Maryland women’s basketball closed the regular season on a four-game win streak, jumping the Terps into consideration to host their first two matchups of the NCAA tournament as a top-16 team.
But a 27-point Big Ten tournament loss to Michigan last Friday — Maryland’s lone game in Indianapolis — has coach Brenda Frese’s squad stumbling into the NCAA tournament.
The Diamondback interviewed two women’s basketball bracketologists — The Athletic’s Mark Schindler and NBC Sports’ Aidan Berg — to discuss the Terps’ realistic NCAA tournament expectations and seed line projections ahead of Selection Sunday.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: What’s Maryland’s NCAA tournament ceiling and floor?
Schindler: When they’re playing at their best, they could get to the Elite Eight and that wouldn’t surprise me. But I think the issue with the floor is just how healthy Maryland is. They could go out in the first game and it wouldn’t be shocking to me. It’s just kinda the nature of what this season has been for them.
Berg: The depth at the very top of the tournament is a little bit better this year. I’m not sure if I see Maryland quite being in that group, but it’s definitely a very good team. An Elite Eight run is definitely not out of the question, depending on the matchups that they end up getting. And for their floor, I would definitely be surprised if they lost in the first round, but I think a second round exit is certainly plausible.
[Shyanne Sellers’ time with Maryland women’s basketball shaped by selflessness, leadership]
Q: Do the Terps still have a chance to host?
Schindler: I think it’s tough, like if you look at the overall resume, they’re 8-5 in Quad 1 games and there’s only a handful of teams who have won that many Quad 1 games. But I think the issue is going to come down to the NET, which I think has been a little bit overplayed. I think this team is a lot better than what the NET indicates, but just given how that Michigan game played out, I’d imagine they’ll probably be a No. 5 or No. 6 seed in the tournament.
Berg: I wouldn’t expect them to host, especially because Ohio State did end up winning their first Big Ten tournament game. If Maryland had won their first game and Ohio State had maybe lost to Iowa, you could potentially see Maryland flipping with them. So I wouldn’t anticipate it, I would guess more like the No. 5, maybe No. 6 seed line for Maryland.
Q: How much did Maryland’s loss to Michigan negatively impact it from a seeding standpoint?
Schindler: They went from being a pretty significant No. 4 seed after that win over Ohio State, to just being on the No. 5 or No. 6 line now. But even if that hadn’t happened in the Big Ten quarterfinals, I don’t think we would’ve had a fourth Big Ten team hosting. UCLA and USC are obviously a guarantee, and it was going to be either Ohio State or Maryland, but now I wouldn’t be surprised if neither of them host.
Berg: Yeah I was a little bit surprised to see what happened with that game. I maybe overreacted to it a little bit in my most recent bracketology, but I just wasn’t really expecting them to lose by almost 30 to Michigan. Michigan is a good team, but Maryland is always there every year as one of the best teams in the Big Ten.
Q: How does Maryland’s resume compare to other teams slotted near the No. 4 and No. 5 seed lines?
Schindler: It’s tough, because in some ways I would look at what Maryland’s done and say that I think they have a better overall resume. Having the Duke win can’t be undersold, but this is the hard part with the end of year stuff. I think Baylor played themselves in because they were fantastic down the stretch, they made it to the Big 12 championship game, they didn’t get blown out — so I think they’re going to get that nod. But if you look at Tennessee, Alabama, Ohio State, North Carolina and Maryland, every single one of those teams had some kind of trip up at the end. The worst thing Maryland could do was put that taste in the mouth of the committee of ‘This is what we look like right now.’
[Maryland women’s basketball couldn’t defend Michigan’s 3-pointers in blowout loss]
Berg: Within the Big Ten, for example, Maryland does actually lag a little bit behind where they have generally been placed this season on that No. 5 seed line. They’re 28th in the NET rank — that’s behind Iowa, Michigan and Michigan State, all teams that I feel have generally not been ranked ahead of Maryland in terms of bracketology projection. I think there’s a healthy respect for what Maryland has been in recent years as a team, and the fact that they’re consistently excellent and tend to get pretty good postseason results. Are we massively overstating what they are as a team? No, but I think that they’re getting a little bit of a bump in that regard.
Q: What factors does the selection committee most take into account when selecting teams on the bubble of being a top-16 host site?
Schindler: It’s going to be the overall resume, but also what your last three or four weeks of play looked like. And I think injuries are going to play a part, because they want the best teams in the best slots, and that’s about who you are right now. And there are some rules you have to follow in building out the bracket, but you can kind of toy with them, and I think a lot of it’s just gonna be keeping conference teams from playing each other until past the Sweet 16.
Berg: I think you just want to look across their resume and see if there’s anything that differentiates a team, and look for those sort of indicators of ‘Oh wow, this team has faced a really, really tough schedule,’ or ‘This team only lost a few games by a couple points, as opposed to a team that got blown out a couple times.’ And I’ll definitely say Quad 1 performance is always really important, and that would be one area that I think accounts for why people respect Maryland in spite of some of the stranger individual results.’
