There's a new metric in town folks! The NCAA is introducing Wins Above Bubble (WAB) among the criteria used by the selection committee.
"WAB was added this season to complement the NET metric. It does not factor in margin of wins or losses or a team’s efficiency — it only measures the quality of your resume based on the results. WAB is results-based and goes beyond strength of schedule to show how a team actually did against that schedule. Each game's result is assigned a value between 1 and -1, and that cumulative total determines a team’s ranking.
As explained in the NCAA's principles and procedures for this year's bracket, WAB shows how many more or fewer wins a team has compared to what a bubble team would average against that same schedule. The WAB uses the NET as the basis for opponent strength, with 'bubble team' being defined as a team ranked 45th in the NET, based on a study of recent women's basketball seasons."
Why does this matter? Well, in the current women's WAB ranking, UCLA is #1 at 12.34, with Texas #2 at 9.77, and South Carolina and Connecticutt close behind.