The Best Of March Madness So Far
The first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament have been amazing and all the credit goes to the women on the floor.
March Madness is here! The tournament has been so glorious despite the NCAA’s missteps (to put it generously). The NCAA tried to keep women’s basketball down by giving them a weight room that would be appropriate for the Motel in Schitt’s Creek before it became the Rosebud and stiffing the players on food and swag bags. They also lied about why they don’t call the tournament “March Madness” when women play in it. Sedona Prince, Nell Fortner, Dawn Staley, and the rest of the women’s basketball community stood up for themselves with male players including Kyrie Irving and Jalen Suggs helping the cause as well. The immediate issues were fixed, and the tournament went on.
While it’s disheartening and wrong, nothing can keep these players down or stop the games from being magical. The game is more popular and growing faster than ever. Instead of getting deeper in the weeds of the problems facing the sport, let’s talk about the beauty that has been the 2021 Women’s Basketball Tournament. If you are looking for a Sweet 16 preview and even more on the second round, you can listen to Christy Winters-Scott and me on the Courtside podcast from Thursday.
Caitlin Clark’s Legend Status
March is when legends are born. The Greatest of All Time case for Sheryl Swoopes began with her dominant performances at Texas Tech in 1993. Arike Ogunbowale’s game-winner shots in the 2018 Final Four and Championship Game made her a household name. Allison Feaster’s 33 points in 16th-seed Harvard’s win over Stanford still resonates. The list of March legends goes on and now that list will have to include Iowa’s freshman sensation Caitlin Clark.
After scoring 23 points against Central Michigan in the first round, Clark put up 35 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists against the four-seed Kentucky Wildcats and first-team All-American Rhyne Howard. She made 13 of her 21 shots from the field and went 6-of-12 from three. She got hot and just kept shooting.
"I was feeling my shot early there in the first half," Clark said after the game. "And when it's going, you just keep shooting it.”
This is a great philosophy for the Hawkeyes’ phenom. Clark leads the nation in points per game, three-pointers made, and assists this season. She is just the second freshman to score 35 points or more in an NCAA Tournament game since 2015-16, with Chennedy Carter being the other. Heck, she’s just the sixth player to score 35 points or more after the first round since 2016. Clark compares favorably to both Trae Young at Oklahoma and Steph Curry at Davidson in a statistical sense. When I asked for WNBA comparisons on Twitter, the name that kept popping up was Diana Taurasi, and it was honestly difficult to ignore the similarities between the two when Clark is draining deep threes, talking smack, and dishing assists as DT has done for over a decade.
There are so many stats that show how amazing Clark has been. But the best indication of her greatness is how insane Twitter goes when she gets hot, and the complete belief that the basketball community has in her making shots. Clark is the type of player that makes you message your basketball friends “you need to get a TV right now!” As a freshman in college, she has reached Diana Taurasi’s or Steph Curry’s level of confidence. She could pull up from 30 feet with the Monstars draped all over her and I’d still think that it’s going in.
Speaking of must-watch TV, the Iowa Hawkeyes take on the UConn Huskies in the Sweet 16 on Saturday. The two best freshmen in the nation, Clark and Paige Bueckers, will play each other for the first time. Sometimes, the basketball gods just smile upon us.
Welcome Back
“We’re not going to the Sweet 16 just to show up,” said Arizona head coach Adia Barnes. “We’re going to win it.” Barnes said that in 1998 after leading the 3-seed Wildcats past 6-seed Virginia onto a matchup with 2-seed UConn. Now she has brought her alma mater back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since she graduated.
Barnes is hoping for a different result for this year’s team than the 74-57 loss that her team suffered. Regardless of what happens on Sunday, she has accomplished something special in her five years as head coach at her alma mater. The Wildcats had not made the NCAA tournament since 2005 before this season (although they would have made the 2020 tournament if it happened). Now, Arizona seems to be building something special. Aari McDonald, who won Pac-12 player of the year like Barnes did, seems hell-bent on taking this program further than it has ever been before.
Nell Fortner is pulling off a similar feat with Georgia Tech. In her second year, Fortner has the Yellow Jackets in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2012 and the second time ever. Unlike Arizona, Tech’s run, and really their success all season, has been unexpected. The ACC’s “blue ribbon panel” picked them to finish 9th in the conference preseason poll. The Yellow Jackets finished 3rd. Picking Stephen F. Austin to beat GT was a popular upset pick and just 29% of brackets in ESPN’s tournament challenge had them getting this far. Yet, here they are.
The Yellow Jackets have a tall task ahead of them with South Carolina coming up. The Her Hoop Stats win probability metric gives them just a 1.2% of advancing to the Elite Eight. But, as the young man in the video below will tell you (volume warning), anything is possible at Georgia Tech.
Nearly every other team in the Sweet 16 has been here recently. Indiana and Michigan, however, are making their first appearances at this stage in the tournament. It seems somewhat impossible that neither of these basketball-loving schools has won two games in the tournament before. Regardless, Adia Barnes, Nell Fortner, Michigan’s Kim Barnes Arico, and Indiana’s Teri Moren are laying down the foundations for strong basketball programs. The question is can they keep the magic going this year and beyond?
A Perfect Amount Of Madness
A lot of people think that upsets make March Madness great. After all, a lot of us will never forget Angel Baker’s clutch performance to lead Wright State past Arkansas or Destinee Wells’s huge game to deliver Belmont’s first-ever tournament win against Gonzaga. BYU almost kept their “Cinderella story” alive until Arizona pulled away in the second half. These moments are fun and make for great memories.
However, the point of the NCAA tournament is to see the best teams from across the country play each other. Upsets are fun for the first weekend, but often diminish the quality of the tournament later on. This year’s bracket has featured the perfect amount of upsets, near-upsets, and great games while yielding top-tier matchups in the Sweet 16. Thirteen of the top 20 teams in the Her Hoop Stats Rating metric are still playing. Arizona (#25), Texas (#28), and Georgia Tech (#43) are the outliers, but all three have shown flashes of greatness throughout the season.
The crown jewel of this tournament thus far is Texas A&M narrowly beating Iowa State. After the Aggies got by 15-seed Troy in controversial fashion, they trailed the Cyclones all game. Jordan Nixon and Iowa State’s Ashley Joens had monster games with over 30 points each.
Joens scored ISU’s last seven points of regulation, but Nixon had the last four of the game, including the game-tying jumper with five seconds left. Nixon would have the final word in overtime, as well. Joens got blocked with four seconds and it seemed like a second overtime was imminent. Nixon decided otherwise, sprinted down the court at a flat-footed Iowa State defense, and threw up a floater. It bounced on the rim and fell through the hoop as the buzzer sounded. The scene was straight out of a movie, as was Nixon’s postgame interview.
The game could not have been scripted better. It was a perfect distillation of what March is all about and why we are so happy to have the tournament back this year.