Injuries, near misses, the rise of the high seeds
USC’s JuJu Watkins Tears an ACL, Team Wins Anyway
The first weekend of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament wasn’t supposed to include USC’s star JuJu Watkins tearing her ACL. It started as routine play with Watkins splitting defenders and attacking the rim, but then she suddenly went down in a heap. All the positive energy in the arena evaporated as disbelief and despair rushed in. USC athletic trainers carried Watkins off the court as a stunned home crowd looked on.
Due to a season-defining effort from teammate KiKi Iriafen, the USC Trojans still managed to defeat Mississippi State.
Other USC Players Emerge From the Wings While it really, (really) sucks that JuJu Watkins is out, this year’s Sweet-16 still has shining stars playing and ready to take their place at the top. Paige, Flau’jae, Lauren, Aziaha, Hailey, Madison, Hannah, and Olivia are still playing. Oh, and defending champion South Carolina is still playing. Tobacco Road’s forever rivalry, Duke vs. North Carolina, is the repeat matchup we didn’t know we needed (again.)
Kentucky Just Misses the Sweet 16 With a near-make at the end of the game that would have advanced her team to the Sweet 16, Kentucky’s Georgia Amoore walked off with her head up high, knowing her college career can’t be minimized to one missed shot.
TCU Scores Their First Sweet 16 In a game of “get-back,” Texas Christian University (TCU)’s Hailey Van Lith defeated her former team, Louisville, despite a match where TCU ceded 41 points to Louisville’s senior guard, Jada Curry. Van Lith’s double-double punched the TCU Horned Frogs’ ticket to the program’s first-ever Sweet-16.
Lower-Ranked Teams Rise Up The Seed List, determines the order teams are placed in the tournament bracket, and it determines their ranking. The higher the number, the lower the ranking. Last weekend saw the tournament’s first double-digit seed, 10-seed Oregon, defeat 7-seed Vanderbilt and freshman standout Mikayla Blakes. The other higher seed to defeat a lower seed: 9-seed Indiana beat 8-seed Utah. This isn’t much of a surprise, with the Big Ten sending 12 teams to the tournament. The strength and depth of the conference remain on display into the tournament’s second weekend.
By and large, higher-seeded teams dominated their opponents. The talent, size and skill gap between the outstanding, established, large programs and the okay, up-and-coming, smaller programs is as immense as the racial wealth gap between white and Black American households. Neither has a chance of ending without some equitable policy changes and resources specifically directed at eliminating the gap.
Most Top-5 Seeds Still Alive and Kicking
Most of the Top-5 seeds in each bracket are still alive heading into next weekend. That means there haven’t been any major upsets yet in this tournament. But the possibilities become smaller and smaller with each game played. Kentucky, Baylor and Ohio State are the 4 seeds that have been eliminated. Kentucky lost an absolute heartbreaker to Kansas State, but it could hardly be considered an upset. Baylor lost to Ole Miss, and Coach Yo (Yolett McPhee-McCuin) led her team to its second Sweet-16 in the last three seasons. Ohio State ran out of gas against Tennessee.
The game of the Weekend: Alabama vs. Maryland
Alabama put on a clinic with their SEC first team senior guard Sarah Ashlee Barker, scoring 45 points in the double overtime thriller. Maryland had three players with 20-plus points and another with 19. The Terps' distribution of scoring and shot making, if they can maintain it, will be a significant challenge for the next team they face (psst… It's South Carolina.)
Compelling matchups await, but I’ll get into those later next week. Know that the time you spent on the couch last weekend watching basketball isn’t going to decrease this weekend. Viewership in the tournament's first round was up 43% from 2023.
The games will now be even more competitive, and the performances will be more incredible. These teams know what’s in front of them and they all want the same thing: to become National Champions and continue elevating the women’s college basketball game.
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