Inside the NCAAW: Can any team stop Sabrina Ionescu and Oregon this season?

It’s prediction season in college hoops: the time when pundits of all stripes, from fervent tweeters to studio show talking heads, are pressed into service to see the future based on how players, coaches and teams performed half a year prior.

It would probably be as helpful — or perhaps more so — to burn some sage and summon latent spirits for supernatural insight on whether or not the UConn dynasty is actually in serious jeopardy, but instead we craft takes that may well be Freezing Cold™ within weeks.

Thank goodness we writers are so persistently willing to hang ourselves out to dry. What would we all fight about otherwise?

Last year, the four teams at the top of the preseason poll made it to the Final Four: Notre Dame, UConn, Oregon and Baylor — the latter of which emerged early in the season as a force to be reckoned with, and rode a wave of relentless beatdowns (the kind we’re most accustomed to seeing up in Storrs) to the 2019 title.

But the relative stasis at the top of the NCAAW over the 2018-2019 belied the league’s gradually increasing parity. Newly perennial contenders from the SEC and Pac-12 like Oregon, Mississippi State and South Carolina have joined the party that UConn and Tennessee (the latter unranked for the first time since 1976) helped start. The 2019 title game was won by one point; 2018’s by three — three that have already been etched into the sport’s history books. There is a real chance for programs that have only occasionally scraped the sport’s top tier (like Texas A&M and Oregon State) as well as stalwarts looking to recreate past glory (like Stanford and Maryland).

Most of 2019-20’s breathless preseason coverage, though, has centered squarely on the Oregon Ducks. The Ducks have dominated national women’s college basketball news more or less since the Final Four thanks to generational talent (and presumed future New York Liberty guard) Sabrina Ionescu, who was compelled by goofy NCAA rules to announce whether or not she would enter the WNBA Draft within 24 hours of losing to Baylor in the semifinal. Spoiler alert: she stayed at Oregon, as she announced in a Player’s Tribune missive, despite the fact she would have likely been the No. 1 pick (an indictment of conditions in the WNBA if there ever was one).

Obviously, Ionescu’s decision to remain in Eugene alongside powerhouse forwards Satou Sabally and Ruthy Hebard (all three are ranked among ESPN’s top 10 players nationally) is one based on manifesting what might feel like some overdue rings for the buzzy program. They’re in a great position to do just that with Hebard posting the highest field goal percentage among returning players, Ionescu poised to keep resetting her own triple-double record (she’s currently at 18, six more than the male record-holder), and a fanbase that is more than ready for a springtime trip to New Orleans.

But it’s a lot of pressure, even for someone as self-possessed as Ionescu. “She’s made us relevant in the national championship discussion,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves told SLAM. “Now we’re a national program. Obviously she has great teammates and everybody has helped, there’s no question about that. But she’s really been the face of that resurgence.”

And the Ducks will face considerable competition, even just within their own stacked conference. Stanford had a particularly strong recruiting class joining standouts Kiana Williams and DiJonai Carrington, Oregon State stars Destiny Slocum and Mikayla Pivec put on a show during the Pac-12 and NCAA tournaments — and UCLA just came from giving UConn a run for their money in Sweet 16.

The reigning champs also seem highly unlikely to go down without a fight, having only lost Kalani Brown and Chloe Jackson off their remarkably deep roster. Sure, Lauren Cox — who barely escaped serious injury during Baylor’s championship game — is one of the best players in the country. But it was now-sophomore NaLyssa Smith who went 7-of-9 for 14 points in the title game, and Juicy Landrum and DiDi Richards, whose six assists each kept the Notre Dame defense on its toes. The Lady Bears kicked off their 2019-2020 preseason with an absolutely brutal 149-32 win over Langston University, just in case anyone forgot what they’re capable of.

As always, the SEC looks to be an enormously fun battleground — this year with more young, raw talent than established stars. South Carolina has its highlight-prone recruiting class led by Zia Cooke and Aliyah Boston; Mississippi State is fielding a bevy of new bigs to try to fill their Teaira McCowan-sized hole and get the ring they’ve come so close to four years in a row; and Texas A&M will be the most fun team to watch in the country because Chennedy Carter is the most fun player to watch in the country, in this biased writer’s opinion. Her duel with Arike Ogunbowale and Notre Dame in the Sweet 16 was the kind of offensive performance that only seems possible in myth. Arkansas is ranked for the first time in almost two decades on the strength of Chelsea Dungee, whose MVP-worthy performance lifted the team to the SEC tournament finals.

There’s Maryland, where Kaila Charles leads a core group of seniors looking to make a deep run in the tournament after a series of setbacks, and of course the NCAAW’s deepest conference, the ACC, which will look substantially different this year following the departure of some of its marquee seniors.

UConn remains UConn, overdue (on their timeline) for a title and with some uncharacteristically flashy players like Christyn Williams and Crystal Dangerfield more than capable of adding to Geno Auriemma’s era-defining run. An interesting aside: the shape of both UConn and South Carolina’s seasons will be shaped by the not-so-invisible hand of the NCAA, which has denied transfer waivers to both programs that would allow Evina Westbrook (who is coming from Tennessee) and Destiny Littleton (from Texas) to play immediately. Why anyone would be kept from playing a sport for free where they want to is the kind of proprietary secret the NCAA prefers not to discuss, but the programs in question aren’t keeping quiet about it.

“You don’t get to decide who’s a yes and who’s a no, because that leads to a lot of other questions that we can’t answer, and then it starts to lead to conspiracy theories. ‘Why does this kid get a yes and that kid get a no? Because they’re going to that school or because they’re involved in that sport,’” Auriemma told the Hartford Courant. “I don’t know that we want to be in the business of doing anything other than what’s in the best interest for the kid. Does it benefit the kid to sit out, especially when the coach and the athletic director at the school that they’re leaving go ‘I’ve got no problem with this?’”

Anyway, none of us really know anything about what will happen this season besides the fact that a healthy portion of it will be extremely entertaining. Here is a Twitter list of the top 25 programs with some good media follows (Swish Appeal, of course, should be your first stop), and a few good games to check out in a sea of soft early-season match-ups.

USA WNT exhibition matchups at No. 6 Texas A&M (Nov. 7, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN+) and No. 1 Oregon (Nov. 9, 7 p.m. ET, Pac-12 Network)

Two of the best college teams vs. the best in the world as they prepare for Tokyo — it’s a no brainer.

No. 8 South Carolina at No. 4 Maryland (Nov. 10, 3 p.m. ET, ESPN)

First ranked matchup of the season is between two teams with a ton to prove.

Tennessee at No. 16 Notre Dame (Nov. 11, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN2)

Could a Muffet McGraw-led team really have taken such a precipitous tumble in the few months since a near title run? Five just-graduated starters in the W say ... yes, but ESPN is giving us the chance to see for ourselves.