Five Observations Heading Into the NCAA Women’s Final Four
UCLA has the players to stop Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong; actually doing so will be the hard part. Plus, Texas’s need for points and South Carolina’s quiet growth.
The Final Four is set, and not one perfect bracket remains. The action will open on Friday in Tampa with what will likely be a defensive slugfest between SEC rivals Texas and South Carolina, followed by a high-octane UConn-UCLA matchup that could break Final Four scoring records. The Huskies and Longhorns, humming juggernauts with long-standing systems, know exactly who they are, while the Gamecocks and Bruins are evolving entities, with stars like MiLaysia Fulwiley and Lauren Betts discovering new peaks through the course of the tournament. Can Paige Bueckers, in her final season of college basketball, lead UConn to its first title since 2016? Will the Gamecocks take home their third title in four seasons? Or, in tune with what’s been the most competitive season of women’s college basketball in recent memory, will a fresh face like Madison Booker or Betts prevail? Here are five observations heading into the Final Four:
UCLA has the pieces to guard Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong.
Strong is an X factor for UConn, and Geno Auriemma knows it. He spent the Huskies’ Elite Eight victory over the JuJu-less USC team feeding the ball to Strong, who, after a few bobbled drives, cut the Trojans up in an array of ways: deep seals, slips, face-up drives, floaters, multiple 3s, and jumpers off screens.
Yeah, that’s your freshman “big” ripping off a screen and nailing a jumper—the kind of action that could pull 6-foot-7 Betts away from the rim and make her uncomfortable. She’s also one-half of Auriemma’s favorite late-game play: the Bueckers-Strong ball screen action that offers an array of unpredictable possibilities. Against the Trojans, the duo combined for 53 points on just 31 shots.
But UCLA might have the right combination of size, speed, and defensive acumen to stifle the duo. Kiki Rice, like USC defender Kennedy Smith, has the strength and speed to push Bueckers off her routes and disrupt her drives. She could also potentially switch onto Strong, while 6-foot-4 athletic forward Janiah Barker could certainly keep up with Bueckers on the perimeter for a possession or two. Even Betts, the lengthy Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, could take a turn or two guarding Bueckers and Strong, although her proximity to the rim gives the Bruins one of the best 2-point defenses in the nation, and they’d likely prefer to stow her there. Really, if head coach Cori Close can resist the urge to put 5-foot-4 Londynn Jones on Bueckers, one of the best offensive guards in the world (not a guarantee, as Close had Jones guard JuJu Watkins this year), the Bruins could be in decent shape—because the prospect of guarding Betts is just as, if not more, vexing.
If Strong is an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube, Betts—who bludgeoned Ole Miss with rim attack after rim attack in the Sweet 16, hitting 15 of her 16 shot attempts—is an unstoppable sledgehammer. The responsibility for guarding her will fall partially on Strong but also on another freshman big, 6-foot-5 Jana El Alfy.
USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, whose team played both UCLA and UConn this season, put it this way: “Two different styles. One team that plays through the post and through the post and through the post and showed they have a ton of great shooters against a team that spreads the floor and can play five guards, if you call Sarah a guard—she’s just a basketball player.”
UCLA has lost to only one team this season, USC, whom they eventually beat in the Big Ten championship game, while UConn has the no. 1 offense and defense in the nation, per HerHoopStats. Both teams are stacked with talent, depth, and connectivity. With dribbling supercomputer Bueckers on the floor and the winningest coach in NCAA history patrolling the sideline, the Huskies have the edge in experience. But Close may have made up enough ground to keep up.
Cori Close and Lauren Betts finally got over the hump against LSU.
You could squint your eyes and imagine Close as a billionaire megachurch pastor in another life. In this version of the multiverse, though, her pulpit is the press conference, where her thunderous voice combines the secular woo-woo-isms of modern-day Los Angeles with credos that toggle between Ted Lasso and Eric Taylor, depending on her team’s effort level.
A “Believe” sign hangs above the door of the Bruins’ locker room. She uses phrases like “mission minded” and “growth mindset.” After UCLA got blown out by USC at the end of the regular season, she basically said that whoever wasn’t committed to playing for the team shouldn’t show up on the bus the next day.
She visualizes. She prays. Gratitude is her gospel. She attributes her rise to multiple people: Julie Plank, then a Stanford assistant, who told Close when she was in high school that she was built for this; her mother, Patti, for whom she saved a piece of the net she cut down after UCLA’s Elite Eight victory; the AIAW-era Bruins, who won the women’s program its lone title in 1978, a history she is careful not to erase as UCLA heads into its first Final Four of the NCAA era. “The list goes on and on,” she says. “It takes a village to build a program. If you just don’t want a team, but you want a true program that impacts people’s hearts first, you don’t do that alone.”
In a college basketball world full of coaches whose personalities, doctrines, and reputations precede them, Close is entering the pantheon.
But after UCLA was upset by LSU in the Elite Eight last year, a moniker, “Fourth-Quarter Cori,” took hold, in reference to the idea that Close didn’t have the in-game execution chops to maximize her team’s talent. So while Betts worked through the challenge of being more consistently aggressive with her lengthy frame, Close had her own demons to shed. It all came to a head in their rematch against LSU, when Betts picked up two first-quarter fouls for the first time in her career, triggering another question that haunted them last season: When opponents limit her, does UCLA have the guard play to make up for it?
One particular play from the UCLA-LSU game sticks out: UCLA's Barker, a mismatch nightmare, aimlessly hung around with 5-foot-8 LSU guard Kailyn Gilbert. Why does that moment stand out so much? Because it was the last time in that game when UCLA’s offense looked listless and undetermined. In Betts’s absence, Close turned to Barker to stay down low, where she consistently punished smaller defenders and drew fouls.
UCLA’s no. 2 option, Kiki Rice, hit just one shot all game, but Timea Gardiner, a transfer brought in from Oregon State to bolster the spacing around Betts, poured in five 3s. Gabriela Jaquez, who improved her range in the offseason, poured in another four, leading the Bruins with 18 points.
“Lauren and Kiki have carried us over and over again,” said Close. “There’s no question they’re our big dogs, right? And we rely on them so much. Tonight, we had to have their backs a little bit.”
Betts, for her part, can be prone to getting in her head when the whistle doesn’t go her way, but she made her presence felt in the second half, finishing the game with 17 points, seven rebounds, and six blocks.
“A year ago, that would have sent her over the edge,” said Close. “She would have been so mad at herself and beat herself up so much that she wouldn’t have been able to continue to defend, continue to lead, continue to do some of the other things we ask her to do.”
In the end, UCLA avenged its loss to LSU and learned some valuable lessons about what it’s capable of. “You can’t give a team confidence,” said Close. “You have to put them in situations where they can learn to conquer hard things and earn the confidence that they want, and they’ve done that.”
Texas’s defense dominated TCU.
By the end of the first quarter of its Elite Eight matchup against Texas, TCU had committed a 10-second violation, two five-second violations, and two shot clock violations, and Hailey Van Lith had coughed up two balls.
This was the Texas defense of coach Vic Schaefer’s fever dreams: Nothing, not even getting the ball on the court, can be presumed safe. Every dribble puts you in danger. The ball pressure? Suffocating. Ball denials? Round-the-clock. Ball screens? Met with high hedges. Shout-out to 6-foot-4 Taylor Jones, by the way, for defending out to the 3-point line and rushing back into the paint for an entire half.
It created a 40 Minutes of Hell–style fear. Even when Texas’s defenders weren’t in Van Lith’s face, they were in her head. In the second quarter, she sprayed a pass out of bounds, even though Texas’s Madison Booker was lagging, and unnecessarily overthrew an inbound entry pass.
One of the most clear-eyed players in college basketball had her vision impaired all night. On one possession, the roller was available twice on the slip, but no one dared to make a rainbow pass through traffic. Hell, you do it. TCU was held to eight assists, tying a season low thanks to the fear of Rori Harmon, whose long journey back from an ACL tear that derailed her junior year will include a stop in Tampa.
A tearful Harmon finished the game with her hands on her knees and her head down. “I was just kinda being selfish and thinking about what I’ve been through as a player, to come back from my ACL injury in 10 months. Obviously it’s physical and mental,” Harmon said. “Just to see us get to the Final Four, I was just really proud of myself.”
TCU’s spread pick-and-roll style netted out a season-low 47 points, to go along with 21 turnovers and 16 missed triples. The women’s game is modernizing, yes, but this weekend, consistency beat variance. After taking down TCU and Tennessee, who were no. 1 and no. 2 in 3-pointers made this year, Texas—who got the lowest percentage of its points from beyond the arc in the nation—is headed to its first Final Four since 2003.
Texas needs to get points on the board.
The last time the Longhorns, who are 1-2 against South Carolina this season, faced off against the Gamecocks, it resulted in a blowout loss in the SEC tournament final. Bree Hall shut down Booker, who has shot 26 percent on the season against South Carolina, and goaded the backcourt into feeding the post and turning the ball over.
South Carolina has been held to 62 points or fewer four times this season and lost three of those games, the lone win being its 54-point outing against Duke in the Elite Eight. Heading into the Final Four, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley is rightfully concerned about her team’s offense, and the no. 4 defense in the nation isn’t exactly who you want to be finding your flow against.
But defense hasn’t been the issue for Texas against South Carolina. It’s been offense. If Booker can’t break free from the claws of Hall (there’s a budding rivalry there, by the way), that means Harmon needs to hit more of her open midrangers, and Jones and Kyla Oldacre need to find their way to clean post touches.
Against TCU, Harmon and Booker combined to shoot 14-for-35, missing the kinds of open midrange jumpers they’ll simply have to hit against the Gamecocks’ elite defense. Maybe they could come from Jordan Lee, their sharpshooting freshman who didn’t hit a shot against the Gamecocks in the SEC tournament, or Bryanna Preston, the breakout freshman guard who scored 12 points off the bench in Texas’s Sweet 16 victory over Tennessee.
South Carolina is still growing.
At some point, all championship-level teams make the transition from being coach led to player led. South Carolina, heading to its fifth straight Final Four, is in the messy space between the two.
On some nights, like against Duke in the Elite Eight, bigs such as Sania Feagin (12 points, eight rebounds, three assists, three steals, and two blocks) and Chloe Kitts (eight fourth-quarter points, including some dagger free throws) make up for the loss of Kamilla Cardoso in the aggregate. The duo, through the course of the season, have tapped further into their self-creation bags while learning to lead with their voices.
When Kitts had to make two free throws to ice the game, Feagin told her to take a deep breath. “To see her just out there performing like a senior, that’s what you want,” Staley said of Feagin. “I wanted her there a lot sooner than this year, but people’s process is their process.”
“They have great self-talk,” Staley added. “They want each other to do well. They want to win. It’s all communication that’s helpful in that moment. Now we’re probably communicating something else, and they’re balancing us with that kind of talk.”
The self-talk matters, too, because Staley has had to yell more than ever. Her young team—especially Fulwiley and Joyce Edwards—has astounded her at times. It also stresses her out more than Gamecocks teams of the past.
She’s in a constant tug-of-war between playing Raven Johnson, the steady but offensively challenged hand she trusts, and Fulwiley, the lightning rod whose explosion she needs but can’t fully rely on yet. After putting up 23 points off the bench against Maryland, Fulwiley had just five points and four turnovers against Duke.
“She’s got a lot of gall to try some of the stuff she does,” said Staley, “but that’s part of who she is. It’s hard to guard, it’s hard to double because she’s got really good vision, she’s got a really good ability to pass in traffic, to make layups in traffic. I think she’s just continuing to grow.”
Edwards, the no. 3 recruit in the country last season, has struggled through the tournament thus far, combining for just 15 points on 21 shots over the past three games after leading the team in scoring in the regular season. She’s now in a race against a scouting report that’s caught up to her.
“We’re just trying to simplify things for her. But things are coming fast, so it’s hard. I know she wants to help. But sometimes, in situations like this, you’ve helped us all season long. It’s OK to allow some other players to help,” said Staley. “We have a week of practice where we can show her some film. We need her. If we’re gonna win a national championship, we’re gonna need better production from Joyce.”
South Carolina’s combined eight-point margin of victory in the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight pales in comparison to the past four years, when it won those games by 16, 27, 38, and 39 points en route to two titles.
“It is that type of year for us,” said Staley. “There aren’t any blowouts.”
In the past two games, South Carolina survived its opponents by making fewer mistakes than them. Maryland’s Shyanne Sellers, with 20 seconds left in the Sweet 16, dribbled the ball off her foot. In the Elite Eight, with a chance to tie the game with a 2, Duke’s Ashlon Jackson hoisted an ill-advised 28-footer with plenty of time left on the shot clock. These are, in part, the kinds of mistakes that the constant pressure of South Carolina’s defense produces. But their Final Four opponents won’t be as prone to making them.
The margin for error is razor-thin for a South Carolina team that is still an evolving property. Its title hopes rest on how quickly it can continue to grow.
