Brittney Griner and Baylor’s path to a second straight national championship will have a familiar feel.
Then again, so will the whole NCAA women’s basketball tournament. For the first time ever, the top four seeds are the same for consecutive seasons. Baylor, Connecticut, Notre Dame and Stanford all earned No. 1 spots when the field was announced Monday night.
Unlike the men’s side, where it was a topsy-turvy season with major upsets seemingly every week, women’s basketball hasn’t had the same parity. The top six teams in the final Associated Press poll only had two losses outside of each other, the fewest by far since writers began voting for the AP’s No. 1 in the 1994-95 season.
"To think that the rest of the field is going to catch up to Baylor or Notre Dame or the top four or five teams in the country this year is probably unrealistic," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "But I think all those teams between five and 12 are way better than they’ve ever been."
The women’s basketball madness gets started Saturday — the first step en route to the Final Four, which begins April 7 in New Orleans.
Baylor coach Kim Mulkey hopes to make it there with her Lady Bears, who will be trying to become the fourth school to win consecutive national championships, joining Southern California, UConn, and Tennessee. Mulkey grew up in Louisiana.
Last season, Baylor was trying to becoming the first team to win 40 games in a season. Now the Bears are just focused on the title.
"Our goal is to win the six games and win the national championship," Griner said.
Standing in the way could be Tennessee. The Lady Vols, who have made every NCAA Tournament since it began in 1982, are the No. 2 seed in Baylor’s region. This will be the first time that coach Pat Summitt won’t be on the sidelines. Summitt stepped down after last season because she had been afflicted with early onset dementia, Alzheimer’s type.
While Tennessee set the standard in women’s basketball, Stanford has been one of the most dominant teams lately.
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The Cardinal will try to reach the Final Four for a sixth straight season and end Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer’s 21-year drought without a national championship.
Led by junior star Chiney Ogwumike, Stanford already may have the most impressive win this season, ending Baylor’s 42-game winning streak in November. That’s the only loss that the defending national champion Lady Bears suffered this season.
The Cardinal, who will open against Tulsa at home Sunday, could face No. 2 seed California in the regional final. The Golden Bears shared the Pac-12 title with Stanford this season after ending the Cardinal’s 81-game conference winning streak in January.
Notre Dame will be trying to make it back to a third straight national championship game. The Irish, led by senior guard Skylar Diggins, already have had an incredible season losing only to Baylor. Notre Dame won its first Big East Tournament championship last Tuesday and also went undefeated in the conference in the regular season.
The Irish will open on the road against Tennessee-Martin.
UConn lost four of its five games against the other top seeds, faltering down the stretch in each of the losses.
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