If March Insanity follows the script, Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes will endure a heartbreaking loss earlier than the Closing 4 – similar to Zion Williamson and Duke did in 2019. However in contrast to that yr on the lads’s facet, which gave us a lackluster nationwide semifinal with the likes of Virginia, Texas Tech, Michigan State and Auburn, the ladies’s sport is full of expertise, storylines, hall-of-fame coaches and sufficient star energy to maintain Mid-America’s new favourite workforce from pulling off an upset.
If Clark can lead Iowa to a nationwide championship in her remaining season of faculty basketball, Disney will fee a film about her life earlier than 2024 ends. It might be the most effective runs we have ever seen within the sport, contemplating the variety of awards she’s gained, the data she’s set, the viewership she’s introduced in, and presumably final season’s loss within the nationwide championship match.
However that is if it occurs. As a result of when we now have gamers or groups prepared for a grand remaining in March, that hardly ever occurs. Simply ask Coach Ok and 2022 Duke. Moreover, Iowa ought to get it Molly Davis’ knee is wholesome.
Nonetheless, that is the place the energy of the ladies’s sport lies this season. It isn’t nearly Clark, the best scorer in Division I basketball historical past, and the Hawkeyes. For instance, this season, legendary Stanford ladies’s head coach Tara VanDerveer broke Mike Krzyzewski’s report for many wins, and he or she has a star in Cameron Brink. Then UConn’s legendary ladies’s head coach, Geno Auriemma, additionally handed Krzyzewski. UConn even has Paige Bueckers again for an additional yr, so be careful for them on this match and subsequent yr.
After which there’s South Carolina. I do not suppose Clark or anybody else desires to see them on their facet of the bracket. Daybreak Staley’s workforce is the one males’s or ladies’s workforce to complete the common season undefeated. Thoughts you, she does this with a very new beginning lineup from the workforce that reached the Closing 4 final season. For the reason that 2019-2020 season, South Carolina has misplaced 9 video games – that is it.
Now let’s go to LSU – the reigning champs. Whereas Iowa and South Carolina are the 2 most talked about groups, LSU would be the most fascinating. Angel Reese is the second hottest participant within the sport, and he or she even disappeared for a number of video games this season – and we nonetheless do not know why. Any workforce Reese and Hailey Van Lithand is coached by Kim Mulkey, is price your time and a spotlight.
And final however not least, the girl who’s arguably the very best participant in faculty hoops can have an opportunity to have a popping out celebration as soon as the match begins. as USC freshman JuJu Watkins is the actual deal. Now that the Trojans are within the High 5, they’ve all of the substances to make a deep run. As a result of they play on the West Coast and within the dying Pac-12, most of their video games come out late or are on smaller networks. However with Watkins’ potential to attain 30 factors in her sleep, or 40 and 50 if vital, she’s precisely what a workforce must make it to the Closing 4: an unguarded bucket-getter. Suppose Maya Moore, however higher at a youthful age.
Convention tournaments have already began, the insanity is formally right here. Please educate your self on all the nice issues and gamers which have made this season such a transcendent one within the ladies’s sport. It’ll be a terrific match irrespective of who cuts down the nets.
