It’s the most wonderful time of the year, if your definition of wonderful is 12 straight top-tier women’s college basketball games (which frankly, it should be).
Women’s NCAA tournament Sweet 16 preview: Get ready for the potential upsets and favorites
Everything you need to know for another mad weekend of basketball.
Now that our collective blood pressure has gone back down after the thrilling finishes of the first two rounds, it’s time to once again put our heart health in jeopardy with even tighter competition: we have even more lower-seeded teams in the Sweet Sixteen on the women’s side than on the men’s, meaning more potential Cinderellas — and at least two regions where the ticket to the Final Four ticket is entirely up for grabs.
Get to know the top teams and players in the 2019 NCAA women’s tournament Sweet 16.
Albany Regional (Friday, March 29)
No. 2 UConn vs. No. 6 UCLA (7 p.m. ET, ESPN)
No. 1 Louisville vs. No. 4 Oregon State (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN)
Two weeks ago, no one would have given a UCLA-Oregon matchup a second thought. But two weeks ago, UConn hadn’t been seriously challenged by a fearless No. 10-seed Buffalo team in the second round, and UCLA hadn’t shown remarkable composure in upsetting No. 3 seed Maryland. The Bruins beat Oregon late in the season, and once again pushed the Ducks to the brink in an OT loss in the Pac-12 tournament — and the Huskies look uncharacteristically vulnerable. An upset is still unlikely, but if it happened, it would tear 90 percent of brackets to shreds.
Oregon State, on the other hand, appears to be hanging on by a thread, having played dangerously close in their first two tournament matchups. Faced with a Louisville team that’s getting hot at exactly the right time, the Beavers have a steep road to the Elite Eight.
Portland Regional (Friday, March 29)
No. 1 Mississippi State vs. No. 5 Arizona State (9 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 6 South Dakota State (11 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
This regional features two teams riding upsets, and the top two offenses in the country (Oregon is No. 1, and Mississippi State is No. 2). The latter two will likely be on cruise control to the Elite Eight, but if anyone can challenge the Ducks it’s the offense-minded Jackrabbits, who shot 47 percent from three-point range in a close loss to Oregon before conference play began. There is always the potential for Madness, after all.
Greensboro Regional (Saturday, March 30)
No. 2 Iowa vs. No. 3 NC State (11:30 a.m. ET, ESPN)
No. 1 Baylor vs. No. 4 South Carolina (2 p.m. ET, ESPN)
It’s going to be decidedly worthwhile to wake up early (sorry, West Coast folks) to see Iowa scoring machine Megan Gustafson — she of the 70.1 percent effective field goal percentage, per Her Hoop Stats — take on a tenacious NC State, a team whose freshman center Elise Cunane shows serious potential to get near Gustafson’s level. These teams are pretty evenly matched, and it should be a good game despite the early call time.
Though it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the oppressive No. 1 overall seed Baylor doesn’t stifle South Carolina, it’s also hard to imagine star South Carolina guard Ty Harris and coach Dawn Staley rolling over. This is still the team that kept UConn in check for an entire half, and if they get enough buckets in transition the Gamecocks could keep this one close.
Chicago Regional (Saturday, March 30)
No. 1 Notre Dame vs. No. 4 Texas A&M (4 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
No. 2 Stanford vs. No. 11 Missouri State (6:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2)
If there were a dictionary entry for “appointment television”, it would feature an illustration of Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale and Texas A&M’s Chennedy Carter going head to head. Notre Dame is stacked top to bottom with phenomenal talent, and Ogunbowale isn’t even the team’s most efficient guard — that would be Jackie Young. But Ogunbowale and Carter share an unequivocal relentlessness that makes them just absurdly fun to watch, even if there’s a strong probability Notre Dame will get the W.
The women’s tournament’s truest Cinderellas are the Missouri State Lady Bears, who started their regular season by losing seven of their first eight games. But they upset Drake to win the Missouri Valley Conference, and then upset No. 6 seed DePaul and No. 3 seed Iowa State. Now, they’re the sole double-digit seed left in the tournament, and as is appropriate for a team that counts former NCAA leading scorer Jackie Stiles among its coaching staff (she’s an alum), they can quickly get hot. Against DePaul, they shot 55 percent from behind the arc — if anybody can match offense, though, it’s Stanford. It should be a wild ride.
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