Top 4 seeds - Women's tourney

The top 4 seeds actually boil down to 16 scenarios, once irrelevant games are factored out. Green Bay already has the 1 seed locked in. YSU, Loyola, and Detroit will each get one of the remaining top 4 seeds (i.e. also host a quarterfinal game).

Current standings:

1.  Green Bay   14-0
2.  YSU         11-4
3.  Loyola       9-5
4.  Detroit      8-6
...

Obviously, only Loyola can challenge YSU for the 2 seed. But Detroit can challenge Loyola for the 3 seed.

The four games that matter for the top 4 seeds: (1) YSU-Detroit (Thurs), (2) Loyola-GB (Thurs), (3) Detroit-Valpo (Sat), and (4) Loyola-UIC (Sat).

If YSU beats Detroit on Thursday, they clinch the 2 seed, and drop Detroit to 8-7 so they can at best tie Loyola at 9-7. Unfortunately, they would be 0-2 against YSU while Loyola is 1-1 against YSU, so Loyola would still get the 3 seed. Hence, if YSU beats Detroit on Thursday, the top 4 seeds would be locked in: (2) YSU (3) Loyola (4) Detroit.

That leaves 8 scenarios where Detroit beats YSU. If Loyola manages to pull of the upset over Green Bay on Thursday, this would relegate Detroit to the 4 seed, and the 2 and 3 seeds would be decided by the Loyola-UIC game. If Loyola wins, they get the 2 seed and YSU gets the 3 seed. If UIC wins, YSU gets the 2 seed and Loyola gets the 3 seed. The Valpo-Detroit game would become irrelevant because the best Detroit can do is tie Loyola, and Loyola's win over GB would break the tie in their favor since GB swept Detroit. Obviously if Loyola beats UIC, they tie with YSU and win the tiebreaker because of the win over GB since YSU was also swept by GB.

If Detroit beats YSU and Green Bay beats Loyola, then Detroit and Loyola fight each other for the 3 and 4 seeds. Since the two teams are now tied in this scenario, Detroit gets the 3 seed unless Loyola beats UIC and Valpo beats Detroit, thus putting Loyola at 10-6 and Detroit at 9-7.

There is one scenario in which the 3 and 4 seeds would be decided by RPI: Detroit beats YSU, Green Bay beats Loyola, CSU beats WSU, and UIC beats Loyola. This would result in:

1.  Green Bay    16-0 or 15-1
2.  YSU          11-5
3.  Loyola        9-7
3.  Detroit       9-7
5.  UIC           8-8 or 7-9
6.  CSU           6-10
    WSU           5-11
    Valpo         5-11

I left the bottom unresolved and left Milwaukee (who can end up with 4, 5, or 6 wins) out completely because they were swept by both teams and therefore have no impact even when they are grouped with other teams.

Both teams in this scenario were swept by Green Bay, split with YSU and UIC, and swept CSU and Milwaukee. Both teams would be 3-1 against WSU/Valpo (Detroit 2-0 vs. WSU, 1-1 vs. Valpo; Loyola 1-1 vs. WSU, 2-0 vs. Valpo). Since there's no other teams left to check, RPI would have to break the tie.

Otherwise, Detroit gets the 3 seed because: (1) they split with each other, (2) both get swept by Green Bay, (3) both split with YSU, (4) both split with UIC, (5) both swept CSU and Milwaukee, (6) WSU who must finish ahead of Valpo in the remaining scenarios breaks the tie in Detroit's favor as shown above.

In other words, if Detroit beats YSU, Green Bay beats Loyola, and either Detroit beats Valpo or UIC beats Loyola or both, then Detroit gets the 3 seed and Loyola falls to the 4 seed.