Eluding a Fray of Upsets, Four Powers Remain

The women’s Final Four are crowded with top seeds and familiar faces. No. 1 seed Stanford; the season-long favorites and top overall seed, South Carolina; an ascendant program with deep runs on its résumé but no title (yet) in No. 1 seed Louisville; a Final Four fixture, Number. 2 seed Connecticut

But this N.C.A.A. This tournament has been unpredictable. To reach the national semifinals, teams needed to win close games. Many other teams went home earlier than their seeding suggested. In other words: There are many. It has been plenty of madness — which the N.C.A.A. allowed women’s teams to claim officially for the first time this year with their use of its signature “March Madness” branding — even if it’s not obvious from looking at the last four teams standing.

“I would have loved to have watched that game,” Paige Bueckers, the star UConn guard, said while speaking with reporters just after her Huskies claimed their 14th straight trip to the Final Four with a double-overtime win over No. North Carolina State was the 1-seeded team on Monday. “It’s one of the best games I’ve ever been a part of,” UConn Coach Geno Auriemma said.

These emphatic endorsements carry some baggage. The pressure to produce close games and unlikely victors — the hallmarks of what supposedly makes the college basketball postseason so entertaining — can be particularly intense in the women’s game, which has long been dogged by the misperception that there are not enough talented players for the teams beyond the very top title contenders.

As a result, there is an understandable tendency among those who work in and around women’s college basketball to cling to every upset and hotly contested matchup as evidence of the game’s continued growth and parity. Yet the women’s tournament has always had upsets; in 2016, for example, teams seeded second, fourth and seventh joined a top-seeded Connecticut in the Final Four (UConn wound up winning to complete an undefeated season). This year’s tournament record was broken by this year’s double-digit wins.

But the tournament hasn’t had to rewrite history books to be action-packed. UConn’s win over N.C. State, the first round of 8 contest to go into double overtime, has been the game of this year’s competition so far, but plenty of others have rewarded viewers with fight and surprise.

No. No. 14 seed Texas, Arlington played No. 3 seed Iowa State came in close behind in its third appearance in this bracket.

Despite their star power, Baylor and Iowa were knocked out by Creighton and South Dakota teams in the second round despite their star power.

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The top two teams were also both tested in the tournament’s second weekend. It took Aliyah Boston’s best game of the season to lift South Carolina past No. 5 North Carolina, No. Stanford was pushed to the brink by 2 Texas’s tireless defense.

“We found ourselves in a two-possession game in the fourth quarter, and we beared down and won the game,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley said on Friday. “Of course, we don’t want it that close, but if it gets that close, find a way to dig deep and get a win.”

Compared with Connecticut’s grueling matchup against North Carolina State, Louisville — the lowest No. 1 seed — probably came away with the easiest wins of the weekend, leading Tennessee and Michigan almost all the way through its respective games.

The Cardinals will take on South Carolina on Friday. They are the closest team to a dark horse in the Final Four. They are the only remaining team that has never won a championship. Louisville entered the tournament with four losses. The most recent loss was against Miami in its first Atlantic Coast Conference tournament game.

Since then, though, sophomore guard Hailey Van Lith — a threat for tough layups and from behind the 3-point line — has scored at least 20 points in every game of the tournament. Her peer in the post, the Syracuse transfer Emily Engstler, has controlled the boards despite being just 6-foot-1 — smaller than most of the players she’s fighting with over the ball. The team’s defense has played excellently, but Louisville will need to summon even more energy to match that of the top overall seed.

South Carolina, which just defeated Creighton with the largest margin of victory (8, 80-50), enters the semifinals. It was a needed confidence boost for the Gamecocks, who hadn’t been able to convert their dominant defense into much offense since their brutal first-round beat-down of 16th-seeded Howard.

Boston was joined by Victaria Saxton, Brea Beal, and Destanni Henderson who all scored alongside Boston. This allowed the Gamecocks’ to show more of their depth than relying on Boston, who was a national player-of-the-year finalist. With renewed offense, South Carolina is looking for its second title and a chance to avenge its 1-point loss to Stanford in last year’s Final Four.

Bueckers, UConn’s resident highlight reel, seemed to return to form following her December leg injury in the second half of the Huskies’ grueling round of 8 matchup. She missed just one shot after halftime and scored 23 of her 27 points in overtime and the second half. The Huskies may need her to perform at that level to contend with Stanford — a tall order considering her injury. UConn will need her support cast to be consistent, especially Christyn Wilkins, who has often closed the scoring gap between Bueckers and her 6-foot forward Olivia Nelson-Ododa.

Stanford has proven through this tournament that they are not only one of the best and most experienced teams in the country but also that they are larger than most of their competitors. Stanford has just one starter under 6 feet tall, and that’s Anna Wilson, one of Division I’s best defenders. If Tara VanDerveer chooses to replace Wilson, she will have a large bench of tall players who can shoot and that will allow Stanford to intimidate even top teams. As the Cardinal fight to become the first team to repeat as champions since Connecticut, which won four consecutive times from 2013 to 2016, it is only fitting that they have to go through the Huskies first — a game that will see two of the most legendary coaches in the women’s game going head to head for the first time since 2017.

While the window for upsets and underdogs may be smaller, the competition in the last stage of tournament will be fiercer.