Selection Sunday: South Carolina WBB’s final NCAA bracketology projections
Rest easy, college basketball fans. Selection Sunday has finally arrived meaning the glory of March Madness and the NCAA Tournament is right around the corner.
No. 2 South Carolina (30-3) is now a week removed from winning its ninth SEC Tournament championship. The Gamecocks moved up to No. 2 from No. 5 in The Associated Press Top 25 after knocking off No. 1 Texas in the conference title game.
An SEC championship win should make the Gamecocks all but a lock to be one of the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
There’s also a solid shot South Carolina is the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament. Dawn Staley believes as much should be true.
“We’re going to be the overall number one seed. It’s really simple,” Staley said Tuesday on the “Carolina Calls” radio show. “It’s not the new math. The new math may have us second, third or fourth or maybe a two seed. But the old, original math with the body of work, the schedule that we put together, the Quad 1 wins, the strength of schedule, the NET. If you add all those metrics together, nobody has the body of work we have.”
USC is No. 2 in the latest NET rankings behind UConn. The Gamecocks have 16 Quad 1 wins, two more than anyone else.
South Carolina has lost three times this season: by five points to UCLA in November, and by four points to Texas and 29 points to UConn, respectively, last month.
“You can look at the three losses and you can say the Connecticut loss was an embarrassing loss — and it was — but how we responded to each and every loss I think shows the type of team that we are,” Staley said on the radio show.
Latest projections
ESPN’s Charlie Creme seems to agree that South Carolina’s losses won’t result in a lower seed.
He currently has the Gamecocks as the No. 1 overall seed in his latest bracketology predictions.
South Carolina would host the first and second rounds of the tournament in Columbia at Colonial Life Arena and would be in Birmingham Region 1.
Creme projects the Gamecocks would face the winner of a First Four game between No. 16 Southern and No. 16 High Point.
Barring an extreme upset, South Carolina would play the winner of No. 8 South Dakota State and No. 9 Georgia Tech in the second round.
TCU would be the No. 2 seed in South Carolina’s region, according to Creme’s projections. Duke would be the No. 3 seed and Ohio State No. 4.
SEC teams Alabama and Vanderbilt would also be in South Carolina’s region, per Creme. The Crimson Tide would be the No. 5 seed and the Commodores would be No. 7.
Around the bracket
Texas, UCLA and Southern Cal are the other No. 1 seeds in Creme’s latest bracketology.
The Longhorns would be in Birmingham Region 4, the Bruins would be in Spokane 2 and the Trojans would in Spokane 3.
TCU, Notre Dame, UConn and N.C. State are the current No. 2 seeds.
UConn is in Birmingham 4 with Texas, meaning South Carolina would avoid a rematch with both teams until the Final Four at the earliest. With UCLA being in Spokane 2, South Carolina would only play the Bruins if both teams advanced to the national championship game.
How to watch NCAA women’s Selection Sunday
What: 2025 NCAA women’s basketball bracket reveal
When: 8 p.m. Sunday
TV: ESPN
Stream: via ESPN.com or the ESPN app
This story was originally published March 15, 2025 at 4:43 PM.
