Review of the Ncaa Womens Basketball Top25 Teams
Northward.C.A.A. Women's Tournament: UConn Handles Mercer; Belmont Upsets Oregon
Second-seeded Connecticut got a balanced endeavour and 12 points in 25 minutes from the star guard Paige Bueckers. Belmont became the sixth double-digit seed to advance to the 2nd round this year.
Update: Southward Carolina shell UConn to win its second national championship.
Later Arizona handed Connecticut a humbling loss in last season'southward Final 4, Geno Auriemma, the Huskies' head motorcoach, was blunt about his team's level of maturity.
"When we're high and when we're on top of the globe, we retrieve everything'south not bad," Auriemma said at the time. "And when things don't go our style, there'south a pouty-ness about u.s.. There'southward a feeling sorry for ourselves about us that you don't win championships when you're like that unless you get lucky."
Before Connecticut'south convincing 83-38 win over 15th-seeded Mercer in the get-go round of the tournament on Sat, Auriemma said that his team was more than experienced and more complete than information technology was last yr, but that the Huskies, a No. 2 seed, had non yet faced enough adversity to mensurate how much they had matured.
"Teams act actually, actually mature when the brawl's going in the handbasket," he said. "Information technology's kind of funny about that, all right? And all of a sudden they become very immature when the ball's not going in."
Despite Mercer's best efforts in the first quarter to keep the game close, Connecticut scored with ease with a balanced offensive attack, made easy buckets in transition and used its top advantage to dominate on offense and defense.
Paige Bueckers, the reigning national role player of the yr, had been playing express minutes while recovering from an anterior tibial plateau fracture and lateral meniscus tear in her left genu in December. Bueckers, who has averaged about 14 minutes per game since the injury, was ambitious on offense and active on defence Saturday. She finished with 12 points, 4 rebounds and 5 assists in 25 minutes.
Christyn Williams, the Huskies' leading scorer with fourteen.6 points per game, led the team with thirteen points.
One of the Huskies' biggest strengths during their x-game winning streak has been defense force, which has improved after a handful of players missed games with various injuries.
Mercer shot only 23.two pct and scored its lowest point full all flavor. The Huskies' full court press forced several Mercer turnovers. Connecticut scored 23 points off 21 Mercer turnovers.
Connecticut has won 11 N.C.A.A. titles under Auriemma, just its last came in 2016.
The Huskies struggled at times this season, but many believe their depth and defense could be enough to hoist the title bays and atone for several seasons of disappointing finishes — disappointing, at to the lowest degree, by their standards.
North.C.A.A. Women's Basketball: Greensboro
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N.C.A.A. Women'southward Basketball: Final Iv
No. 12 Belmont upsets No. 5 Oregon in double overtime.
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If you were looking for the promised madness of March, the Belmont Bruins and the Oregon Ducks delivered.
The No. 12 Bruins defeated the No. 5 Ducks, 73-lxx, in double overtime — the get-go double overtime in the N.C.A.A. women's tournament in 9 years.
Sedona Prince lobbed a iii-point shot in the final seconds in hopes of forcing a third overtime. Merely the ball bounced off the rim, giving the Bruins their 2nd tournament upset in two years. They are the 6th double-digit seed to accelerate to the second round in this year's tournament.
"When someone makes it, it'south contagious. Whenever 12 seeds see that other 12 seeds are doing it, it lights some hope upwards," Conley Chinn, a forward for Belmont, said subsequently the game. "It'due south pure heart and guts to go out in that location and play against some of the all-time teams in the nation."
Belmont plowed through much of regulation, matching Oregon point for point. Oregon'south Te-Hina Paopao delivered a 3-pointer to strength overtime. Just it was Belmont's 3s — 12 in all — that kept the Bruins in the game. Tuti Jones led her team with 22 points, including two layups in the final minutes that she converted from steals.
Nyara Sabally led Oregon with 31 points, a career high for the 6-foot-5 junior forward who used her size and quickness to consistently go to the basket.
Nonetheless, Belmont outplayed Oregon's powerful offense with its quick reflexes. The Bruins play No. iv Tennessee on Monday in Knoxville.
"The multiple efforts that our kids made over and over today, that was the deviation in the game," Belmont Bus Bart Brooks said.
No. iii Louisiana Country ekes out a win over No. 14 Jackson Land.
No No. 14 seed has ever won a game in the N.C.A.A. women'due south tournament, just when Jackson Country took a ten signal lead in the eye of the fourth quarter against No. iii seed Louisiana State, information technology looked like information technology might be the team to modify that.
Alas, in 50.Due south.U.'s first tournament game under coach Kim Mulkey, the higher seed found a way to pull ahead at the last possible moment on its habitation floor. Louisiana State's leading scorer, Khayla Pointer, capped its comeback with a iii-signal shot that proved a winner.
A slew of unlikely foul calls, including a technical foul against Jackson State Coach Tomekia Reed and a filibuster of game technical against L.S.U. that followed a alert for the same seemingly pocket-sized infraction, added to the anarchy.
Jackson Land entered the game with a tie for the longest active win streak in Sectionalisation I women'south basketball. The squad competed against Baylor, and then coached by Kim Mulkey as well, in final year'due south tournament — a possible explanation for how effective their game plan was.
Jackson State'south 3-point shooting, specifically four timely 3-point baskets from inferior Miya Crump, kept Jackson State in the game, but information technology was the inside effort of Southwestern Conference Player of the Year Ameshya Williams-Holliday that gave Jackson Country its advantage through much of the 4th quarter.
Sharp guard play from Louisiana State, particularly Jailin Crimson, who had a career loftier 24 points, helped the team clamber dorsum but in fourth dimension — and delayed 1 item women'southward tournament milestone.
No. 11 Princeton stuns Kentucky, the Southeastern Conference champion.
For the third time in N.C.A.A. women's tournament history, an Ivy League team has won a game. For the second time, that team is Princeton.
The Tigers managed a win for the starting time time since 2015 equally a No. 11 seed, despite competing confronting a nominally formidable opponent: a sixth-seeded Kentucky team that had only upset the all-time team in the country, South Carolina, to win the Southeastern Conference tournament.
The Tigers took over early on in their game on Saturday, though, cheers in large role to the fearless play of senior guard Abby Meyers, who finished with 29 points. Meyers and her fellow baby-sit Kaitlyn Chen set up the pace, executing graceful fakes and muscling past a Kentucky team that seemed to be perennially looking for foul calls that never came.
Rhyne Howard, Kentucky's best player and a projected first-round W.Northward.B.A. draft pick, tried to reply but her efforts were futile. She made simply 4 of her fourteen attempts from the field, and along with her teammates looked generally bewildered past the Tigers' defense. Dre'una Edwards, who striking the buzzer-beater shot that won Kentucky its briefing championship, finished the game with 16 points and 12 rebounds.
Though Princeton never had a double-digit lead, it plant ways to respond every fourth dimension information technology looked like Kentucky might accept found a little momentum. Meyers's 3-point shot halfway through the fourth quarter, a quick response to a fast-pause handbasket past Edwards, effectively iced the game.
Princeton will face No. 3 seed Indiana on Monday as it competes for its first win in the tournament's round of 32.
Villanova upset Brigham Young.
Maddy Siegrist averaged 25 points per game this flavor, and that's exactly what the nation's second-leading scorer posted as she led No. 11 Villanova to a win over No. 6 Brigham Young.
Siegrist, a half dozen-human foot-1 junior, was responsible for every field goal the Wildcats made in the final vii minutes of the game, equally well as most of the free throws that sealed their victory.
"The ball is certainly going to fall in Maddy'southward hands," said Villanova Bus Denise Dillon. "Down the stretch, nosotros were looking for her to make plays for us."
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The Cougars entered the tournament with only 3 losses, including a surprise defeat past Gonzaga in the title game of the West Coast Briefing tournament. No. nine seed Gonzaga advanced to the second round on Friday after beating Nebraska.
B.Y.U. contained Villanova early, rushing out to a double-digit pb in the first quarter. Subsequently that, both teams traded the pb until the very end. The Cougars got within 1 indicate of the Wildcats with 26 seconds left in the game, but couldn't convert any potential game-winning shots. Siegrist too blocked a late three-betoken shot effort.
"I couldn't give up any 3s to No. x," Siegrist said afterward most that crucial block against Tegan Graham. "She already hitting one in my face, she wasn't going to get a 3 off."
Villanova held Shaylee Gonzales, the Westward Coast Conference actor of the year, to merely 8 points, less than half of her season average. She managed to brand viii assists, simply was even so relatively quiet in what looked at the outset like a matchup betwixt 2 stars.
Siegrist looked poised, despite the fact that this was her first career N.C.A.A. tournament game. Some experience came from Brianna Herlihy, who led the Wildcats with nine rebounds.
N.C. Land left no doubtfulness well-nigh its prowess.
North Carolina State, a No. one seed who is trying to brand a Last Four advent for the first fourth dimension since 1998, defeated No. sixteen seed Longwood, 96-68, in Raleigh, N.C.
Longwood kept up with North Carolina State through the first quarter thanks to Tra'Dayja Smith, who finished with 25 points, and Kyla McMakin, who finished with 19, and headed into the second quarter with but a 4-betoken arrears. But North Carolina State kicked into high gear in the second quarter and took off, extending its atomic number 82 to 42-21.
Prototype
The Wolfpack spread the wealth: Eleven different players scored for North Carolina Country and v of them reached double figures, including Raina Perez, who led the team with 16 points, equally well as Diamond Johnson and Jakia Dark-brown-Turner. Freshman Aziaha James made her court advent in the fourth quarter with a splash, faking a pass so making a layup that drew the dwelling oversupply to their anxiety.
North Carolina State volition face Kansas Country on Monday in Raleigh, pinning vi-pes-6 Ayoka Lee against 6-human foot-5 Elissa Cunane.
Michigan'southward Naz Hillmon dominates as the Wolverines advance.
Naz Hillmon made a statement in but iii quarters of No. 3-seeded Michigan's blowout 74-39 win over American.
Michigan's first-ever Associated Printing all-American proved why she deserved that award with a nearly flawless performance in the Wolverines' first game of the tournament. Hillmon put on a show for the home crowd in Ann Arbor, scoring 24 points in 25 minutes on the flooring while gathering eleven rebounds. It was her 49th career double-double.
Paradigm
Hillmon was named the Large Ten actor of the year terminal flavor, and this season she was neck and neck with Iowa's Caitlin Clark for the title. Though Clark prevailed, Hillmon has had a commanding senior flavor, scoring quickly and gracefully from the midrange and beneath the handbasket while playing with impressive urgency on the defensive end of the courtroom.
This year's tournament is her second showcase on the national phase before she enters the W.Due north.B.A. draft this spring, where she is projected to be a first-round pick. Terminal year, Hillmon led Michigan to the round of 16 for the get-go time in program history. She played with fifty-fifty more confidence and efficiency in Saturday'due south opening game.
In her concluding tournament run, Hillmon never cracked 20 points in a game. Against American, she fabricated xi of her 14 shots — and ii of those misses came late in the third quarter, when the game was already far out of reach for the Eagles. Even when she wasn't padding her numbers in the box score, Hillmon was creating opportunities for her teammates, setting screens and drawing defenders.
On Monday, she'll face up off with Villanova's Maddy Siegrist — another acme-tier player who had an impressive opening game.
Ayoka Lee leads No. ix Kansas State in her first tournament victory.
The coronavirus pandemic may have delayed the postseason ambitions of Ayoka Lee, Kansas State's vi-foot-vi center, for two years, but no longer. Lee and the ninth-seeded Wildcats outlasted No. 8-seeded Washington State in a hard-fought defensive battle, winning 50-40 and denying the Cougars their showtime tournament win in programme history.
Washington State was up 7 points at halftime, a lead that seemed substantial given that the score was merely 24-17. Lee had made a single field goal, while Washington State'southward Leger-Walker sisters, Krystal and Charlisse, had combined for xix points. Both crafty guards, the New Zealand natives appeared in control early and capitalized on the Wildcats' slow pace.
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But trying to comprise Lee had gotten the Cougars into foul problem, and then gradually she was able to help Kansas State become in control of the pace and the scoreboard. Her deft rebounding and quick release near the handbasket make her an imposing threat to any squad that allows her to become position inside. The Cougars' center Bella Murekatete, who typically averages 10 points and seven rebounds per game, was held scoreless and grabbed simply three rebounds.
The matchup was then low-scoring that once the Wildcats were more than five points alee, the game felt all simply over.
"When shots weren't falling, we dug deep," Kansas Country Double-decker Jeff Mittie after the game. "That'southward something that this squad has learned: Not to tie their defense to their crime. We're moving on considering of that."
Lee finished the game with twenty points and fifteen rebounds, numbers that offer a glimpse of the kind of authoritative play she is capable of — and that the Wildcats volition demand equally they endeavor to brand it to the circular of 16 for the first time in 20 years.
No. 7 seed Cardinal Florida got its beginning North.C.A.A. tournament win.
In their seventh trip to the Due north.C.A.A. tournament, the seventh-seeded Knights of Central Florida finally earned their very commencement win, a decisive 69-52 victory over in-state opponents Florida.
Though they were the higher seed with Florida seeded No. 10, the game even so had the feel of an underdog's triumph considering Florida'southward position in the ascendant Southeastern Conference and the Knights' dismal tournament record.
Key Florida has lost just three games this season, and this win extends their current streak to 14. The Knights accept earned those wins mostly on defence, assuasive an average of just 47.6 points per game — the least in the state.
In this win, though, their offense shone. The Knights took control early on and rarely allow the Gators, who were playing without their injured leading scorer, Kiara Smith, come within striking altitude. Senior forward Brittney Smith led the team with 25 points off the bench, and fabricated 11 of her 15 shots. Senior Diamond Battles and 5th year senior Masseny Kaba rounded out Central Florida's experienced offense, scoring hands around the basket and from midrange (the Knights made only two three-indicate shots).
Central Florida will be rewarded for their offset plan win with an unenviable challenge: none other than Connecticut will be their second round opponent as they try to move on to Bridgeport, Conn., in the round of 16.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/19/sports/ncaabasketball/ncaa-tournament-womens-scores.html
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