2022 NCAA women's basketball tournament bracket predictions, less than a month away from selections

We are less than a month away from Selection Sunday! 

Women's college basketball teams across the country are finishing up their final stretch of conference play, which means I'm going to start ramping up my bracket predictions to a weekly basis. 

I predicted my fourth field of 68, which includes my automatic qualifiers for each conference, and then filled in the rest with my at-large bids. I took into consideration what we've seen so far, the DI women's basketball selection committee's second Top 16 reveal and major upsets that happened shortly afterwards.

Here's my bracket in table format:

FIELD OF 68: Expansion of 2022 DI women’s basketball tournament to 68 teams approved

1 seeds remain the same, but upsets caused movement

South Carolina, now 10-0 against ranked opponents, keeps the Gamecocks on the throne as my No. 1 overall seed in my fourth bracket prediction of the 2021-22 season. Stanford, NC State and Louisville also locks in its spot on my one line, staying atop of the pack. But a few upsets around the league caused some movement in my latest bracket. 

Since the DI women's selection committee announced its second Top 16 reveal, multiple teams suffered some tough losses against conference foes. Arizona split its series in one weekend with in-state rival Arizona State (who's featured in my First Four In), Oklahoma fell to Texas, Notre Dame dropped a game to Louisville, and Oregon was defeated by in-state rival Oregon State. 

The biggest shift in my predictions is Michigan moving down to a three seed due to back-to-back upsets. The Wolverines have a head-to-head win over Baylor in December, but the Bears are have been blazing as of late as winners of nine of their last 10 games and are sitting sixth in NET rankings, as of Feb. 13. Meanwhile, Michigan is 15th in latest NET and has dropped two straight to unranked conference opponents - Michigan State and Northwestern, which put the Wildcats back in the tournament conversation as a contender on the rise. 

Last four in 

1. Oregon State vs Marquette 
2. Boston College vs Arizona State 

First four out 

1. `Villanova 
2. Washington State
3. Liberty 
4. Texas A&M 

In case you missed it, here is a link to my second bracket of this season.

The automatic qualifiers

Here are my 32 AQs, based off of who I think will lock in spots by everlasting foes in each respective conference tournament.