Links to all 40 Great Women's College Teams Released in this Blog

Hours after a classic Final Four game between the Iowa and UConn women, we finished all the fine tuning calculations to release the rest of the 40 great women's teams for the Value Add Basketball Game.

To make it easier to pull up teams to play games, we divided these all-time great women’s teams into these three google sheets. Click for Auburn to Marquette, Maryland to Stanford or#1 Tennessee 1998 (Pat Summit) to Washington.

Before listing our top 20 teams in order, we saw one interesting note. Caitlin Clark joined Pistol Pete Maravich of LSU as the only players able to be the player on their team getting off the shot or drawing a foul 44%+ of the time, which means they both get the ball on a 1,6,7 or 8 on the 8-sided die. We hate to say their two teams might play the worst overall defense of all the great teams in our game.

We list on the top of each team sheet how much better than the average great team we believe that team would be - so a +6 would mean better than the average team in the game,while a -4 would mean four points worst. We also ranked the top 20 of our 40 all-time teams, mainly based on these card calculations, but we adjusted a little based on our tournament results - nudging Tennessee 1998 past UConn 2016 - whose cards we actually thought were a little better.

1. 1.       Tennessee 1998 - Chamique Holdsclaw
2. 2.       Connecticut 2016 - Maya Moore
3. 3.       Louisiana Tech 1982 - Pam Kelly
4. 4.       Connecticut 2010 - Breanna Stewart
5. 5.       Baylor 2012 - Kalani Brown
6. 6.       "South Carolina 2024 - Kamilla Cardoso                  "
7. 7.       USC 1983 - Cheryl Miller
8. 8.       Baylor 2019 - Brittney Griner
9. 9.       Notre Dame 2018 - Arike Ogunbowales
10. 10.    Stanford 2021- Kiana Williams
11. 11.    Texas A&M 2011 - Danielle Adams
12. 12.    South Carolina 2017 - A'ja Wilson
13. 13.    Old Dominion 1980- Nancy Lieberman
14. 14.    Maryland 2006 - Crystal Langhorne
15. 15.    Oregon 2019 - Sabrina Ionescu
16. 16.    Mississippi State 2018 - Victoria Vivans
17. 17.    Iowa 2024- Caitlin Clark
18. 18.    Long Beach State 1987 - Cindy Brown
19. 19.    LSU - 2023 - Angel Reese
20. 20.    Rutgers 2007 - Kia Vaughn

In addition to adding 20 teams to the 20 original all-time great teams we played in our first tournament, won by the 1998 Tennessee Vols coached by Pat Summit, we were able to go through new data added at college basketball reference and adjusted the lay-up or defensive adjustment for the following original 20 teams:

These adjustments are now all on the cards on the links above.

Long Beach State 1987 now has a defense improved to "Adj Lay-up -2" where the cards originally were five worse at +3. You can still use the old cards if you already printed them - just note on the top of the sheet so the other teams lay-up range is worse. So if an opponent had a 51-53 automatic lay-up range, LBS's defense is now good enough to lower the opposing range to 51-51 whereas before the adjustment it would have increased to 51-56.

Ohio State 2016 has the offense improved to 51-53 - it was a 51-50 which is sometimes just listed as NONE or "no lay-up).

The Old Dominion 1980 now has a -1 defense, improved from +4.

Oregon 2019 now has a 51-53 offense, improved from 51-50 like OSU.

Texas 2018 improved the most to 51-56 from 51-50.

And finally Tom Brady's favorite player Kelsey Plum and Washington 2017 improves to 51-53 from 51-51.

Auburn 2009 - Keke Carrier, DeWanna Bonner , Rating:  -14 , Oadj  90, Dadj  110, Actual season average score:  77 - 61
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Kelsey Plum Bests Cheryl Miller, but USC Rallies 65-57

 Kelsey Plum started the clash of two of the greatest players ever by drawing a foul on Cheryl Miller. She then hit both free throws - the second on a roll of "18" on the 20-sided due, which we assumed was a miss only to see her range is 1-18 good 19-20 miss as a 90% free throw shooter. 

Two trips later Plum hit a 3-pointer and the 2017 Washington team had a 27-20 lead over Millers's 1983 USC champs that inspired a movie. (click for free Value Add Basketball Game)

Washington had an edge these opening 7 possessions when we usually play reserves, because Plum, Natalie Romo and Chantel Osahor all have stamina of 44 or higher so were all three in for all 44 possessions, while Miller was the only USC player to do that.

Plum, who was third in WNBA MVP voting this year and is Tom Brady's favorite WNBA star, lead all scorers with 21 points to go with two blocks and steals, but more importantly drew five fouls on Miller to the bench. Miller already had 13 points, 7 rebounds and 4 steals. From Plum's Facebook page: The actual video of her opening the surprise gift.

Miller may have the best player card in the game, and is one of two ladies in our game who used to defeat their brothers as children - the other being Dennis Rodman's sister for Louisiana Tech the year before this USC season.

After Miller left the USC lead dwindled from 11 points to 4, but they held on for a 65-57 win.

However, this game might have come down to the wire except for four "home job" calls (in the game the home team can flip a 36 or 66 roll which calculates to the average home advantage in real games).

Home Job calls

At the end of the half Plum was call for a phantom foul on Miller, who went to the line and tied the game 29-29 at halftime.

The second possession of the 2nd half, Aair McDonald was called for a phantom foul and Cynthia Cooper cashed in at the line to make it 34-30 USC 

With 18 possessions left Plum actually drew a 5th foul on Miller, but the call was missed to let her get in several more crucial possessions.

With 8 possessions left Osahor drew a foul on Pam McGee that was missed.

This is the second game in which the home court advantage may have changed the result. The other was Britney Griner's three point opening round win in which two calls were missed.

The better seed in our first two rounds of this all-time great women's tournament get home court advantage, but the elite 8 will be neutral court games.