There was no question about the No. 1 overall seed for the women’s tournament. (Who else but the undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks?) But plenty of bracket drama was in store beyond that on Selection Sunday.
Let’s start with the second regional in Albany. There at the top, you have the one-seed Iowa Hawkeyes, two-seed UCLA Bruins and three-seed LSU Tigers. That’s both teams from last year’s national championship game—each has since graduated some of its talent, yes, but they’ve both shown a clear ability to move beyond those key losses—bookending a program that had its own case for a top seed for most of the year in UCLA. Then you have the four-seed Kansas State Wildcats, who delivered the first loss of the season to Iowa, and the five-seed Colorado Buffaloes, who delivered the first loss of the season to LSU. All in one region! That’s an awfully dense concentration of talent. If you were expecting Caitlin Clark & Co. to return to the Final Four or Angel Reese to run it back with LSU or Lauren Betts to make a deep run with UCLA? You can only pick one. It’s going to be a tough road out of this regional.
