Caitlin Clark and Iowa Met Every Challenge
(So far.)
Prior to the NCAA tournament, I wrote that we shouldn’t be shocked if Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes didn’t make the Final Four. Far from rolling out the red carpet for the tourney’s No. 2 overall seed, the committee put a surprising number of obstacles in their way — and the way probabilities multiply together, even a solid favorite can be unlikely to string together four straight wins against (mostly) tough opponents.
But it turns out that the math’s doubts about Clark and company were misplaced. Despite facing the toughest set of opponents possible within the Albany 2 regional bracket — Holy Cross, West Virginia, Colorado and (looming most prominently) LSU — Iowa survived and advanced to its second consecutive Final Four, with Clark averaging a tourney-high 32.3 PPG (including 41 in the regional final).
If we look at the average strength of Iowa’s regional opponents according to their Simple Rating System (SRS) scores, the Hawkeyes faced the eighth-toughest path of any Final Four squad since 2010:1
NC State, who’ll join Iowa, UConn and South Carolina in this year’s Final Four, actually faced an even more difficult path by average SRS than the Hawkeyes did. However, the Wolfpack are a 3-seed, so we might expect their journey to be more fraught simply because they were in a region with two teams considered to be better by the committee — with less chance to avoid the 2-seed via early upset — and also not given as preferential consideration when the brackets were being made.
Iowa, meanwhile, had the toughest average regional SOS of any 1-seed who made the Final Four since 2010. This, again, speaks to the way nothing was made easy for Clark and her teammates in this tourney. And yet, they rose to the challenge and overcame the odds to make a return trip to the biggest stage in college basketball.
The challenges don’t end there, though. Far from it: Iowa must now face the resurgent Paige Bueckers and UConn — the nation’s No. 2 SRS team — before potentially squaring off with undefeated No. 1 South Carolina in a rematch of last year’s national semifinal (which the Hawkeyes won in an upset).
Talk about an arduous final section of the climb to the top.
If Iowa wins those games, however, they would solidify one of the most legendary championship runs in NCAA history. Adding the UConn and possible South Carolina games to their schedule-strength average, a hypothetical Hawkeyes national championship squad would have gone through the most difficult set of opponents of any champ since at least 2010 — unseating the 2018 Notre Dame team that ended UConn’s perfect season in the national semi, then won it all on Arike Ogunbowale’s game-winning buzzer-beater in the final.
It’s going to be a tall task. ESPN Analytics’ model currently gives the Hawkeyes just a 13% chance of winning the title (and only a 39% chance of beating UConn in the Final Four). But then again, we’ve doubted Clark based on odds like that before — only to see her overcome them with flying colors.
Filed under: College basketball
That’s the earliest season for which Sports-Reference/CBB has full, nationwide SRS ratings listed.