanford, Colorado, Fairfield, Arizona State

Next Four Out: South Dakota State, Indiana, Cal, Columbia

The path for the Big East to get more than two teams into the NCAA Tournament is getting increasingly narrow after Seton Hall lost back-to-back games to Creighton and St. John’s. The Pirates likely need to win their six remaining regular-season games and make a run to at least the semifinals of the Big East tournament to have a shot at cracking the field of 68 for the first time since 2016.

Elsewhere, hope is alive for mid-major teams to receive multiple bids. Both Richmond and Rhode Island out of the Atlantic-10 have at-large worthy resumes. If the Spiders and Rams keep stacking wins, and then if a team like George Mason or Davidson wins the conference tournament, a three-bid A-10 is still in play.

With multiple teams on the bubble, the ACC and Big 12 will be monitoring the conference tournaments of the Ivy League and the Summit League for bid-stealing scenarios. North Dakota State and Princeton both have at-large worthy resumes, so if the Bison and Tigers don’t win their conference tournaments, they would likely still get in and push teams like Virginia Tech or Utah to the wrong side of the bubble.