LSU women top first NCAA NET rankings after record-breaking early season wins

The NCAA released its first NET rankings this week and No. 5 LSU is leading the way on the women’s side.

The predictive system doesn’t take opponents into account and the Tigers haven’t played a strong schedule to start the season, with seven of their eight games coming against Quad 4 teams (the lowest-ranked group). Kim Mulkey’s squad set an NCAA record by scoring more than 100 points in each of its first eight games, which has inflated the numbers.

There’s a lot of basketball left to be played and LSU could face a challenge Thursday when the Tigers visit Duke. LSU will also surely get tested in the Southeastern Conference, which features many quality teams.

UConn, Texas and UCLA are behind LSU in the NET.

The NET is just one tool the NCAA selection committee uses to figure out which teams make the NCAA Tournament and where they are seeded. It has predicted the winner pretty accurately since it first was used in 2021. Four of the five national champions were No. 1 in the NET on Selection Sunday.

This year they added Wins Above Bubble (WAB) — a metric used by the men last season. It’s a more results-based metric that measures the quality of victories.

“We believe that the WAB will be an important tool to help objectively see the value of each win and loss and how to best evaluate and emphasize a team’s strength of schedule and results,” NCAA selection committee chair Amanda Braun said. “Whether it’s a nonconference or conference game, no matter the scoring margin, the WAB is going to tell us a lot about what a team did against the schedule they played. This will be used along with the established selection criteria when considering the selection and seeding of teams.”

ACC-SEC Challenge

The annual meeting between the two power conferences is stacking up well for the Southeastern Conference. The ACC has had a rough nonconference season so far and could definitely use a few signature wins. On Thursday, No. 22 Louisville hosts No. 3 South Carolina; No. 11 North Carolina visits No. 2 Texas; and No. 13 Ole Miss plays No. 18 Notre Dame.

Conference play

This weekend also marks the beginning of Big Ten Conference play. No. 21 Washington visits No. 16 USC on Sunday in one of the most intriguing matchups. The Big Ten has eight teams in the Top 25 this week, with No. 23 Ohio State entering the rankings.

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Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball