Half of the women’s NCAA Tournament Final 4 field is set. The other half will be settled Monday evening.
Who will join Iowa and LSU in Dallas?
No. 1 South Carolina — the defending national champions — beat the second-seeded Maryland Terrapins. The Gamecocks are aiming to be the 1st repeat women’s basketball champion considering that Connecticut won 4 straight national titles from 2013-16.
Subsequent up, No. 1 Virginia Tech faces No. three Ohio State (9 p.m. ET on ESPN). The Hokies have by no means reached the Final 4. The Buckeyes, meanwhile, final created the Final 4 in 1993 when 3-time Olympic gold medalist, WNBA champin and future Hall of Famer Katie Smith was a freshman.
Comply with along for updates on all the action from Monday’s Elite Eight matchups:
Ohio State has surged ahead as the Buckeyes lead the Virginia Tech Hokies 23-22 following an intense 1st quarter of play.
The Hokies led from the start off till Taylor Mikesell tied the game at 19 with a 3-point shot with 3 minutes left in the quarter. Ohio State ultimately took the lead at 1:50 remaining when Jacy Sheldon created a layup. She followed that up with a jumpshot to close out the quarter.
Mikesell has nine points for Ohio State, even though Cayla King has the very same for the Hokies.
The second game of Monday night’s action tipped off with buckets galore. Halfway via the 1st quarter, there are currently 5 total 3-point shots with the major-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies major the No. three seeded Ohio State Buckeyes 17-14. Each teams are fantastic from behind the arc.
The Hokies tipped off the action with back-to-back treys, 1 every from Kayana Traylor and Cayla King. King currently has six points on the evening as does Ohio State’s Taylor Mikesell.
It was a rocky start off, but No. 1 South Carolina is nonetheless in the operating to defend their national championship following beating the No. two seeded Maryland Terrapins 86-75 in Elite Eight action on Monday. The Gamecocks are headed to their third straight Final 4. This game marks a college-record 36th win of the season and their 42nd in a row dating to final year’s NCAA Tournament.
South Carolina star Aliyah Boston completed with 22 points and ten rebounds for her 82nd profession double-double.
“I am super excited,” Boston mentioned on the ESPN broadcast following the game. “The coaches did a wonderful job on scout. We’re going to the Final 4!”
Senior guard Diamond Miller led the Terrapins with 24 points. Abby Meyers completed with 14 points following fouling out in the fourth quarter.
Immediately after a slow start off, Aliyah Boston powered the South Carolina Gamecocks to what is been a further dominant functionality. The senior forward exited the game with four:20 on the clock and her group up 79-63. She completed the evening with 22 points and ten rebounds for her 82nd profession double-double.
South Carolina has all the momentum as it ended the third quarter up 62-50 more than the Maryland Terrapins and are inching closer to a third straight Final 4 look.
The Gamecocks went on a 7- run toward the finish of the quarter and had a lead as significant as 15.
Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke every have 18 points for South Carolina, even though Diamond Miller has 15 points for Maryland. Abby Meyers has 14 but got into foul difficulty following major the Terrapins most of the game.
In spite of South Carolina’s surge, head coach Dawn Staley did not seem pleased with her team’s inconsistent functionality. “Cookie’s gotta cook,” she mentioned on the ESPN broadcast.
The South Carolina Gamecocks could possibly not have looked like themselves in the 1st quarter, but they shook off the dust and lead the Maryland Terrapins 38-30 at halftime.
Maryland took almost two minutes to score in the second quarter as South Carolina inched closer to the lead. Star forward Aliyah Boston place the Gamecocks ahead with a layup and four:55 on the clock. South Carolina went 9-two to close the period and had been up by as quite a few as ten points.
Boston is the major scorer for the Gamecocks with 12 points and Zia Cooke added all nine of her points in the quarter.
Maryland is staying alive with 14 points from senior guard Abby Meyers. She scored a layup with eight seconds on the clock to retain the Terrapins from going into the break down double digits.
The Maryland Terrapins are not generating it quick for the South Carolina Gamecocks to attain the Final 4 and are up 21-15 at the finish of the 1st quarter. The Terrapins scored 12 unanswered points toward the finish of the period as Dawn Staley’s group failed to locate a rhythm. South Carolina’s Laeticia Amihere ultimately broke the streak with a pair of no cost throws.
Senior guard Abby Meyers is the game’s major scorer with seven points for Maryland. For South Carolina, star forward Aliyah Boston has six points.
It is not frequently that a No. two seed is regarded a mammoth underdog to a major seed in the NCAA Tournament, but that is specifically what the Maryland Terrapins (28-six) are as they head into an Elite Eight showdown with reigning national champion South Carolina.
South Carolina has lost precisely two games in the previous two seasons to Missouri and Kentucky in the 2021-22 season. The Gamecocks (35-) have mainly steamrolled opponents this season and are riding a 41-game winning streak dating back to final year’s NCAA Tournament. Only 5 opponents have even kept the losses below single digits with two taking the Gamecocks to overtime – Stanford in November and Ole Miss in February.
So, Maryland coach Brenda Frese, who coached the Terrapins to the 2006 national championship, knows what her group is up against: expertise, depth and size.
“Obviously, to be undefeated and to appear at the depth and the size that they have, you bring the players off the bench, and they just even get much better, Frese told the Washington Post. “It’s got to rank up there as 1 of the most effective when you speak about all the size becoming on their roster.”
Maryland is looking for its 1st Final 4 considering that the Terrapins created back-to-back appearances in 2014 and 2015.
— Ellen J. Horrow
South Carolina senior guard Brea Beal has an added season of COVID-19 eligibility offered but mentioned she does not program to use it and will declare for the 2023 WNBA draft.
“College is not for me, I will inform you that, so I undoubtedly have (created a choice),” Beal mentioned with a laugh. “So a great deal of my profession I really feel like a lot of items went unnoticed, so to be capable to close out my senior year, to see a lot of folks placing me in mocks or just speaking about me, it shows that I am starting to get noticed and how useful I can be.”
Beal has by no means been a headliner for the No. 1 Gamecocks, but she has anchored the beginning lineup from the moment she set foot on campus. Final year, she earned All-American honorable mention honors for the 1st time in her profession from the Connected Press and was named a finalist for Naismith Defensive Player of the Year alongside her teammate Aliyah Boston, the reigning winner of the award.
ESPN and The Athletic presently project Beal as the No. 7 all round choose in the WNBA draft on April ten.
— Emily Adams, Greenville (South Carolina) News
On the morning of the 2023 SEC championship game, the 1st issue South Carolina women’s basketball point guard Kierra Fletcher did was text her girlfriend Kayana Traylor good luck.
At almost the very same time as Gamecocks tipped off against Tennessee on March five, Traylor and Virginia Tech women’s basketball had been hoisting the ACC championship trophy. Fletcher and South Carolina went on to win the SEC title hours later.
“It was crazy, simply because correct following we played I checked the score and I was like, ‘Wow, they won,'” Fletcher mentioned. “I named her as quickly as I got time, and we had been just speaking about how crazy it was that each of us won the conference tournament collectively.”
Traylor, a five-foot-9 senior guard for the Hokies, 1st connected with the Gamecocks’ beginning point guard on social media. They bonded more than becoming from the Midwest — Fletcher is from Michigan and Traylor from Indiana — and have now been collectively for almost 3 years.
Now, South Carolina and Virginia Tech are the only 1-seeds left. If Virginia Tech beats Ohio State and the Gamecocks take down Maryland, Fletcher and Traylor will head to Dallas with a reputable opportunity to face every other for the national championship.
— Emily Adams, Greenville (South Carolina) News
It did not take a miracle for Ohio State to advance previous the Sweet 16 for the 1st time considering that 1993. The Buckeyes, in a 73-61 win more than Connecticut on Saturday, basically outplayed the Huskies for the majority of the game.
“As extended as we play our game,” Ohio State senior forward Eboni Walker mentioned, “we have the utmost self-assurance in ourselves and in every other.”
For Ohio State, playing its game goes hand-in-hand with its complete-court press. When the Buckeyes get their press set and start off forcing turnover following turnover following turnover, as they did against the Huskies, they can be virtually not possible to cease.
Now, No. 1 seed Virginia Tech will have to grapple with Ohio State’s press just as UConn did. Throughout the Hokies’ Sweet 16 win more than Tennessee, the Lady Vols applied their personal press to come back from an 18-point deficit early in the third quarter to get inside 1 point.
Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks knows Ohio State will employ the complete-court press Monday evening and says his group will have to play clever but aggressive offense.
“We have to get downhill, break the stress, and get some quick possibilities, and I feel that that will sort of ease it up a tiny bit,” Brooks mentioned. “But they have been carrying out it all year extended. They are definitely excellent at it.”
— Bailey Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch
Kim Mulkey is currently calling South Carolina in the Final 4.
The defending national champions do not play their Elite Eight game against second-seeded Maryland till Monday evening, but Mulkey does not want to wait about for that. The major-seeded Gamecocks will be in Dallas subsequent weekend, LSU’s coach mentioned Sunday evening.
“South Carolina is going. I’m just telling you that, flat out,” she mentioned following LSU clinched its personal spot in the Final 4 with a 54-42 win more than Miami. “That’s practically nothing against who they play. I just know how excellent they are.”
South Carolina thumped LSU by 24 points, 88-64, in their 1 meeting in the typical season. If Mulkey’s group sees the Gamecocks once again, a national title would be on the line.
“I’d certain really like to be in that championship with them,” Mulkey mentioned.
— Nancy Armour
To get an notion of just how intoxicating Caitlin Clark’s game is, all you had to do Sunday — if you weren’t close to a Television to watch her pile up 41 points, hand out 12 assists and grab ten rebounds — was scroll Twitter.
In the second half as her Hawkeyes pulled away from Louisville and everybody in Climate Pledge Arena went on triple-double watch, Clark became the No. 1 trending subject on Twitter. And as Clark led No. two seed Iowa to its 1st Final 4 considering that 1993, it became clear: the junior guard is the superstar women’s basketball wants, correct when the game wants it.
On Saturday, women’s basketball bid an early goodbye to UConn, the system that had created an NCAA-record 14 consecutive Final Fours but will be watching from property this April. On Sunday, it mentioned hello to Clark, the most electrifying player in college basketball, men’s or women’s. Her passes in transition causes gasps, her tendency to pull up from the logo tends to make opponents shake their heads.
She’s a transcendent talent, a player of the year candidate who elevates everybody about her and loves the massive stage. Sunday when Iowa constructed as a great deal as a 22-point lead she played to the crowd, motioning to fans to cheer louder, cupping her ear to see if they complied. Asked afterward what it is like to have an whole arena wrapped about your finger, Clark leaned into the mic and admitted sheepishly, “I really feel kinda highly effective.”
— Lindsay Schnell