The transitive property is always a faulty tool in March, but this year, it feels especially useless. Anyone using it to predict their women’s tournament champion must first untangle this regular-season mess: No. 1 overall seed UCLA beat South Carolina, who went 2-1 against Texas this season but lost at home to UConn, who lost to Notre Dame and USC, who beat UCLA twice but lost to Notre Dame, who just lost three of their last five games. To choose our champion and build our own perfect bracket, we’ll have to study the six serious contenders more closely.
(1) UCLA
Wins Of Note: South Carolina at home (77-62); USC at the Big Ten Tournament championship game (72-67)
Losses Of Note: USC at home (80-67); USC on the road (71-60)
Teams who play UCLA tend to recognize 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts as their biggest challenge, sending double and triple teams her way. She’s a National Player of the Year candidate because of the instincts she’s developed for those situations. The junior has the size and footwork to wriggle out of doubles on her own, but her assist averages are up this season, too. She’s particularly good at finding cutters, and it helps that there are some particularly good cutters on her team. Around Betts is a pair of wings who capably perform every basketball chore. Angela Dugalić’s teammates call her “grandma” because she’s the only fifth-year player on the team; she does also play with the wisdom and quiet confidence of a grandmother. In the second half of the Big Ten championship game, Gabriela Jaquez did fine work to stop JuJu Watkins, who killed UCLA in their previous two matchups.
If UCLA wins a national championship, it'll be for the same reasons South Carolina did last year: Having a 6-foot-7 big goes a long way. Experienced wings and above-average guard play will get you the rest of the way. If the Bruins lose, their regular-season losses against USC suggest it’ll come at the hands of a team with a deep and athletic frontcourt—or, as their very close win over Iowa suggests, because Betts ended up in early foul trouble.
(1) SOUTH CAROLINA
Wins Of Note: Texas in the SEC championship game (64-45); Texas at home (67-50)
Losses Of Note: UConn at home (87-58); Texas on the road (66-62); UCLA on the road (77-62)
There’s a strong case to be made that the best player on South Carolina is someone who hasn’t started once this season and doesn’t usually play more than 20 minutes. But it’s the magic of MiLaysia Fulwiley that she doesn’t need much time to completely change a game. When you can watch her, the 5-foot-10 sophomore guard is must-watch: an electric downhill scorer with an insane handle that she flashed in her literal first game. She brings the athleticism to bear on opposing ball-handlers too, though as you can imagine, her penchant for flash sometimes leads her to gamble, to head coach Dawn Staley’s dismay.
Last year’s championship vindicated Staley’s small doses strategy. When the moment came for everyone to step up in March and April, she had an experienced and unselfish rotation to work with. Though South Carolina lost Kamilla Cardoso to the WNBA and Ashlyn Watkins to a knee injury this season, plenty of important pieces return: shooters Te-Hina Paopao and Tessa Johnson, as well as efficient big Chloe Kitts, who’s waited her turn in a stacked frontcourt for years.
If the Gamecocks win a national championship this year, they’ll win with defense and fresh legs. Staley felt her team deserved the No. 1 overall seed and said so on Selection Sunday, but they actually seem to have the cleanest path to the Final Four—and, if you share my misgivings about Texas and Notre Dame, the cleanest path to the national championship game. If the Gamecocks lose, it’ll be because they don’t have the safety blanket of a dominant big this year. UConn shot 13-of-28 from three when these teams met in mid-February, but crucially the Huskies killed the Gamecocks on the boards, 48-29. For the first time in six seasons, South Carolina isn’t a top-five team in the country by total rebounding or offensive rebounding rate. Rebounding can be a great equalizer when other things aren’t going well; as the Gamecocks know, it’s a reliable way to tame the madness of March.
(1) TEXAS
Wins Of Note: South Carolina at home (66-62)
Losses Of Note: Notre Dame on the road (80-70); South Carolina on the road (67-50); South Carolina in the SEC championship game (64-45)
If Texas wins a national championship, I can confidently say it’ll be the hardest-won national championship ever. Vic Schaefer's teams win ugly; they don't ask how, just how many. Except me—I’m going to ask how, because that’s the whole point of this preview. Blessed with a tough frontcourt and a pesky two-way guard in Rori Harmon, the Longhorns are one of the better defensive teams in the country, and in most games that’s enough to make up for the jankiness of the offense. At times, this can actually be a pleasant jank. Sophomore Madison Booker won SEC Player of the Year. Last season, she was tossed into an odd experiment running the floor when Harmon got injured, but she made the best of life as a forward-sized point guard and is a smarter, more versatile player this season for it. Jankiness, after all, is what makes college basketball special.
If the Longhorns lose, it’ll be because they are one of the weaker three-point shooting teams in the country, making just 29.6 percent of their outside shots. This isn’t a button they feel comfortable pressing at all: Three-pointers account for just 14.6 percent of all their scoring attempts, which ranks dead last in all of Division I. Their games against South Carolina suggest that could be a problem against other physical teams. In the SEC championship game, the Texas offense went through bad dry spells. They’ll also have to fend off the sleepers lurking in their quadrant of the bracket. Not too long ago, Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 in the country. But after a recent slide to end the season, the Fighting Irish ended up a three-seed in Texas’s region. There’s also an intriguing, experienced No. 2 seed there in TCU.
(1) USC
Wins Of Note: UConn on the road (72-70); UCLA at home (71-60); UCLA on the road (80-67)
Losses Of Note: Notre Dame at home (74-61); UCLA in the Big Ten championship game (72-67)
I admire how easily JuJu Watkins channels her hatred into productivity. Oh, that we could all be so focused. If there were any doubt that USC’s sophomore superstar hates her crosstown rivals, the video of her saying “Bro, I hate UCLA” in the background of teammate Kennedy Smith’s vlog should clear it up. But her game did the talking the first two times she played them this season.
Watkins scores with such savvy and craft that watching her can sometimes create an optical illusion; the rest of the players are flying around, and she’s ambling along at her own speed. Those wins over a seemingly flawless contender announced that USC had a real championship case of its own. The Trojans pose matchup problems at every position, and the bigs might be miracle workers: Kiki Iriafen has some experience putting a team on her back in March. Clarice Akunwafo is the rare player who can say she's solved Lauren Betts.
If the Trojans win a national championship, it’ll be because they’re a team that, much like their star, can completely dictate the pace of the game. You’ll hear coaches sometimes refer to three stops in a row as a “kill.” It’s a stat USC defensive assistant Beth Burns likes to emphasize, and they can sometimes feel like the defining moments of a USC game—when the mood swings in USC’s favor and they break everything open. If the Trojans lose, it’ll be because the halfcourt offense can sometimes get a bit sludgy. Even on bad shooting nights—and her shot selection and inconsistent three-point shot does produce those—Watkins gets to the line a ton, which is its own way of dictating pace. But when they lost to UCLA in the Big Ten championship game, the game seemed to turn when Watkins got fewer calls on her drives in the second half. The team didn’t have many other answers.
(2) UCONN
Wins Of Note: South Carolina on the road (87-58)
Losses Of Note: Notre Dame on the road (79-68); USC at home (72-70)
The Huskies’ best win this season, a blowout of South Carolina on the road, proved that they can hang with a group of athletic guards and wings. And they’ll enter the tournament mostly healthy for the first time in forever: The last time Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd played in a tournament together was 2022, when they lost to South Carolina in the national championship game. (And even in that game, Fudd had a bad stomach bug.) In 2022, they didn’t have Sarah Strong on their side either. She’s the sort of UConn-esque power forward who can play a bit bigger as a rebounder and a bit smaller as a scorer and passer, and she may already be the best teammate Bueckers has ever had.
This is a team you can trust. You can trust them hold on to the ball—UConn's assist-to-turnover rate is the best in the country. You can trust them not to commit dumb fouls. You can count on them for efficiency; see their 50.8 percent field goal percentage, also the best in the country.
If the Huskies win, it’ll be because they’re a team made in the image of Bueckers. She doesn’t quite rack up the scoring numbers she might if she were fully let loose—if she were, as head coach Geno Auriemma often puts it, a bit more selfish. But she does so much so well on both sides of the ball that you always feel in good hands when she’s running the show. If they lose, it’ll be because some new medical malady befalls them—or because they don’t quite have the consistent, dominant post player they need to keep a bigger lineup on the floor for long stretches. Their smaller lineups have been plenty successful, but all the switching might create some advantages for an opponent with more size.
(3) NOTRE DAME
Wins Of Note: USC on the road (74-61); UConn at home (79-68)
Losses Of Note:
You’ll notice that Notre Dame has no losses to any of the teams above. Unfortunately, they have a bunch of losses to worse teams, and three of their five total losses have come in the last month. The juice is gone on both ends of the floor right now. When the Fighting Irish looked unstoppable about a month ago, they turned unrelenting defensive pressure into quick transition offense and moved the ball efficiently in the halfcourt. Liatu King was shooting 100 percent on those baseline jumpers. (Do not fact-check this.) Sophomore guard Hannah Hidalgo, a menace in every way, has stayed her fearless, ball-hawking self. “She’s had more steals than I had in my whole career in one game,” Notre Dame alum Marina Mabrey told me in February.
But when it’s not working for Notre Dame in transition, offense just looks too hard for them. Opponents can exploit the team’s relatively weak frontcourt to put more defensive pressure on the Notre Dame backcourt. In the ACC semifinal game, Duke’s athletic guards also hunted Olivia Miles, something NCAA tournament teams might try themselves to avoid Hidalgo and lockdown wing Sonia Citron.
If the Fighting Irish lose, it’ll be because elite guard play only takes you so far. If they win, it might be because Notre Dame prides themselves on being the exception, as Mabrey, a 2018 champion, knows well. It might also be because forward Maddy Westbeld, who returned from an injury midseason, finds enough of a rhythm in the post to keep opponents honest.
THE FIELD: Duke is rounding into form right now, and just had a lovely jaunt through the ACC tournament, but the Blue Devils are young and it’ll be a challenge for a team without consistent answers on offense to win six games in a row. LSU is LSU, but banged up heading into the tournament. One year after a hellish season with so many injuries they held open tryouts, TCU raised a Big 12 banner. They also have an early-season win over Notre Dame to their names (albeit at a neutral-site Thanksgiving tournament). But I’m not sure I buy their defense. Full-court pressers Tennessee and Ohio State are always bound to cause chaos, but Final Four-caliber guards can always beat a full-court press. Some are saying Syla Swords and the Michigan Wolverines will topple Notre Dame in the second round and shock the world! Not me, necessarily. But some.
MY PICK: Gun to my head, UConn. As whoever is holding this gun slowly removes it from my head, I might reconsider and say South Carolina.
