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All roads now lead to Cleveland.
The NCAA Division I women’s college basketball season has finally arrived at Selection Sunday, where the paths to this year’s Final Four were revealed.
Undefeated South Carolina stands alone as the clear championship favorite, but a host of teams are hot on its heels hoping to take down the two-time national champions.
With that being said, here’s a look at this year’s bracket and seeds, alongside some notes on the top squads.
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Naturally, South Carolina is the clear favorite after a 32-0 season. The Gamecocks outscored their opponents by nearly 30 points per game and took down seven ranked opponents during the season, including defending champion LSU twice.
Senior center Kamilla Cardoso (14.0 PPG, 9.5 RPG, 2.6 BPG) leads the way, but this is a deep team that has nine players who score 5.9 PPG or more. The Gamecocks’ offensive efficiency (49.7 FG%, 39.7 3P FG%) is a serious problem as well.
A few different teams can spoil their search for a third national title. One of them did last year in Iowa, led by presumed back-to-back consensus national player of the year Caitlin Clark. The assured No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA draft averaged 31.9 points, 8.9 assists and 7.3 rebounds for the Big Ten champions, who finished 29-4.
The Hawkeyes are a great shooting team (50.3 percent from the field) and can get after it on the boards (four players average six or more per game).
Another superstar could lead her team to national championship glory in JuJu Watkins, the first-year USC guard who’s been lighting up the sport all season. Watkins averages 27.0 points, 7.2 rebounds and 2.4 steals per game. She dropped 51 of USC’s points in a 67-58 win over Stanford earlier this year. Simply put, she’s a machine and quite capable of leading USC to a crown a la Cheryl Miller in the mid-1980s.
Speaking of Stanford, the Cardinal have perhaps the most deadly one-two punch in the sport thanks to Kiki Iriafen (18.6 PPG, 11.0 RPG) and Cameron Brink (17.8 PPG, 12.0 RPG, 3.5 BPG). This team assuredly is hungry for a deep playoff run after a shocking upset to No. 8 seed Ole Miss in the second round of last year’s tournament.
Although the Cardinal’s Pac-12 tournament ended with a thud after a 74-61 loss to USC, Stanford is very much so capable of winning it all.
So is UCLA, another Pac-12 powerhouse. A fantastic 25-win season ended with a double-OT heartbreaker to USC in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals. Still, UCLA can go far, thanks in part to a well-rounded offense (five players scoring 9.7 points or more per game). Center Lauren Betts leads the way with 14.7 PPG and 9.0 RPG.
And then there’s the defending national champions in LSU. Like Stanford, LSU also possesses a great two-superstar combo in Angel Reese (19.0 PPG, 13.1 RPG) and Aneesah Morrow (16.5 PPG, 10.0 RPG). But this team runs real deep, with its five starters scoring 12 or more per game.
The Tigers entered this season with a big target on their backs after winning the national title and did well, going 28-5 overall and 13-3 in the SEC. Two of those losses were close defeats in hard-fought games to South Carolina. We’ll see if those two teams match up again.
Somehow, both UCLA and LSU matched up with Iowa in its regional to form a Group of Death. It’s remarkable that only one of those teams is headed to the Final Four, but it speaks to the depth of great squads this year.
Texas rounded out the No. 1 seeds after winning the Big 12 tournament. The Longhorns have done a sensational job rebounding from the brutal loss of Rori Harmon, who suffered a torn ACL in December.
The 30-win team is led by guard Madison Booker, who paces the squad with 16.9 points and 4.9 rebounds. Taylor Jones has been very efficient, scoring 12.4 points and grabbing 6.5 rebounds in just 20.7 minutes per game. Texas is also on a 12-1 roll, with the only loss a 71-70 result to Oklahoma.
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