For Iowa women’s basketball, NCAA matchup could be more important than seed

IOWA CITY — It’s not the number, though “3” seems most likely.

It’s not the regional, though Wichita would be most optimal from a fan-base perspective.

No, the most important item in determining Iowa’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament fate is matchup.

“I think if you take everybody in the tournament, and you talk about how important a particular matchup, where they’re bracketed ... the two teams jump out to me in which matchups are most important are Iowa and Iowa State,” ESPN women’s basketball bracketologist Charlie Creme said in a Zoom call Friday morning.

The 68-team NCAA field will be revealed Sunday (7 p.m., ESPN). Eighth-ranked Iowa (23-7) is an automatic qualifier based on its Big Ten tournament championship, achieved last Sunday in Indianapolis.

Creme has the Hawkeyes projected as a 3 seed.

“There’s an outside chance they could move up to a 2 if both Iowa State and Texas lose in the Big 12 (tournament) quarterfinals (Friday),” Creme said. “But that’s a long shot.”

Iowa has made a leap, both in the polls and in the mock brackets, throughout the past month. The Hawkeyes have won seven straight games, including three against Indiana and one against Michigan. Both the Hoosiers and the Wolverines were recently in the top 10.

“That first Indiana game, over there, we really got rolling,” Coach Lisa Bluder said Thursday. “We had everybody back (from injury), and everybody played well.”

The first round of the tournament will be Friday or Saturday at Carver-Hawkeye Arena; Round 2 will be Sunday or Monday.

With the assumption that Iowa is a 3 seed, the Hawkeyes would face a 14 seed in the first round, with a 6 seed meeting an 11 seed in the other game.

Selecting a list of potential first-round opponents is a crap shoot, so Bluder and her staff haven’t bothered with advance scouting.

“It’s just a waste of time. It could be anybody,” she said. “We’ll wait until Sunday, and then with the technology we have today, we’ll have instant information at our fingertips.”

If the Hawkeyes win their first two games, they will advance to the Sweet 16 for the third consecutive tournament.

They made the Elite Eight in 2019, the tournament was canceled in 2020, then they advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2021 in the San Antonio bubble.

Wichita (7 hours, 11 minutes from Iowa City) is the closest regional. The others are at Greensboro, N.C., Bridgeport, Conn., and Spokane, Wash.

The Final Four is in Minneapolis.

With the possibility that four Big Ten teams and four Big 12 teams earning top-4 seeds, getting a Wichita berth “is really tricky,” Creme said. “I think it’s unlikely.”

Now, about Creme’s theory about matchups, and it’s a valid one:

“Iowa wants to play a team that will try to match them, getting up and down the floor, somebody they can outscore, because they’re going to be able to outscore most teams,” he said.

“Somebody that wants to grind it down, get physical, bump Caitlin (Clark) around the court, that’s not somebody that Iowa wants to play.”

Iowa has a NET ranking of 13 as of Friday morning, and Creme considers the Hawkeyes the 10th-best team in the field, thus the second-best 3 seed.

“There are four Big Ten teams all together in a pack, and Iowa is the best of the four,” he said. “I have Michigan, Indiana and Maryland at 12, 13 and 14.”

Iowa set an NCAA record for first- and second-round attendance in 2019, and the Hawkeyes sold out their regular-season finale against Michigan on Feb. 27. So tickets could be scarce next week.

When they hosted in 2019, they narrowly escaped a first-round catastrophe against Mercer in a 2-vs.-15 game, then beat Missouri in Round 2.

“The first game is always a little tricky,” Bluder said. “Sometimes you can be tight in that first game. I think the success we had last year will help us.”

Iowa women's basketball resume

Record: 23-7

Big Ten: 14-4 (T-1st)

Big Ten tournament: Champion (beat Northwestern, 72-59; beat Nebraska, 83-66; beat Indiana, 74-67)

NET Ranking: 13

Last 10: 8-2, including 7-game winning streak

W-L vs. NET top-50: 8-4

W-L vs. NET top-100: 15-7

Best wins: Indiana x 3 (A, H, N), Michigan (H), UCF (H), Nebraska x 3 (A, H, N)

Worst losses: IUPUI (H), Northwestern (H), Duke (A)

ESPN.com bracketologist Charlie Creme says: As of Friday morning Iowa is a 3 seed in the Bridgeport Region and will host a subregion that also consist of No. 14 seed Southern Illinois (its first-round opponent), as well as No. 6 seed Mississippi and No. 11 seed Washington State.

Comments: jeff.linder@thegazette.com