The conference finals are up to the hype
It was an incredible weekend of women’s basketball, with a handful of teams experiencing the joy of a conference championship title and many more enduring the agony of defeat.
Most notably ACC, Pac 12 and SEC crowned the winners on Sunday in three competitive games that featured some of the best athletes the sport has to offer. Let’s look at what happened and what it means for the NCAA tournament.
NC State vs. Louisville
The Atlantic Coast Conference is home to many excellent programs, as evidenced by the fights promoted by Syracuse and Georgia Tech in the semifinals, but NC State and Louisville are the cream of the crop. Both ranked in the top 5 in the country, this was the game that everyone wanted to see.
In its only contest in the regular season, Wolfpack won with relative ease to eliminate the then unbeaten and # 1 Cardinals. This only increased motivation for Louisville, who watched last year while NC State hung up the banner after they were prematurely rejected from competition for Florida St.
It was a round-trip battle, with both teams struggling to get the shots out. Wolfpack found themselves with the ball and the kick interrupted, and with two seconds left the graduation transfer Raina Perez placed a dagger in the hearts of Louisville fans everywhere.
(If the camera fell on the fake, it was probably pretty good)
Dana Evans failed to hit the bell and NC State secured consecutive ACC titles, with Elissa Cunane winning the MVP tournament. In my mind, Wes Moore and his team did enough to raise a seed, with Louisville sitting in the line of two. Both teams are prepared for incredibly deep tournament races.
UCLA vs. Stanford
The Pac 12 championship was a much more one-sided affair. It is hard to even blame UCLA, Stanford is simply becoming a dominant force after all. Number one in the NET standings and possibly number one of the general team in the national team on Monday, the cardinal stepped on the accelerator from the start and had a 23 point lead in the break until the final score of 75 to 55.
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Lexie Hull and Kiana Williams eclipsed 20 points, going a combination of 9 out of 15 beyond the arc to bury the Bruins in a wave of triples. UCLA was led by Michaela Onyenwere (as usual), which ended with an impressive, but unimportant 30.
Despite not having impressive wins outside the conference, the Bruins are in 7th in the NET ranking, which should allow them to hold three seeds, despite the defeat in the championship.
Georgia vs. South Carolina
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t expect to see the Bulldogs in this game. I had scored in Texas A&M to play in South Carolina, and clearly that was a mistake. This Georgia team does not have the names known to many of the other SEC teams, which is one of the reasons why coach Joni Taylor was awarded the Coach of the Year award at the conference.
The Bulldogs started well in the final, winning the first quarter by six points. That lead evaporated almost instantly and, at the turn of the half, the Gamecocks put him in another gear. Aliyah Boston finished with 27 points, 10 boards and 4 blocks, and Destanni Henderson added 18 when playing every 40 minutes of the competition.
That Morrison had a few buckets in the 4th quarter to try to bring Georgia back into the game, but they never managed to close the gap. South Carolina has won its 6th SEC title in the past seven seasons and will be one of the top contenders to win it all in March.
NET has Georgia as seed at the 3/4 limit, but winning A&M should give them an edge over the other SEC teams in the seed line below them.
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