This weekend, the best women’s college basketball conferences will crown their champions. While teams like USC, Texas and UConn don’t need great performances in their conference tournaments to earn great spots in March Madness, these tournaments offer a chance to build some momentum. Here’s what we want to see as the weekend unfolds.
Another USC-UCLA matchup
OK, maybe I’m greedy. USC and UCLA, the No. 1 and 2 seeds in the Big Ten tournament, respectively, have already played twice this season. USC won both, with JuJu Watkins having great performances in both games. Could the result be different if the two teams play in Indianapolis instead of Los Angeles? Could it be a preview of a Final Four matchup, as the two teams are both ranked in the top five of the AP poll? Will a former Pac-12 team win the Big Ten tournament in its very first year in the conference? We will find out soon.
And another South-Carolina-Texas matchup?
OK, I admit it. I am greedy. These two teams split games against each other, have identical records, and are so similar that a coin flip had to decide the winner of the SEC. In the first matchup, South Carolina won in large part because of Texas’ inability to find the basket. The Longhorns shot 27 percent from the field. Fortunes were flipped when the two teams faced each other in February. South Carolina shot 26 percent from the field, and lost the rebounding battle to Texas. What would a game look like with both teams shooting their best? Or at least better than 27 percent? This is what one more game between the two teams would tell us.
Notre Dame finding their mojo
In the AP poll released on Feb. 17, Notre Dame earned the top spot for the first time that season. A decisive win over Duke soon followed. But late in February, the Fighting Irish seemed to lose steam in a double-overtime loss to NC State. Then they lost at home to Florida State. So which version of Notre Dame is the real team? The ACC tournament can be the crucible that tells us.
A test for UConn
The Huskies haven’t lost a game in more than a month, with the last loss coming to Tennessee, an SEC team. While the Big East has been a great basketball conference in the past, this season, no one is close to UConn. Creighton is currently ranked in the top 25, but those are the only two Big East teams who are ranked. In fact, UConn held every Big East opponent to 61 points or fewer during the regular season, and we aren’t even going to discuss the 87-21 win over Xavier. As the Big East converges upon the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut, the main thing we want to see is someone test Paige Bueckers and the rest of the Huskies as they prepare for the NCAA tournament.
Healthy teams by the end of the weekend
Look, the beauty of the women’s conference tournament setup is that most of the teams who will play in the NCAA tournament will get a week and a half off between their last conference tournament game and the first round of March Madness. Athletes get a little bit of time to work out bumps and bruises, but the biggest thing to hope for when watching the conference tournaments is that everyone stays healthy enough to play another day.
