NC State women's basketball bracketology update: Feb. 13
Following a two-win, one-loss week for the No. 6 NC State women’s basketball team, the Wolfpack is continuing to make its case for a No. 1 seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The program sits at third place in the ACC with a 21-3 (9-3 ACC) record and 6 regular season games left to play.
Despite last week’s loss to Virginia Tech at home, the Wolfpack remained on ESPN.com’s top seed line in its latest bracketology update released Tuesday morning. This projection takes each of the program’s most recent games into account, including Sunday’s blowout win over Pittsburgh.
ESPN’s Charlie Creme projected the Pack as one of the top seeds, joining South Carolina, Stanford and Ohio State. The program would be a part of the Portland 4 regional. After playing the first couple of games on its home court, the Wolfpack would play any Sweet 16 or Elite 8 games in Oregon if the team advanced that far.
In the round of 64, hosted in Raleigh, NC State would face off against the winner of a first-four game between No. 16 seeds SE Louisiana, the leader of the Southland Conference, and Sacred Heart, the top team in the Northeast Conference.
The Wolfpack would then play the winner of No. 8 seed Mississippi State vs. No. 9 seed Penn State if the program won its round of 64 game. Senior guard Madison Hayes played one season with the Bulldogs before transferring to NC State.
Iowa would be the No. 2 seed in this regional, and UConn is projected as the No. 3 seed. No. 6 seed North Carolina would be the only other ACC program on the Pack’s quadrant of the bracket. If NC State advanced to the Sweet 16, it would probably face a hostile crowd in Portland. No. 4 seed Oregon State and No. 5 seed Gonzaga would be the most likely opponents.
The ACC and the SEC are tied with 9 bids in Creme’s bracket.
NC State women’s basketball NET update
The Wolfpack checks in at No. 14 in the NCAA NET ranking, a metric that plays a significant part in building a tournament résumé. NC State is the second-highest ranked ACC squad behind No. 10 Notre Dame.
So far this season, the Wolfpack has already defeated 4 programs in the NET ranking top 25— No. 4 UConn, No. 15 Colorado, No. 20 Louisville and No. 21 Duke.
No. 18 Virginia Tech and No. 37 Miami are the only programs to defeat NC State this season. A total of 9 ACC programs made the metric’s top 50.
