Late Thursday night, the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee revealed its Top 16 teams if the tournament selection were to happen today. Reveals like this are important in that they take some of the speculation out of bracketology work; the top teams no longer have to guess where they stand. Analysts can review trends and determine what factors in a team’s resume that this particular committee likes better than others.

One note before we dig in: Thursday’s results — including Iowa’s loss at Indiana — were not factored into the committee’s rankings. It's doubtful that outcome would have changed much for Iowa anyway, but it’s still worth noting that the reveal wasn’t updated to account for that result.

Before showing the Selection Committee’s Top 16, let's use ESPN’s last bracketology (released on Tuesday) as a baseline. No one bracketologist is perfect obviously, but ESPN’s Charlie Creme is probably best at it on the women’s side. ESPN’s projection can serve as a reasonable guess at the expected Top 16 and then we can review where the Committee differed from ESPN.

Two notes on ESPN’s bracketology. First, it was released before UConn lost at Marquette on Wednesday night. Thus the Selection Committee’s Top 16 takes that loss into account, but ESPN’s last projection did not.

Second, Creme doesn’t release the S-curve he uses in his projections. What's listed below for the Top 16 teams is somewhat of a guess, though the top 3 seem fairly obvious, and Creme explained how he ranked teams 4-6.

1 Seeds

1—South Carolina
2–Indiana
3—UConn
4—Stanford

2 Seeds

5—Iowa
6—LSU
7—Utah
8—Maryland

3 Seeds

9—Duke
10—Notre Dame
11—Ohio State
12—North Carolina

4 Seeds

13—Michigan
14—Virginia Tech
15—Florida State
16—Texas

1 Seeds

1—South Carolina (SEC)
2—Indiana (Big Ten)
3—Stanford (PAC 12)
4—UConn (Big East)

2 Seeds

5—LSU (SEC)

6—Utah (Pac 12)

7—Iowa (Big Ten)

8—Duke (ACC)

3 Seeds

9—Maryland (Big Ten)
10—Notre Dame (ACC)
11—Michigan (Big Ten)
12—Texas (Big 12)

4 Seeds

13—Virginia Tech (ACC)
14—North Carolina (ACC)
15—Villanova (Big East)
16—Ohio State (Big Ten)

The biggest difference for Iowa fans is that ESPN had Iowa 5th overall and the Committee had Iowa 7th overall. That said, ESPN thought the gap between 4 through 7 was fairly small, and there’s a good chance the Committee feels the same.

ESPN and the Committee’s Top 10 teams were all the same. The only difference of note in their top 10s was the Committee had Duke on the 2-line (8th overall) with Maryland as a 3-seed (9th overall), while ESPN switched the two with each other.

More substantially, ESPN was much higher on Ohio State (11th) than the Committee (16th). That’s bad news for Iowa, because Iowa’s win in Columbus is one of the best on its resume. Hopefully Ohio State will pick things up again and improve its standing.

The only team the Committee had in its top 16 that ESPN didn’t was Villanova (ESPN had FSU instead).

South Carolina looks like easily the best team in the country, and is the one team that would be good for Iowa to avoid in the tournament for as long as possible. As long as Iowa stays at 7 overall or higher, the Hawkeyes should manage that.

At 7th overall, Iowa would have been in Indiana’s mock bracket, but the Committee flipped Utah and Iowa to avoid the Indiana-Iowa rematch potential. As fun as the Iowa-Indiana games are, we won’t see one in the NCAA Tournament unless both teams make the Final Four or National Championship.

A fully healthy UConn squad is probably the second-best team in the country, but UConn hasn’t been healthy all season. We’ll see if the Huskies can get healthier before the season ends. If they can’t, they’re as vulnerable as any of the top teams.

I’m not sure whether the Committee would avoid pairing Iowa and UConn for a potential rematch in the Elite Eight. Last year the Committee set up a potential Iowa-Iowa State rematch in the Sweet Sixteen, but that was also a rivalry match that would have been easy to sell. Iowa-UConn is a big-time matchup, but doesn’t have the same rivalry hype. And with Paige Bueckers hurt, there’s no Clark vs. Bueckers matchup to market.

Stanford has a loaded frontcourt that would be difficult for Iowa to stop, but its star post—Cameron Brink—often finds herself in foul trouble, and the Cardinal are relatively weak at guard. Stanford wouldn’t be a terrible matchup for Iowa in a potential Elite Eight game.

Utah is a bit more mysterious, but from glancing at their stats and metrics, they look an awful lot like Iowa—an offense-first team that plays quickly and gets into shootouts. Iowa tends to do comparatively better against offensive teams than defensive teams, so that would likely be a fun matchup in the NCAA Tournament if it comes to pass.

As I mentioned in my recap earlier, LSU hasn’t played a ranked team all season. Because of that, they are the biggest question mark in college basketball right now. They’ve blown out some good teams, but have also looked particularly shaky in the last two weeks. LSU’s Angel Reese would probably put up monster numbers against Iowa, but it's possible that the Tigers’ true talent level is somewhat lower than their current seeding because their resume is being propped up by the undefeated record. It would not be a huge shock if the Tigers drop quite a bit in the Committee’s eyes if they have a big loss to South Carolina (Sunday, February 12, 1 PM CT, ESPN).

Further down, ACC and Big Ten teams occupy 8 of the 10 slots between #7 and #16. Iowa won’t be matched with any of the Big Ten teams in that range for a potential Sweet Sixteen game, so the Hawks would match up against Texas, Villanova or one of the ACC teams if things don’t change significantly between now and Selection Sunday.