Building the Smartest Women’s March Madness Bracket
What 50,000 simulations reveal using Her Hoop Stats win probabilities
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Let’s get right to the point: you’re building your March Madness bracket (or your second, or your 25th) and you want to make the best, most data-informed decisions using metrics from your favorite stats site. We got you!
Some say that the women’s tournament is all chalk (top seeds winning every time), but is it? Let’s find out.
How are the probabilities calculated?
The Her Hoop Stats rating is our predictive metric that estimates the relative strength of a team versus an “average” team on a neutral court. For example, as of Selection Sunday, the UConn Huskies have the best HHS rating in the country with 58.6, meaning that they would be expected to outscore a hypothetical average opponent by 58.6 over 100 possessions on a neutral court.
These ratings are the basis for the matchup win probabilities/predictions you see on the homepage of our site.
The simulation
Using the HHS matchup predictions, we simulated the tournament 50,000 times. The table below shows the probability of each team making it out of each round, based on the simulation results. In other words, it is the percentage of times each team made it out of the round in the simulations.
The regions are labeled as follows:
F = Fort Worth 1
S = Sacramento 2
G = Fort Worth 3
T = Sacramento 4
Key takeaways from the simulations:
The No. 1 seeds are in a tier of their own
The four No. 1 seeds have HHS ratings that are relatively similar, each having at least a 19% chance of winning the national championship. UCLA has the lowest odds of reaching the title game (35.6%) because, as many have noted, LSU is the No. 2 seed in the Bruins’ region, and they would theoretically meet in the Elite Eight.
There is also a large gap between the fifth and sixth most likely teams to take home the title. LSU is No. 5 at 6.5% championship odds, which is more than the next 10 teams combined. The huge gap between LSU (51.8 rating) and No. 6 Michigan (40.9) makes LSU’s region significantly harder for everyone.
TL;DR: choose a No. 1 seed to win it all.
Not all double-digit seeds are underdogs in the round of 64
There are multiple double-digit seeds with a better than 50% chance to win in the round of 64. These favored double-digits seeds are No. 11 South Dakota St. (54.9% probability vs. No. 6 Washington) and No. 10 Villanova (51.1% chance vs. No. 7 Texas Tech). Also, No. 10 Tennessee has a 48.0% win probability vs. No. 7 NC State, so don’t count out the lower seeds early on in the tournament.
The No. 5 seeds have the best chance to upset early-round hosts
Unsurprisingly, the four 5 seeds have the best chance at upsetting their respective 4 seed hosts and moving on to the Sweet 16:
F05 Maryland 37.4% (host: North Carolina) (they are 12th in Her Hoop Stats rating despite losing two in a row)
T05 Michigan St. 31.4% (host: Oklahoma)
G05 Kentucky 30.9% (host: West Virginia)
S05 Ole Miss 27.1% (host: Minnesota)
The bracket makes a difference
Some key differences between Megan Gauer’s Bracketology and how the bracket shook out in reality make things harder for Duke but easier for Louisville.
Duke got the worst draw of any top team relative to Megan’s Bracketology. It moved from a No. 2 seed in Texas’s region in Megan’s Bracketology to a No. 3 seed in UCLA’s region. The Blue Devils would face LSU in the Sweet 16 if chalk holds, and their chances of making the Elite Eight dropped from 56.5% to 22.5%, based on previous simulations completed using Megan’s Bracketology.
Louisville is in a similar situation to Duke. It moved out of UCLA’s region into Texas’s region but didn’t change seed lines. Still, its chances of making the Elite Eight dropped from 78.9% to 37.0%.
The verdict: there is the possibility of a few upsets in the first couple of rounds. In the end, though, expect one of the No. 1 seeds to cut down the nets next month in Phoenix.
This takes some inspiration from Neil Paine’s 2026 NCAA Tournament Forecast!
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