WBB: exciting stat nerd news!

Bart Torvik has added women's college basketball to his excellent site!

Many of you are probably already familiar with Bart Torvik and his essential college basketball stats website, but for those of you who aren’t, here’s a quick rundown. Torvik, a Wisconsin Badgers AND Bucky’s 5th Quarter alum, has been the owner of one of the most influential college basketball stats websites for the past decade plus. I don’t know how long he’s actually had it, but that isn’t really the point here.

Until yesterday, that website only had men’s college basketball stats. That is no longer the case, though! You can know find Torvik’s women’s college basketball stats right here!!! His T-Rank and tempo-free stats are free to access and are very fun to pore over throughout the season.

While Bart is an internet pal of mine, this is not a biased recommendation of his site as it is used by media members and fans all over the country and is routinely mentioned during broadcasts on every network. He has already back-filled the WBB data to the 2021 season and, well, I’m getting excited just typing all this out!

Let’s take a quick look at some of his projections for the 2025 season and see how the match up with my own. First up, his national top-10 with AdjOE (adjusted offensive efficiency), AdjDE (adjusted defensive efficiency), Barthag (the projected win percentage against an average team on a neutral court):

1. South Carolina: 118.5 (1st), 75.1 (1st), .9947

2. Notre Dame: 115.6 (3rd), 77.0 (2nd), .9907

3. UConn: 114.9 (5th), 77.6 (3rd), .9892

4. Texas: 115.2 (4th), 79.2 (4th), .9867

5. UCLA: 115.7 (2nd), 80.8 (7th), .9842

6. LSU: 114.0 (6th), 81.4 (9th), .9795

7. Southern Cal: 111.8 (8th), 81.3 (8th), .9749

8. NC State: 109.6 (13th), 79.8 (5th), .9745

9. Duke: 108.3 (19th), 80.8 (6th), .9666

10. Baylor: 109.8 (11th), 82.0 (10th), .9665

My top-10, which you can find below with thousands and thousands of other words about the upcoming Big Ten WBB season, looks a little different.

My top-10, with difference between T-rank and mine in parantheses:

1. South Carolina (-)

2. Southern Cal (+5)

3. UConn (-)

4. Texas (-)

5. UCLA (-)

6. Notre Dame (-4)

7. Iowa State (+10)

8. LSU (-2)

9. Kansas State (+3)

10. West Virginia (+14)

Guess I’m just higher on the Big 12 than the STATS NERDS!

As far as Big Ten rankings go, Torvik has eight teams in his top-25 and every team, sans Northwestern, in his top-100. There are a number of surprising things to note here.

1st B1G/5th overall: UCLA
2nd/7th: Southern Cal
3rd/14th: Maryland
4th/15th: Ohio State
5th/19th: Indiana
6th/21st: Michigan State
7th/22nd: Washington
8th/25th: Iowa
9th/31st: Illinois
10th/34th: Nebraska
11th/36th: Oregon
12th/38th: Michigan
13th/41st: Minnesota
14th/47th: Penn State
15th/62nd: Purdue
16th/97th: Rutgers
17th/99th: Wisconsin
18th/132nd: Northwestern

The Badgers ranking 17th in the conference is not what I expected, but the numbers are not high on UW. When you click through to their team page, a projected record of 11-18 (4-14) pops up. Torvik’s numbers only show the Badgers being favored in two conference matchups, home games against Rutgers and Northwestern, but favored in all of their non-conference games except South Dakota State and Butler.

For comparison, here are my preseason B1G rankings:

1. Southern Cal (+1)

2. UCLA (-1)

3. Ohio State (+1)

4. Nebraska (+6)

5. Illinois (+4)

6. Maryland (-3)

7. Indiana (-2)

8. Michigan State (-2)

9. Iowa (-1)

10. Minnesota (+3)

11. Michigan (+1)

12. Purdue (+3)

13. Oregon (-2)

14. Wisconsin (+3)

15. Penn State (-1)

16. Washington (-9)

17. Rutgers (-1)

18. Northwestern (-)

The only thing we agree on is that Northwestern is the worst team in the conference lol. Sorry, ‘Cats.