You know, the AAC has had a good OOC this year - they aren't exactly battling great teams, but they are winning games that last year they were losing. It isn't P5 strength, but it is improving - 57-29 to this point is not bad and the worst teams have 3 wins each. This is going improve everyone's RPI number so maybe that on the hump team for an NCAA berth will get a bid instead of heading to the NIT.
And the other mid-majors are flexing a little muscle as well - looks like the newBE is getting stronger as well with some signature wins.
The worrying about parity in WCBB is usually confined to the top ten, but I think you are seeing the real parity showing up with the top 15-100 kind of teams and even further down. Better coaching and better player development and maybe a wider pool of HS talent coming in, again not in the top 50 recruits necessarily but in the 50-350 type of recruits that you need to have more balanced leagues and a more balanced national environment. There is also probably just a little more money being spent be schools on the women's side. The fact that the top end of the HS talent still remains in college for 4 years means that the middle rank of teams will never achieve quite as much as they do on the men's side, but I am not sure that matters.
Maybe last year's FF is a precursor of all this as well. Uconn and Oregon State were both top ten, but Syracuse was mid teens and Washington was unranked and go back to the elite eight and it had two unranked teams, two from the teens, two from the top 5 and two from the second five.
I know it is early in the year and most of the usual suspects are populating the top 10 and the top 25, but there are some surprises and again because of the four year players, change isn't going to manifest itself as quickly in WCBB.