South Carolina is the No. 1 Women’s Team in the NCAA – How They Earned the No. 1 Seed in the Tournament

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Dawn Staley’s team, the South Carolina Gamecocks, are on track to do something incredible – becoming the 10th women’s basketball team to go without losing a single game throughout their entire season. This is a very difficult thing to do and they’ve been faced with challenging games multiple times yet have always come out on top. For this year’s NCAA Tournament, they’ve been selected as the No. 1 overall seed and will play against Norfolk State in the first round!.

The South Carolina Gamecocks, led by Aliyah Boston, have been in the lead for most of the season and almost guaranteed to become a top seed. Other teams who also want to be one of the top seeds include Iowa with Caitlin Clark leading them, Virginia Tech, Stanford and Utah. The Iowa Hawkeyes were already chosen twice before in 1988 and 1992. According to Staley, they can’t afford to lose when aiming at being a top seed again.

The committee picked three teams for the tournament: Indiana, Virginia Tech and Stanford. This is the first time Indiana and Virginia Tech have been chosen as top seeds, but this isn’t Stanford’s first rodeo! They’ve been a No. 1 seed 13 times before, including in the past three tournaments.

Chair of the committee Lisa Peterson said that they “spent a lot of time thinking about things like who should be No. 1 seed”.

The tournament starts Wednesday with two games and then sixteen more on Friday and another sixteen on Saturday!

The South Carolina Gamecocks, who were the 18th team to go undefeated in the NCAA tourney, may be able to make it to the Final Four Dallas easily. They won’t need to travel too far away since now they only have to play their first two games local on campus and potentially head 90 minutes away from home for one of the regionals which is also located in Greenville, South Carolina – where they just won the Southeastern Conference Tournament.

“When we got sent to Stockton, California in 2017, we were really mad. But then something amazing happened – we won the national championship! It was a great reminder that no matter what happens, there’s always some kind of good that comes out of it. We’re thankful for being put in the Greenville region because it means that at least we have a chance. Though it won’t be easy, we know we can do it!”.

This year, the NCAA is doing something different. They are using two places to have the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds. One is in Greenville and the other is Seattle. Four of the best teams in the region will host parts of these tournaments in their own cities.

South Carolina’s tournament also has some really good teams like Maryland (No. 2 seed), Notre Dame (No. 3) and UCLA (No. 4). South Carolina already beat both Maryland and UCLA this season too!

Coach Staley said that it would be good to play the team from Norfolk State first so they could see how far they could go. Indiana is the top seed, Utah is in second, LSU third and Villanova fourth in the tournament.

UConn, who won the whole competition without losing any games in the year 2015-16, is trying to make history and make it to the Final Four for the 15th time in a row. This year, UConn had its fair share of injuries, but things actually started looking better as March came closer. Azzi Fudd, an important star guard for UConn, missed 22 games with a knee injury before coming back just ahead of the Big East Tournament and helping them win it.

Geno Auriemma’s team, which won an amazing 11 championships, has the second-best ranking in Seattle. Virginia Tech is ranked number one in that area while Ohio State and Tennessee come at third and fourth place, respectively.

California is the champion in the other Seattle bracket; Iowa takes second, Duke comes third, and Texas also joins them at fourth place. These teams have been part of the NCAA Tournament since 1982!

The Atlantic Coast Conference has the highest number of teams taking part in the tournament – 8 teams. Right after that, the Big Ten and SEC have 7 team each and the Pac-12 has 6 teams. The Big 12 has 6 teams while the Big East only has 5.

Four new teams will be joining this year’s tournament for the first time ever: Southern Utah, Southeastern Louisiana, Sacramento State and Saint Louis. However, Columbia, Kansas, Massachusetts and Oregon didn’t make it to the list.

Are you ready to follow the thrilling excitement of March Madness? For all the action, check out these websites: https://bigbignews.net/march-madness, https://bigbignews.net/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25. Follow along for all your college basketball updates!