The bracket prognosticators generally agree that the USF women’s basketball team will be seeded 13th in a region when the pairings are announced Sunday night.
If that holds true, the Bulls would travel to the home court of the No. 4 seed for their first-round game.
ESPN foresees a USF-Ole Miss matchup in Oxford, but if the selection committee goes by those blasted NET rankings that haunted the Bulls all year, that might not be accurate.
The Rebels are No. 11 in the NET, which should make them a No. 3 seed. Then again, UConn is projected as a No. 2 seed despite being No. 1 in the NET, so who knows what to think?
For what it’s worth, the projected four seeds are Ohio State, North Carolina, and Baylor.
The Bulls, by the way, are No. 68, pulled down by losses to UAB, Tulsa, and East Carolina. That was bad.
However, they recovered their swagger over three days at the American Athletic Conference tournament, so, for now, let’s play along with the possible matchup against Ole Miss.
The Rebels are 20-10 and finished seventh in the SEC. They have four common opponents with the Bulls – UConn (73-60 loss), Mississippi State (71-63 win in the regular season and 85-73 win the SEC tournament), Vanderbilt (76-61 win), and South Carolina (75-59 loss).
USF lost to each of those teams.
Ole Miss is known for its defense, although this season, the Rebels stepped up their game on offense. They topped 90 points four times and averaged 75 points per game.
Defensively, they like to pressure teams, which means the Bulls would have to take better care of the basketball than they did in the regular season. Ole Miss forced 633 turnovers while the Bulls turned it over 542 times (16 per game.
They can’t do that on the road against a high-caliber team and hope to have a chance.
However, this is where the brutal non-conference schedule USF played becomes a factor. The Bulls played the SEC champ (South Carolina), the ACC champ (Duke), the Big 12 champ (TCU), and the Big East champ (UConn).
Of those, only Duke was a home game for the Bulls.
All of that was designed to have the Bulls ready for whatever March Madness throws at them. If the projections are correct, let’s just put it this way – USF would not be an ordinary No. 13 seed.
“If we get somewhere around a 12 or 13 (seed), you know, if I was a four or five (seed), I wouldn’t want to play us right now,” USF coach Jose Fernandez said.
No matter the opponent, the Bulls know they’ll be going into hostile territory as heavy underdogs. If you’ve watched this team, you know it is capable of winning.
Finally, there is this stat: In the 4-versus-13 matchup, the lower seed has won seven times and advanced to the Sweet 16 three times.
Anything can happen in March and usually does.