Selection Sunday has come to pass, and March Madness is here. The bracket for the most evenly matched women’s tournament in recent history is set. The no. 1 seeds, predictably, are UCLA, South Carolina, Texas, and USC—in that order. South Carolina and UCLA have relatively easy paths to the Final Four. Paige Bueckers (UConn) and JuJu Watkins (USC) are poised for an Elite Eight rematch, while Texas will have to get through the Fighting Irish (who beat them in an overtime thriller) and Tennessee to reach the Final Four. Let’s tip off the madness by breaking down the most intriguing players and teams facing the biggest questions heading into the tournament, their paths to cutting down the nets in April, and the stakes for everyone involved.
Can Paige Bueckers lead UConn to its first title since 2016?
If a coach could construct a basketball player in a lab, they’d play a lot like Bueckers, a perpetually swivelling supercomputer seamlessly spitting out +EV decisions. For two seasons in a row, she’s led every guard that’s scored at least 18 points per game in points per possession. She is more efficient and mistake-proof than ever, with a 3.9 assist-to-turnover ratio that leads the nation by a mile, despite her affinity for no-look passes.
On defense, she’s a tactical cheat code, who can put the clamps down one-on-one, suck up space in zone coverage, switch multiple positions, and even play the four, sliding down and protecting the rim when UConn goes small with Sarah Strong at the five.
But there’s a downside to her perfectionism. While Bueckers can score anywhere on the court, any time she wants to, with a pull-up she gets to by slithering, spinning, and shaking off defenders, she’s also never processed the game more effectively—so much so that you wish she had the ball in her hands more. Forget JuJu Watkins, Mikayla Blakes, and MiLaysia Fulwiley; Bueckers has an equal or lower usage rate than their teammates, KiKi Iriafen, Khamil Pierre, and Joyce Edwards. Lucy Olsen finishes more possessions for Iowa than Bueckers does for UConn. It’s hard to knock the no. 1 offense in the nation, but their egalitarian style has left points on the floor in critical moments, like last year’s Final Four loss to Iowa, when Bueckers took just 17 shots.
As Geno Auriemma told The Ringer’s Mirin Fader: “You want a national championship, so at the end of those [Final Four] losses, did you really feel like you did everything humanly possible on your end? Or did you defer too much?”
Bueckers has ratcheted up her shot attempts in big moments this season, including a dominant first quarter against North Carolina that ended with her skipping in front of the Tar Heels bench, and a 21-point first half in the Big East Semifinals. Even last year, four of her highest FGA games came during March Madness.
But there are also nuances within the binary that Auriemma presents. Bueckers is at her best when she fuses the two, killing opponents under the pretense of giving to her teammates: recognizing the overplay and executing a give-and-go, setting a screen for her teammate because it opens her up for a 3.
Her strengths as a screener and a cutter, alongside her one-on-one abilities, allow her to move seamlessly on and off the ball, and she’s at her best when she’s melding both sides of her game in one possession, turning as she does in the below clip, where she uses the defenders reaction to her cut to create leverage and space for a turnaround fadeaway.
Or when she recognizes an overplay and turns it into a give-and-go:
Bueckers does not need to betray her basketball sensibilities, or abandon the Huskies egalitarian system, to maximize her effectiveness. She simply needs to recognize how much her presence is a weapon, and utilize it without hesitation. She can get off the ball as much as she wants, as long as she doesn’t fade into the background.
Stakes: Bueckers grew up idolising UConn legends like Maya Moore, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi, all of whom won titles with the program. As she told The Ringer, she wants to prove she’s one of those legends herself—that she can win at every level before she goes to the pros. But the recent parity of the college game has ended UConn’s historical run of dominance. After cutting the nets on the final day of the season 10 times in 20 years, the Huskies haven’t won a title since 2016. For Auriemma, who is the winningest coach in NCAA history (men or women), winning a title in the most competitive era of the sport would be yet another feather in his cap, especially in a year in which his methods and system have been criticized more than ever.
Ceiling: Natty. UConn is a monster no. 2 seed. They will likely have to avenge their regular-season loss to USC to reach the Final Four, but this is a very different version of the Huskies, with a healthy Azzi Fudd, and Jana El Alfy, a freshman big with star potential, starting. Even then, the Freshman of the Year candidate Sarah Strong (poised to take the keys from Bueckers next season) had a chance to tie the game against the Trojans with two free throws near the end of the contest, which she went on to miss. Expect her to have this game circled on her calendar. UConn also came within two possessions of beating Tennessee, despite missing 15 3s (many of them open, from the fingertips of high-level shooters). Since that loss, Fudd is averaging 15.5 points on 44 percent shooting from beyond the arc.
UConn, with the no. 1 offense and defense, according to Sports Reference, doesn’t have a lot of weaknesses. Ashlynn Shade, who shot just 12.5 percent from 3 in their losses this season, is probably the biggest X factor. The Huskies have talent, experience, depth, size, versatility and spacing. Unless they go ludicrously cold while failing to get the ball in the hands of Bueckers and Strong, it’s going to be hard to outscore them.
Title odds: +280
How far can JuJu Watkins take USC?
Women’s basketball has never seen a player who moves like JuJu Watkins. At 6-foot-2 with a right-at-the-rim vertical leap and an extensive, elegant bag, Watkins alternates between pumpfakes and spin moves and double-clutches with the fluidity of water.
In transition, she brandishes her body into a weapon, fusing her size and skill into the most unstoppable Eurostep the women’s game has ever seen. As a freshman, she took 241 free throws, the most out of any college player since at least 2009, according to HerHoopStats, supplanting second-place Kelsey Mitchell by 59 attempts.
Watkins has been going viral since she was 14, creating highlights that were not only mesmerising—and perfectly tailored to the 15-second window of TikTok—but just scratching the surface of her abilities. As her gifts coalesce, her growth forces us to continually reimagine what’s possible on the court.
Alongside Kennedy Smith, a freshman who might be the best one-on-one defender in the nation, and Rayah Marshall, one of the nation’s best rim protectors, Watkins’s defensive versatility helps unlock multiple lineup combinations and schemes for the Trojans. Against UCLA in February, Watkins took the onus of being the primary helpside defender on Lauren Betts, forcing multiple turnovers and blocked shots, leading USC to a comeback victory. It was the first of USC’s two regular-season victories over UCLA; the second ended up being an all-around tour de force that sucked the life out of a raucous Pauley Pavilion crowd, ending with Watkins jawing with the remaining fans and mocking UCLA’s “fours up” celebration. "I would be remiss to say that playing against UCLA doesn't motivate me extra," Watkins said after.
Watkins has a knack for meeting the moment, a requirement for the broader superstardom a deep tournament run could offer.
The rare moments she hasn’t reached that level, like in USC’s Big Ten Tournament loss to, ironically, UCLA, offer insight into her team’s vulnerabilities. Watkins has spent the season in a race against an ever-evolving scouting report. In the first game of the season, Ole Miss swarmed Watkins with multiple defenders who could match her in size and speed, leading to a season-high nine turnovers. By the time the Big Ten Tournament final rolled around, Watkins easily manipulated UCLA’s trap-heavy coverage.
Watch as she calls for a screen, tricking three defenders into shading towards the middle, before rejecting the screen and driving with her left hand (which she’s improved this year). She proceeds to Eurostep to evade Londynn Jones, the only UCLA defender on that side of the court, and finishes the bucket. She did it again later in the game, creating an advantage for Iriafen to get a lay up.
There’s also this read, where she feeds the ball to Marshall, who makes a quick shovel pass to Iriafen, one of Watkin’s multiple first-half assists.
UCLA eased the pressure in the second half, opting to have Betts defend higher against the pick-and-roll, while helping off the 3-point line more than the paint. The fusion of one-on-one and help coverage took the clarity out of Watkins’s choices, forcing her to cough the ball up in congested driving lanes.
By the time Watkins figured it out, now pulling up for jumpers instead of trying to drive into Betts, the game was out of reach. It was a microcosm for the Trojans’ biggest tournament X factor: how quickly Watkins and USC can adapt to the ever-shifting strategies teams deploy against her.
Stakes: Watkins could have gone to South Carolina or Stanford, but she eschewed joining a great program for trying to build one close to home, planting her flag seven miles from the Ted Watkins Memorial Park in Watts, Los Angeles, where she grew up shooting hoops on the court her great-grandfather helped build. The Trojans, with all the gifts and trappings of Hollywood at their disposal, including a celeb-speckled courtside atmosphere, have the potential to be a great powerhouse of the NIL era. They’ve completed the first step, drawing in the talent required to compete for a title. Now, can they coalesce on the biggest stage, against the best competition?
Ceiling: Featuring one of the best players in the nation, a potential lottery pick in Kiki Iriafen, three five-star freshmen, and the no. 6 defense in the nation, USC has the potential to win its first title since Cheryl Miller led the Trojans to glory in 1984. But they’re also facing the toughest path to the Final Four. Iowa, who beat USC in the regular season, is on the opposite side of the Regional 4 (Spokane) bracket, and so is Oklahoma, which features 6-foot-4 matchup nightmare Raegan Beers. But USC will likely have to get through Kentucky, the no. 4 seed, to get an opportunity to avenge last year’s Elite Eight loss to UConn, which ended with a tearful Watkins being consoled by Bueckers.
Title odds: +700, a shift from +650 before their bracket was revealed.
Is Lauren Betts ready to dominate for six straight games?
Two weeks ago, the water was at Lauren Betts’s head. The Bruins had just lost to their rival Trojans for the second time this season, this time in brutal, blowout fashion on their homecourt, where USC ended up celebrating their first Big Ten regular season title, while Trojans fans sang their fight song.
Betts, despite her 16th double-double of the season, looked more like a role-playing, screen-setting big than the dominant National Player of the Year candidate who anchored UCLA on both ends. The physicality of USC’s Rayah Marshall and Clarice Akunwafo threw her off her spot and into her head. She stared icily at the refs after missed calls and committed multiple travels.
In the postgame press conference, UCLA coach Cori Close went full Eric Taylor and told her team that if they weren’t going to do the things they needed to do to win, they shouldn’t show up on the bus to their next game.
Betts was clearly listening. First, she saved face with a stat-sheet-stuffing performance against a lesser opponent in Nebraska: 28 points on 15 shots, 13 boards, five assists, three steals, and seven blocks. Then, in the Big Ten championship game, she dominated USC on both ends, in a manner that erased every lingering question the losses had left.
At the half, after a difficult start to the game, teammate Kiki Rice reminded her of what she’d known before the game: The refs weren’t going to bail her out, and she had to play through it. “I knew that I wasn’t going to get calls, but I think it was just the mentality I had going in the second half that I was just going to keep being aggressive,” Betts said.
From there, she repeatedly posted up Marshall and Akunwafo, asking for—no, demanding—post touches and putting USC’s frontline in foul trouble. She displayed the killer instinct that the game’s tallest players are so often accused of not having.
Betts nailed a midrange jumper that’s going to be key to her offensive development, then drove to the rim from the same spot. On defense, she picked up Watkins high on pick-and-rolls, impeding her drives and blocking her at the rim multiple times. “I think it was just making myself a little bit uncomfortable. Obviously, playing on the perimeter was something a lot of 6-foot-7 posts don’t like to do, but I think that’s what the team needed from me in that moment,” she said.
If this version of Betts shows up for seven straight games, there’s no team in the nation that will be able to handle UCLA’s combination of size, spacing, depth, and defense.
Stakes: The Bruins have never made the Final Four, let alone won it all. Cori Close, long maligned for game management that critics say has prevented her from maximizing the talent at her disposal, has made strides in that area—especially recently.
Take this play she called out of a timeout that helped ice the Big Ten tournament:
A deep run will provide Close with more opportunities to hone this skill and shed her reputation, while putting UCLA on the map as a recruiting hub and national story in a city where they’re usually an afterthought to the Trojans.
Ceiling: Betts has struggled against exactly two bigs this season: Marshall and Akunwafo, both of whom she won’t have to see until a potential Final Four matchup against USC. There’s nobody in Region 1 (Spokane) who can give her much trouble outside of Aaronette Vonleh (Baylor) and Makayla Timpson (Florida State), and she’s got the height advantage on both. UCLA could potentially face LSU in the Elite Eight, giving them an opportunity to avenge last year’s loss in the Sweet 16. The Tigers haven’t been able to fill the gaping frontcourt hole left behind by Angel Reese, and Flau’jae Johnson and Aneesah Morrow are both working their way back from injuries. UCLA, likely because they beat South Carolina in their head-to-head matchup, and because of their victory in the Big Ten final, is the rightful no. 1 overall seed, and the second-easiest Final Four pick on the board. But I do wonder whether they have enough big-game experience to win it all in Tampa. My gut says they’ll lose in a heartbreaking, educational fashion, setting Betts up for a monster senior year.
Title odds: +500
Can Hannah Hidalgo and Notre Dame get back on track defensively?
Hidalgo, the ACC Player of the Year and ACC Defensive Player of the Year, is a blur.
According to Synergy, Hidalgo gets 33 percent of her offense in transition, where her blazing speed allows her to convert at a rate of 1.275 points per possession. Averaging over four steals per game in her career, the most by any player in that span, Hidalgo creates these opportunities for herself. She is, as Vanshay Murdock puts it, her own hype man, flexing and snarling after winning loose balls and and-1s.
At 5-foot-6, Hidalgo has no business being one of the best one-on-one defenders in the nation, let alone a big-esque helpside threat. She turns her size into an advantage, getting underneath the space of ball handlers like a kid entering a makeshift fort. Earlier this year, I broke down how her speed, instincts, and guts (à la prime Marcus Smart) blew up USC’s inside game.
Her speed also allows her to create space for a scarily accurate jumper, and it keeps defenders who would otherwise give her space honest. According to Synergy, she’s shooting 42.6 percent on off-dribble 3s. Combine that with elite ballhandling and creativity, and you’ve got one of the nation’s most electrifying isolation scorers.
But Notre Dame is stumbling into the tournament, losing three of their last five, including a loss against NC State that forced them to share the ACC regular-season title, and a loss against Duke in the ACC tournament. At one point, they were the no. 1 team in the nation. Now they’re entering the tournament as a no. 3 seed.
Stakes: In her fifth year on the job, Niele Ivey has done an admirable job of filling Muffet McGraw’s shoes, and this is her best chance at a title yet. With multiple high-level seniors potentially leaving for the WNBA this offseason, the time is now.
Ceiling: Notre Dame is stacked, with three likely first-round picks in Olivia Miles, Sonia Citron, and Maddy Westbeld. Before floundering toward the end of the season, they beat Texas, UConn, and USC. The loss against NC State was only the second time all year that Miles, a presumptive lottery pick and dynamo point guard, and Hidalgo both shot below 40 percent from the field. Efficiency and decision-making, especially from Hidalgo, will be an X factor, and so will defense. The Irish were at their best defensively, allowing 75 points per 100 possessions, when freshman rim protector Kate Koval was in the rotation. But Westbeld’s return from injury has sidelined her and she hasn’t played more than 20 minutes in a game in their last 18 games. Their defensive efficiency has dropped by five points in that span. They’re going to need Koval in a potential matchup against no. 2 seed TCU’s frontcourt, as well as Texas’s frontline. If Notre Dame can get its defense back on track, there’s no reason they can’t be the last team standing at the end of the year. But in a stacked region, even an upstart like Michigan could surprise them in the second round.
Title odds: +800
Is MiLaysia Fulwiley ready to take the keys of the offense?
MiLaysia Fulwiley, the SEC Sixth Woman of the Year, is a dribbling flashbang. The moment she walks toward the scorer’s table to check in to the game, the murmurs and cheers at Colonial Life Arena begin. Because when Fulwiley is on the court, it’s a disservice to your time to pay attention to anything else.
North-to-south, she’s the most explosive player in the SEC. She’ll do stuff like this. And this:
And this:
Fulwiley toes the line between recklessness and courage (peep this self-alley-oop off the hardwood she tried in high school), making her a simultaneous source of astonishment, frustration, pride, and hope for coach Dawn Staley. Take this sequence against UCLA, where she checked in to the game, drove to the rim for a foul she wouldn’t get, complained to the refs before jogging back in transition. A few plays later, she jumped in the air with no plan and turned the ball over.
Staley took a quick reset timeout and yanked Fulwiley. Just two weeks earlier, Fulwiley excitedly praised her team's togetherness, saying, “We win together, we lose—well, we don’t lose together.” Now, she was watching from the sideline, where she’d spend the rest of the game, with her face buried in her palms. It was South Carolina’s first loss since the 2023 Final Four, and the first of Fulwiley’s young, charmed career.
Since then, Staley has challenged her to defend with consistency, giving her the assignment on high-level guards Hailey Van Lith, Rori Harmon, and Georgia Amoore. Mistakes still happen, but the risk-reward ratio of playing Fulwiley lessens when she can lock down opponents just as well—and if not better, on some nights—as Raven Johnson, the all-world defender who starts in her place.
Beyond that, a Gamecocks offense that no longer revolves around Kamilla Cardoso’s gravity in the paint needs the downhill pressure that Fulwiley can create. Down the stretch against Kentucky in the SEC tournament, Staley and senior Te-Hina Paopao leaned on Fulwiley to make plays, like this layup-block-layup sequence that powered their eventual victory.
After the game, Staley was beaming. “A lot of trust was built out there in the last seven minutes, the last quarter they were on the floor,” she said. “I think it’s gonna sharpen us to the point where we got options to play them in late-game situations because they just performed on both sides of the basketball. They were masterful when it comes to just being disciplined and predictable.”
Stakes: In this new era of parity, no team has won back-to-back since UConn, led by Breanna Stewart, ripped four straight titles from 2013 to 2016. If the Gamecocks defend their title, they’ll also be the last team standing in three of the last four seasons, adding a feather in the cap of Staley, who has fostered a virtuous cycle of growth and balance with her young dynasty.
Ceiling: National title. On the one hand, the Gamecocks are the most vulnerable they’ve been in years. They lost to UCLA and Texas and got blown out at home by UConn—their first loss at Colonial Life Arena in four years. But they’ve also grown through the course of the season. Tessa Johnson is rounding into form. Freshman Joyce Edwards is finding her way. Chloe Kitts and Sania Feagan have upped their physicality since Ashlyn Watkins, South Carolina’s best rim protector, went out with an ACL tear, and their two-woman high-low passing game has been fruitful. They also have the easiest path to the Final Four. The jumper-heavy Blue Devils sneaked into the no. 2 seed after winning the ACC tournament title, but they likely won’t be able find daylight against the Gamecocks’ pro-style perimeter coverages. And Maryland, their second-biggest threat, is hobbling into the tournament with an injured Shyanne Sellers.
Title odds: +230
Can Madison Booker carry the Longhorns offense?
She wears no. 35 for the Texas Longhorns, uses her wingspan to ice teams with her silky-smooth midrange pull-up, and she’s always losing her shoe. No, I’m not talking about Kevin Durant. I’m talking about Madison Booker, the SEC Player of the Year.
After a standout freshman season, during which she averaged 20, 5, and 5 in Big 12 play after taking over the point guard role when Rori Harmon went down with a season-ending injury, Booker leaned out in her sophomore season, so she could play hard on both ends consistently.
And like her numbersake, when Booker gets hot, sometimes the only recourse is to prevent her from catching the ball at all, because once she gets on a heater, it’s hard to break her out of the spell.
Only Notre Dame and South Carolina have had much luck. The Longhorns played South Carolina three times this season, and their sole victory featured this incredible, call-an-ambulance-but-not-for me gem:
After getting shut down by Bree Hall in their first rodeo, Booker was apparently feeling herself, telling the Gamecocks wing, “You can’t fucking guard me.” Hall took the retort personally and proceeded to make Booker’s life hell in the SEC tournament finals. Not only did she contest Booker’s shot all game, but Hall made herself a menace by blocking inbound passes and poking away errant dribbles. By the end of the game, I got flashbacks of LeBron James grimacing when Kawhi Leonard entered the game in the 2013 NBA Finals.
Of course, it was a team effort. Booker’s reads were not quite advanced enough to consistently beat South Carolina’s swarming pressure.
In fact, Booker played right into South Carolina’s hands. Here’s what Dawn Staley said at halftime, after the Gamecocks held Texas to their lowest point total in a half all season in the SEC tournament final: “We want them to lob over the top, see if we can swarm at the ball. It’s working. We’re chasing Booker all over the place, making it hard for her to catch. So hopefully by the time the third and fourth quarter come up, she won't have the height on that beautiful shot.”
She was right: Booker is now shooting 26 percent on the season against South Carolina, but I know everyone—fans included—would love to see a rematch.
Stakes: Vic Schaefer returned to his hometown of Austin after leading Mississippi State to two championship game appearances. Alongside South Carolina, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma, the Longhorns are in the hunt for Aaliyah Chavez, the Naismith High School Player of the Year, and the most electrifying prospect since JuJu Watkins. Beyond that, in 2026, four of ESPN’s top-25 recruits are from Texas. The Longhorns have the brand and budget to become the NIL darlings of the South and recapture their former glory. Making their first Final Four (or better) since 2003 would be a feather in Schaefer’s recruiting cap.
Ceiling: Texas can win a title, but I see them as more of an Elite Eight or Final Four out.
The Longhorns pride themselves on defense, but they’re also the no. 3 offense in the country, thanks to their ability to outshoot opponents by crashing the glass on offense and forcing turnovers on defense. Their frontcourt rotation of Taylor Jones, Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda, and Kyla Oldacre can steamroll most opponents, but Texas has posted some of their lowest scoring totals against fellow SEC teams, who can typically neutralize their physicality and size. That’s when their lack of spacing becomes glaring. Out of 362 teams in the HerHoopStats database, Texas ranked 362nd in 3-point rate. It’s not totally a personnel issue. Booker, who shoots 44 percent from beyond the arc, attempts only 1.7 per game. Jordan Lee, their second-best shooter, needs to get more minutes.
Tennessee, the no. 5 seed in Region 3 (Birmingham), can match Texas on the boards and force turnovers just as well. The Lady Vols get up 30.9 triples per game, third in the nation, and can get hot at a moment’s notice. If Texas does beat Tennessee (or Ohio State) in the Sweet 16, they’ll have to face off against a Notre Dame team that beat them in overtime earlier this season, behind the perimeter defense of Citron and Hidalgo, who held Rori Harmon to six points and four turnovers on nine shots.
Title odds: +700
Can Tennessee rediscover its edge?
Kim Caldwell, in her first year as head coach, has brought a revolutionary style of basketball to Knoxville. The Lady Vols press all game, institute hockey subs approximately every two minutes, and have played 16 different starting lineups all season. Tennessee’s defense is physical, with long defenders such as Talaysia Cooper, Ruby Whitehorn, and Zee Spearman perpetually swiping at the ball and crashing the glass for offensive rebounds. In the first half of the season, Tennessee led the nation in steals, 3-pointers made or attempted, offensive rebounds, and most importantly in the gospel of Caldwell field goal attempts. The Lady Vols want to win the possession battle so dramatically that beating them becomes an impossible math problem.
On top of that, they shoot a ton of 3s, while suppressing their opponents' long attempts. Against NC Central, they nailed 30 triples—an NCAA, NBA, and WNBA record. At one point, they averaged a chart-busting 98 points per game.
So much of the battle against Tennessee occurs before half court. On a part of the court that’s usually considered an afterthought, the Lady Vols have forced 26 backcourt violations. But if you can cross half without coughing it up, the court conditions exponentially improve. The Lady Vols defense, as a whole, is average, and so is their defensive rebounding, made vulnerable by how their system stretches them out. Intrastate rival Vanderbilt beat Tennessee on an offensive rebound by Mikayla Blakes.
The pass-happy Oklahoma, which plays a similar, press-heavy, up-tempo style, neutralized Tennessee on the boards, while 6-foot-4 Raegan Beers had the size and strength to handle the Lady Vols’ pressure long enough to see over it and make the right decision.
Passers who can make plays under duress, like Beers and Georgia Amoore (who we’ll talk about more next), can exploit the gaps. Kentucky, with bigs like Clara Strack (who has never missed a shot against a Kim Caldwell team, according to Cora Hall) and Teonni Key, who can handle the ball, made quick work of Tennessee’s system.
Stakes: The shadow (and statue) of the late Pat Summitt looms large over Tennessee. Caldwell is the Lady Vols’ third coach since Summitt’s retirement in 2012. Her predecessor, Kellie Harper, essentially got fired because of a miracle shot by Kamilla Cardoso. The terrain is unforgiving. The Lady Vols are stumbling into the tournament, having lost three of their last five games, including an upset by Georgia on Tennessee's senior day.
On YouTube, under a post of the ceremony, there’s a comment that says, “The way they played against Kentucky and Georgia, they shouldn't be allowed in the gym!! Just pathetic!! Pat would not be standing around smiling!” The reality is, she might have been. In fact, Caldwell seems to embody that same captivating contradiction of Pat: hard-driving yet caring, particular and intense yet humble.
After Tennessee got whooped that night, Caldwell eschewed scolding in favor of honoring the outgoing players. “I won’t make an opening statement after that performance because you still want to love on your seniors, you still want to give them the recognition they deserve. I love them. I appreciate them. I’m thankful for them changing my life, and being around them every single day, so you have to just move on from the game and enjoy the last time at home you have with them.”
Part of how she’s handled the gauntlet of the SEC is by leaning on those seniors, who have more experience in the conference. And after Tennessee was upset early in the SEC tournament by Vanderbilt, she admitted “we could have managed our load a little bit better. [The SEC] absolutely takes a toll on you night in and night out. Our last two weeks have showed we’re a little fatigued, a little banged up, and we need some rest.”
The silver lining: After being knocked out early, the Lady Vols will have had two weeks to rest and install counters that would have otherwise had to wait until the offseason. From the outside looking in, Caldwell seems like the type of coach who can be malleable with her system when she needs to be. The Lady Vols’ future depends on it.
Ceiling: Final Four. If Tennessee can get its act together, the bracketology gods blessed them with a favorable path. They could upset Texas, whose size, rebounding, and defense they can neutralize. Notre Dame, a potential Elite Eight matchup, has not been the same defensively since Kate Koval was taken out of the rotation. Beating the transition attack of the Fighting Irish, however, would likely require some systemic tweaking to prevent Hannah Hidalgo from breaking the press and finding easy advantages. She is not a player you want to get into a track meet with. If we get the Tennessee we’ve seen lately, though, a focused and equally press-heavy Ohio State could knock them out in the second round. The Lady Vols are the biggest X factor in the tournament.
Title odds: +20000
Can Georgia Amoore carry Kentucky past USC?
Amoore, a fifth-year senior for Kentucky, is the kind of fearless, creative lead guard who can take a team a few rounds further than it should go.
She’s averaging a career-high 19.1 points per game with 6.9 assists, third in the nation. She’s listed at 5-foot-6 (which might be generous), but her strength and balance allow her to stay steady in the face of duress and manipulate coverages. Think Kyle Lowry with the jump-passing chicanery and vision of Tyrese Haliburton.
It’s the subtleties that make Amoore a great ball-screen practitioner (265 possessions, converted at a rate of 0.815 points per possession), like this head fake before the pass to the popper:
Her vision also makes her one of the most effective transition players in the nation. When Kentucky upset Tennessee a few weeks ago, she consistently faked out the Lady Vols’ full-court press with lookaway jump passes that allowed her to get the ball over their length, like this diagonal beauty over coverage to hit her receiver, Clara Strack, in stride:
Her raw turnover numbers can be jarring at times (eight in an overtime win against Louisville, five in a loss against Texas) but her 2.98 assist-to-turnover ratio is in the 98th percentile, according to HerHoopStats. The risk, for Kentucky’s offense, is worth the reward. In fact, four of Kentucky’s seven losses this season came in Amoore’s lowest turnover games. Despite her isolation efficiency (1.179 points per possession, per Synergy), the best way to suppress Kentucky’s offense is to take a page out of South Carolina’s book: turn Amoore into a scorer and force her into pull-up 3s, where her accuracy can be shaky. But not everyone has defenders with the switch discipline, scouting acumen, and athleticism of the Gamecocks.
Plus, Amoore is liable to go on the kind of magical shot-making heaters that fuel deep runs and upsets. Against Iowa last year, she dueled with Caitlin Clark and hit two end-of-clock buzzer-beaters.
She did it again against Tennessee, hitting buzzer-beaters at the end of the first and second quarters—a crossover and hesi driving left to finish with her right, and a one-footed floater from 18 feet.
Stakes: This is Brooks’s first season as Kentucky’s head coach, and making a big early splash could put the Wildcats on the map as a future recruiting destination, especially given the development of his players.
Ceiling: Sweet 16. In 2023, Kenny Brooks, hired out of Virginia Tech, took the Hokies to the Final Four—with Georgia Amoore in tow—where Tech lost to eventual champs LSU. Kentucky’s bigs, Clara Strack and Teonni Key, have both made tremendous leaps this season, tripling their scoring output from the prior season, but the Trojans’ frontcourt is a matchup nightmare, with their combination of speed, size, and depth. Strack in particular has shown creation ability off the dribble, and she’s slowly expanding her range out to the 3-point line, but she and Key also both have a tendency of getting into foul trouble, which Watkins and KiKi Iriafen could take advantage of. Kennedy Smith, one of the best point-of-attack defenders in college basketball, has the lateral quickness, size, and instincts to slow down Georgia Amoore. The Wildcats have made great strides this season, but this bracket does not favor them.
Title odds: +15000
Can Mikayla Blakes put Vanderbilt on the map?
Mikayla Blakes can move—and put up points—in a flurry.
While Milaysia Fulwiley has the most explosive end-to-end burst in the SEC, Blakes probably plays with the most consistent tempo. Whether it’s in half or full court, on defense or offense, she looks like she’s playing at 1.5x speed, allowing her to create space as a cutter, driver, and shooter.
Throw in some counters, like this stop-and-spin fader she opened her 55-point game against Auburn with (breaking the freshman Division I scoring record), and you’ve got one of the most frustrating covers in the nation.
Anytime a freshman climbs up the scoring ranks, the Clark comparisons start, but the way Blakes uses her speed to create space for her jumper on and off the ball is reminiscent of Kelsey Mitchell. On average, Blakes generates a scintillating 1.238 points per possession on spot-ups (98th percentile in the NCAAW).
Despite her shooting bona fides, the meat and potatoes of her scoring output comes from inside the arc, where she uses her speed to knife through defenders and get closer to the rim. Her movements, precise and balletic, make her a shifty and unpredictable mid-post player. Of the 108 points she scored in her two 50-pieces this season, only 21 came from 3. Her never-ending motor makes her fun to root for, and gives her the efficiency profile of much bigger players. Clark and Bueckers are the only other freshman guards in the HerHoopsStats database, going back to 2009, to shoot better than Blakes from inside the arc (though she bested them at the free throw line) while averaging more than 20 points per game.
Blakes is also in the 99th percentile in steals, boasting a combination of inside-the-arc efficiency at the guard spot, two-way ability, and a proficiency for playing on and off the ball that offers more comparisons to Bueckers. It’s fitting: Vanderbilt’s head coach, Shea Ralph, cut her teeth at UConn, first as a player and as an assistant coach. Blakes, on that note, grew up idolizing Maya Moore.
Per Synergy, she generates 1.174 points per possession on isolations, good for the 94th percentile in the NCAAW. And now, she’s leveraging the attention she generates into creating easy looks for her teammates, averaging four assists in her last eight games.
Blakes vs. Mitchell and Bueckers as Freshmen
Stakes: Last season, the Commodores got their first March Madness berth of the Shea Ralph coaching era. This year, they’re looking to improve upon that. This was the first season in program history that Vanderbilt beat the Lady Vols, who own Tennessee women’s hoops, twice—one of them on a last-second buzzer-beater by Blakes. If Blakes and Co. have a good showing in March, the Commodores could capture the local imagination in a state where they’ve always lived in the shadow of the orange-and-white.
Ceiling: Elite Eight. Vanderbilt’s defense isn’t overpowering, but their 84 defensive rating, 34th in the nation, belies their versatility. Anchored by Khamil Pierre, who’s been fired up since being left off the All-SEC team, Vanderbilt can morph from a zone to a switch to a blitz without overextending themselves too much. If Duke, their potential second-round matchup, fails to hit their 3s and Mikayla Blakes has a good shooting night, they could walk away with a victory. Vanderbilt has been playing their best basketball lately, while North Carolina, the no. 3 seed, barely beat a Florida State team with a struggling Ta’Niya Latson in the ACC tournament, only to get bounced by NC State.
Title odds: +20000
