The final eight spots in the N.C.A.A tournament: What we don’t want to miss (player selections organized by seed, all times Eastern)
The final eight spots in the round of 16 of the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament will be decided Monday. Follow along with the bracket and live scores, and check out our picks for the games we don’t want to miss (teams organized by seed; all times Eastern):
For the second year in a row, Florida Gulf Coast entered the N.C.A.A. tournament as a No. 12 seed, and for the second year, the Eagles beat a No. 5 seed. This time it was a 74-63 win over Washington State. Sha Carter led Florida Gulf Coast with 24 points, and Tishara Morehouse added 16 points. The Eagles held the Cougars’ leading scorer, Charlisse Leger-Walker, to 5 points on Saturday. They may have a harder time putting the clamps on Villanova’s star forward, Maddy Siegrist. In Villanova’s 76-59 first-round win against Cleveland State, Siegrist scored 35 points and became the fifth Division I women’s player in N.C.A.A. history with at least 1,000 points in a single season.
Indiana was the topseeded team in the N.C.A.A. tournament and beat Tennessee Tech easily on Saturday. Miami, on the other hand, needed a 17-point comeback in the second half to beat Oklahoma State. The Hoosiers are playing to get to their third consecutive round-of-16 game, while Miami has made the second weekend only once. The universities met in the men’s tournament for the second time.
Alabama jumped out to a big lead of 18 points in the first quarter. But the Bears pulled out the third-largest comeback in the tournament’s history to win, 78-74. Connecticut breezed through its first half against Vermont, racing to a 53-20 halftime lead before cruising to a 95-50 win. The last time UConn and Baylor met, in the 2021 tournament’s round of 8, the game ended on a missed shot from Baylor’s DiJonai Carrington that was tightly contested by two UConn defenders, a play that was loudly decried after the game for the absence of a foul call. Can we get similar drama in the rematch?
When asked if this South Carolina squad was the best team she’s ever coached, Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley said, “I mean, this team has been to three consecutive Final Fours. I think they separate themselves from any other team that we’ve been a part of.”
The defending champions were not at their best throughout the opening stages of their Elite Eight matchup against the Terrapins and were surprisingly trailing after the first quarter.
NAIsmith women’s defensive player of the year: Elizabeth Kitley, Emily Clark, Jordan Clark, Andreev Amoore
The reigning NAIsmith women’s player of the year and NAIsmith women’s defensive player of the year has had another fantastic season and put on another show when it mattered most.
Boston had her 82nd double-double in the victory to propel the Gamecocks to their third straight Final Four appearance.
Clark became the first player in NCAA Tournament history – men’s or women’s – to record a 40-point triple-double to lead Iowa to its first Final Four appearance since 1993.
Led by Elizabeth Kitley’s double-double and Georgia Amoore’s 24 points, the Hokies came back from a first-quarter deficit to seal victory in the Elite Eight.
“It is so huge. I can’t even speak right now, I can’t believe it,” Amoore told the ESPN broadcast on what it meant to advance to the first Final Four in program history.