NCAA Women's Preview 2015

I didn't write much during the regular season, but I'm ready to go for the NCAA women's tournament. I have once again produced my Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) metric, the methodology of which is explained here. The heart of the CACOD is the ratio of a team's own hitting percentage to the hitting percentage allowed to opponents. The 64 NCAA teams are ranked below on the CACOD (unless you have amazing eyesight, you'll want to click on the images to enlarge them).

The principle is simple: Whenever two teams play, the one with the higher CACOD would be favored to win. The CACOD's success rate in predicting winners of NCAA women's tournament matches has been right up there with other forecasting tools such as Pablo, Massey/Elo, and RK (see here and here). Last year, the CACOD foresaw BYU's run of upsets in the NCAA tourney.

The Washington Huskies (28-2) come out No. 1 on the CACOD, with a clear margin over the next-closest teams. U-Dub also finished the season atop the AVCA coaches' poll, but received only a No. 5 seed from the NCAA. The Huskies' only losses were at USC (3-1) and at Stanford (3-2).

The No. 1 tournament seed is USC, which got off to a surprisingly torrid start this season, before losing to Washington and UCLA in the second half of conference play. A key to the Trojans' success this season was their mettle in road five-game matches. Four times (at Stanford, at Colorado, at Washington State, and at Arizona State), 'SC prevailed in five. However, in the final days of the season, UCLA took a five-setter from USC on the Trojans' home floor.

Looking over which teams have had the highest CACOD each year (since its introduction in 2011), I find that Washington has the highest score for a yearly leader of any school not named Penn State:

Penn State (2014) -- 3.09
Penn State (2013) -- 2.91
Penn State (2012) -- 2.85
Washington (2015) -- 2.67
Nebraska (2011) -- 2.29

That's all for now. I'll continue to comment on tournament results and the CACOD as "December Madness" progresses.