Countdown to March Madness: Champ Week — or where No. 1 seeds are made

It’s the time of year where there’s simply too much happening, in the best possible way. The NCAAW regular season wrapped up for most teams over the past weekend, with a few notable upsets (Creighton over Marquette, Arizona State over No. 11 Oregon State, and Texas A&M over Kentucky) and a lot of games where top teams — no doubt burnt out by the grind of the season — had to fight to assert their dominance.

UConn and Baylor in particular found themselves in nail-biters versus unranked South Florida and West Virginia, respectively, on Monday night. UConn, who was missing starter Katie Lou Samuelson after she suffered a back injury (thankfully, it’s not serious), went into the locker room at halftime with just 25 points before edging out a win, 57-47 — one can barely recall those halcyon days when UConn was ruining women’s basketball with their impenetrable dominance. (That said, I probably just jinxed it, and now they’ll win the title.)

Now we’re already in the thick of Champ Week, with the ACC, SEC and Big Ten tournaments having kicked off yesterday. If you’re trying to figure out how to watch, Swish Appeal has helpfully published a schedule of when and where you can find all the conference tournament games.

We dove into the ACC a little bit last week, and the outcomes since have only confirmed what we already knew: the ACC tournament winner is going to dramatically change the way the NCAA women’s basketball tournament bracket looks. Basically, as ESPN notes, if it’s No. 3 Louisville or No. 4 Notre Dame (and as of now, they are the clear top two teams) whoever wins gets to go to the nearby Chicago regional; it’s impossible to forecast anything else about the tournament without having that information.

For more information about the ACC (which, beyond its bracketology implications, is also the most competitive conference in women’s college basketball), check out the Swish Appeal preview, the Women’s Hoops World preview and the AP preview.

Over in the SEC, No. 5 Mississippi State claimed the regular season title on Sunday — but their 68-64 clinching victory over No. 12 South Carolina wasn’t as easy as the Bulldogs would have probably liked. In all likelihood, they’ll have to defeat the Gamecocks — the reigning SEC tournament champions — again if they want to win their first-ever conference title, and make a last-ditch run for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Read more at Swish Appeal and from the NCAA; personally, I will probably spend much of the tournament mourning Chennedy Carter’s finger.

The Big Ten also promises tight competition. No. 8 Maryland won the regular season title outright, but lost to No. 10 Iowa — the conference’s No. 2 seed — in the process. Plus, there are a slew of teams in the middle of the pack ready to pull off an upset; last year, as the NCAA notes, over half of Big Ten tournament games were decided by single digits. Swish Appeal, Testudo Times and Women’s Hoops World all previewed this year’s tournament.

This week, our primary focus will be the Pac-12 — a conference that seemed all but locked up until fairly late in the season. Yes, No. 6 Oregon, No. 11 Oregon State and No. 7 Stanford have been nationally-ranked threats almost all season. But for the vast majority of the regular season, including conference play, Oregon kept winning in gaudy fashion — with the exception of an anomalous loss to Michigan State in December — and even today, remains the No. 1 offense in the country per Her Hoop Stats. Sabrina Ionescu racked up seven triple doubles as the team hummed along, even beating a top-10 Stanford by 40 points in February.

Then came what Oregonians refer to as the Civil War (a modification of meaning only really possible in Oregon): Oregon vs. Oregon State, once in Eugene and once in Corvallis. Oregon defended home court handily, but were upset on the road by the Beavers in a 67-62 game where they lost star forward Ruthy Hebard to injury — and didn’t look particularly effective before she went to the bench. They dropped their next game too, to a then-unranked UCLA.

Suddenly, the No. 2-ranked team — the highest national ranking in program history — didn’t look like such a sure thing, while Oregon State, Stanford, No. 20 Arizona State and No. 25 UCLA were surging or at the very least steady. Since, the Ducks have dropped to No. 6; Hebard still isn’t playing at 100 percent, and guard Taylor Chavez is out with a foot injury for the foreseeable future, both serious blows to the team’s depth.

Meanwhile, the tournament looks like it could be a great stage for some of the conference’s less-appreciated talents. At Oregon State, stars Destiny Slocum and Mikayla Pivec have the support of a dangerous backcourt in Aleah Goodman.

The Bruins have Kennedy Burke and Michaela Onyenwere, who are together averaging 33 points and 14 rebounds a game.

Stanford has WNBA-bound sharpshooter Alanna Smith, who’s currently top 20 in the country in both field goals made and blocks — a testament to her hustle.

And Arizona State has been content to play the spoilsport, without gaudy stats and mostly on the back of senior forward Kianna Ibis — but there’s no telling whose run they could mess up if they got hot at the right time.

Entering the tournament, Oregon is still the frontrunner. But if you ask the Arizona State team who played them close in Sunday’s regular season finale (66-59, Oregon), the Ducks have weaknesses that a smart team can play off of. Plus, there’s the confidence that comes from knowing Pac-12 have beaten each other, at least by extension: Oregon lost to UCLA who lost to Stanford who lost to Cal who lost to Oregon State, and so on. This weekend’s tournament is anyone’s game.

It’s hard not to just say, all of them — but naturally, the weekend’s championships will be must-see TV. You can more or less just set aside your Sunday: title games start with the ACC at 12 p.m., and continue with the SEC at 2 p.m. After a break, it’s the Big Ten at 6 p.m. and then the Pac-12 at 8 p.m. — all on ESPN2, so for once they will be easy to find (times are Eastern).