A brand new girls’s faculty basketball season will tip off on Monday, and the identical groups that dominated the final two campaigns will probably be favored to take action once more.
South Carolina is the reigning N.C.A.A. champion and is No. 1 within the Related Press preseason Prime 25 ballot for the third straight season. Stanford, which received the nationwide championship in 2021, is ranked No. 2.
These two colleges — together with Connecticut — have all appeared within the Remaining 4 in back-to-back seasons.
Whereas the UConn star Paige Bueckers is out for the yr with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, the opposite colleges return with a lot of their star energy. Senior ahead Aliyah Boston of South Carolina is again because the projected No. 1 choose within the W.N.B.A. draft after being named nationwide participant of the yr and most excellent participant of the Remaining 4. Stanford’s Haley Jones and Cameron Brink each return and have been key members of the 2021 championship staff. This group, together with the Iowa star Caitlin Clark, figures to dominate lots of the sport’s headlines this season.
“It’s all the time nice that we’re placing our greatest merchandise on the ground as a result of I do assume girls’s basketball is at a spot the place there are a whole lot of eyeballs on us,” South Carolina Coach Daybreak Staley stated in a cellphone interview. “I feel we’re in excessive demand, and I do assume determination makers have to fulfill the demand as a result of folks wish to see girls’s basketball.”
Listed here are some issues to look at as the ladies’s faculty basketball season begins:
South Carolina has its sights set on one other title.
Many coaches who win championships comply with up by talking in platitudes about beginning the subsequent season with a clear slate, with no strain and no expectations.
Not Staley, who led the Gamecocks to titles in 2017 and final season.
“No, we’re not going to low cost the truth that we’re the defending champs,” Staley stated. “We’re the defending champs. And that doesn’t come by fairly often. Till somebody dethrones us and we exit from the N.C.A.A. match, converse to us as defending champs.”
Staley has again 10 letter-winners from final season’s championship staff, together with 4 of the 5 starters. Boston and senior guard Zia Cooke have been named to the preseason All-SEC first staff. The sophomores Sania Feagin (ahead) and Bree Corridor (guard) look to have an even bigger impression, and the redshirt freshman Raven Johnson and the Georgia Tech switch Kierra Fletcher will battle for the purpose guard place left vacant by the W.N.B.A. draft choose Destanni Henderson. Cooke additionally figures to play some at level guard.
“When you might have a brand new level guard, it adjustments issues,” Staley stated.
Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma, winner of 11 nationwide championships, believes the Gamecocks stay the staff to beat.
“Anytime you win it and you’ve got the vast majority of your staff, nearly your total staff again, it’s fairly onerous to not choose them, you realize?” Auriemma stated.
Texas is eyeing its first Remaining 4 since 2003.
In two seasons at Texas, the defensive-minded coach Vic Schaefer has led the staff to a 50-17 mark and back-to-back Elite Eight appearances.
Earlier than that, he guided Mississippi State to the nationwide championship recreation in 2017 (shedding to South Carolina) and 2018 (Notre Dame).
Now the Longhorns are ranked No. 3 within the preseason ballot and are eyeing this system’s first Remaining 4 since 2003.
“The last word purpose is to win that final recreation,” Schaefer advised reporters as his staff was getting ready for the season.
Texas is led by the sophomore guard Rori Harmon, one of many extra thrilling gamers within the sport, who averaged 11.4 factors, 5.0 assists and 4.4 rebounds, and the sophomore ahead Aaliyah Moore (6.0 factors).
Schaefer can also be very excessive on the 6-foot-2 junior ahead DeYona Gaston, who has battled accidents throughout her profession.
“I stated this because the day I signed her, if I may ever get her wholesome, I feel she may actually be particular,” he stated. “And he or she’s lastly wholesome.”
Switch gamers Sonya Morris (DePaul) and Taylor Jones (Oregon State) may additionally play key roles, together with the staff’s freshmen.
Texas is one in every of 4 Massive 12 applications which are ranked, together with No. 8 Iowa State, No. 15 Oklahoma and No. 18 Baylor.
UConn has excessive hopes even with out its star.
The Huskies would have been among the many favorites to chop down the nets in Dallas in April had Bueckers not suffered a torn A.C.L. whereas enjoying a pickup basketball recreation in August.
Bueckers, a 5-foot-11 guard from the Minneapolis space, was the nationwide participant of the yr as a freshman in 2021 and returned late final season from a tibial plateau fracture and meniscus tear to steer the Huskies on a considerably stunning run to the nationwide championship recreation.
Nonetheless, UConn is No. 6 within the preseason ballot and returns a really gifted staff. And, oh, by the way in which, the Huskies have been to 14 consecutive Remaining Fours below Auriemma.
UConn misplaced Christyn Williams, Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Evina Westbrook to the W.N.B.A. from final yr’s staff, but it surely brings again three preseason all-Massive East first-team choices in Caroline Ducharme, Aaliyah Edwards and Azzi Fudd whereas including Ayanna Patterson, the Massive East preseason freshman of the yr who Auriemma stated “has expertise that nobody else on our staff has athletically.”
“We have now some good gamers that may compensate for her not being there,” Auriemma added, referring to the absence of Bueckers.
“I like the place we’re, I do,” Auriemma added. “It is a good group to work with.”
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark has drawn comparisons to Stephen Curry and Sue Chicken.
Along with her jaw-dropping skills on the court docket, Iowa junior guard Caitlin Clark has invited comparisons to Stephen Curry and Sue Chicken and earned admiration from Kevin Durant.
Final yr, she led the nation in scoring at 27.0 factors per recreation whereas additionally averaging 8.0 assists and eight.0 rebounds. She is the projected No. 1 choose within the 2024 W.N.B.A. draft.
“I feel I can nearly see the sport a step forward, and that’s sort of what units me aside,” Clark stated in an interview in February.
Iowa is ranked No. 4 nationally and Clark, super-senior Monika Czinano and their teammates need redemption after being upset within the second spherical of the N.C.A.A. match.
The coaches within the Massive Ten know the risk that Clark poses.
“So electrical,” Maryland’s Brenda Frese stated. “Clearly, can rating the basketball from wherever as quickly as she steps on the court docket. It’s not accidentally.
“She’s made such a distinction, clearly at Iowa. Within the nation, she’s a recreation changer, only a particular participant to look at, however not enjoyable to need to scout and coach towards,” Frese stated. “However really a kind of that it’s a must to respect in her time as a as soon as in a lifetime sort of participant to return via.”
Which shock staff may make a deep run this season?
Final yr, Creighton shocked almost everybody within the girls’s recreation when it superior to the primary Elite Eight in class historical past by knocking off No. 2 seed Iowa at dwelling within the second spherical and Iowa State within the regional semifinals.
“I don’t assume anyone predicted Creighton,” UConn’s Auriemma stated.
Creighton enters this season ranked No. 21 nationally — whereas its in-state compatriot Nebraska is No. 22.
Which staff may get away and make a Creighton-like run on this yr’s match?
Villanova, one other Massive East staff, could be a program to look at. The Wildcats function senior ahead Maddy Siegrist, the reigning Massive East participant of the yr and a projected high 10 choose within the W.N.B.A. draft. A 6-foot-1 Poughkeepsie, N.Y., native, Siegrist averaged 25.3 factors (second nationally behind Clark) and 9.2 rebounds a yr in the past whereas taking pictures 49 p.c from the sphere and 35 p.c from 3-point vary.
She may take a fair larger step this season after competing this summer season as a part of the USA Basketball girls’s 23-and-under 3×3 staff.
“She’s extra snug passing the basketball, simply opening the ground up for a lot of different gamers,” Villanova Coach Denise Dillon stated. “And he or she continues on each ends of the ground to develop.”
Supply: NY Times