Women’s basketball teams within the Power Five conferences who have women head coaches are associated with a higher likelihood of making it into the NCAA end-of-year tournament as compared to Power Five conference teams coached by men, according to Bryant researchers.
A study from the university’s Laura Beaudin, Ph.D., and Aziz Berdiev, Ph.D., examined the impact of coach gender on the probability that NCAA Division I women’s basketball teams advance to the end-of-year NCAA Tournament. Through their research, the two Economics professors, who teach within the College of Arts and Sciences’ Mathematics and Economics department, provided insights on Power Five and non-Power Five conference teams and added new ways to measure success within this area of research. Their findings were published in the Eastern Economic Journal.
A decline in women head coaches
Prior to the passage of Title IX in 1972, women’s athletics teams were almost exclusively coached by women; however, by the 2019-2020 athletic season, women held only 42.3 percent of NCAA Division I head coach positions for all women’s sports teams. This decrease was partially explained by the increased demand for coaches following Title IX’s adoption as well as the uptick of men entering the market as the prestige of women’s sports grew.
Focusing specifically on basketball, Beaudin and Berdiev noted that, between 1982 and the early 2000s, the percentage of women head coaches for basketball decreased by nearly 20 percent. Of all 25 women’s sports in the NCAA’s Division I program, basketball has debatably become the most prestigious; in 2021, the sport made history when every single game in the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament was aired on national television — reaching millions of viewers. Holding only about 60 percent of head coach positions today, women continue to fight to maintain their ground in a competitive and lucrative market they once controlled.
Defining and calculating success
For their study, data were collected from more than 330 women’s basketball teams from the 2009-2010 to the 2017-2018 athletic seasons. This information assisted Beaudin and Berdiev in conducting two analyses: one at the divisional level and a sample set looking at Power Five and non-Power Five conference teams who filled the NCAA Tournament’s 64 slots. Power Five conferences are known as the most competitive and tend to field the most successful teams. More than 47 percent of teams in Power Five conferences advance to the end-of-year tournament while less than 13 percent of teams from the non-Power Five conferences make it to March Madness.
Adding onto previous external studies, Beaudin and Berdiev used appearances in the NCAA Division I end-of-year tournament as measures of success whereas previous studies used win percentage differentials or player performance. Given the increased competitive nature and growth of the sport, the authors noted that the win-loss percentage may not be a strong indicator of team performance.
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Digging deeper
Results from their full division analysis and a sample of teams in the non-Power Five conferences showed that there was no statistical evidence to suggest that coach gender has any significant impact on the probability of making it into the NCAA Tournament. To gain additional insights, Beaudin and Berdiev studied whether the impact of coach gender on the probability of tournament appearance differs based on how long a coach has been with a team. From the full sample, they found that the predicted probability for women coaches was not statistically different from the predicted probability for men coaches at any number of years of coaching tenure; however, results showed interesting differences between the subsamples of teams in the Power Five and non-Power Five conferences.
For instance, in a sample of teams in the non-Power Five conferences, the predicted probabilities for women coaches decrease, while the predicted probabilities for men coaches increase with more coach tenure; the predicted probability for women coaches is statistically different from the predicted probability for men coaches starting at eight years of coaching tenure. Meanwhile, in the sample of teams in the Power Five conferences, the predicted probabilities for women coaches are higher – with that likelihood increasing for both women and men coaches as coach tenure grows. The predicted probability for women coaches is statistically different from men coaches starting at three years of coaching tenure.
Avenues for further study
Ultimately, Beaudin and Berdiev found that Power Five conferences that had women head coaches were associated with an approximate 5.6 percent increase in probability of their team making it into the NCAA end-of-year tournament as compared to Power Five conference teams coached by men.
Looking toward the future, the authors hope that the analysis inspires future work to explore the opportunities for women in head coaching positions in all sporting areas. One potential avenue for research expansion includes looking at college athletic directors’ gender and their hiring decisions. While discrimination in Division I college athletics or in the hiring process were not examined in this study, there may be a need for this type of work to ensure women continue to have the same opportunities as men in collegiate sports markets.
