One Big Thing In Every NCAA WBB Conference Tournament: Thursday, March 6th

Day two of our NCAA women's basketball conference tournament coverage continues, highlighting the top storylines from every bracket all over the country.

Hello, friends! We have officially made it to March Madness, Part One. Conference Tournaments kick off this week and, while there are few that take place a bit later in the month, most of the mid-major action is centered around the next half-dozen days. The high-majors also dominate the week with the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten starting Tuesday as well.

Instead of giving you viewer guides to preview the entirety of the Tournament, we’ll be giving you daily content outlining what we think is the biggest storyline, game or player to watch in every bracket across women’s basketball. Think of it as a combination of a preview and a watch guide.

Best of all, this content is 100% free for everyone in service of growing the game and giving you a chance to find the best hoops the sport has to offer. Let’s get to it!

One Big Thing In The…

A-10 Championship - Second Round

As I mentioned in yesterday’s rundown, the A-10 has the greatest chance for upsets in the second round and quarterfinals. Take, for instance, the two following matchups. Duquesne and Fordham are both 9-9 in conference play while St. Louis and UMass are mirror images of each other (7-11 and 11-7 in the standings). Those both have upset potential and some great players to watch. While Richmond’s Maggie Doogan is the well deserved A-10 Player of the Year, Duquesne’s Megan McConnell had a legit case just based off what she means to her team. She led the Dukes in points (18.8), rebounds (7.1), assists (5.2) and steals (4.0) per game this year. In past years, we’ve seen an A-10 upstart make a deep run in this tournament. Last year, Duquesne was one of those teams. Now, they’re at risk of being one of the top teams to get scalped early. Should be fun!

ACC Tournament - Second Round

So…remember what we said yesterday about Clemson and Stanford? Well, the Tigers won and the second longest NCAA Tournament streak in women’s basketball is all but over. Now we start to get into the meat of the ACC Tournament and what I’m most curious about is which of the lower seeded teams actually have an extra level in the tank to beat a better team. For the most part this year, the Virginia Tech’s, Virginia’s and Clemson’s of the world have mostly beaten up on similar or lower end competition and lost to top teams. Can they sneak a win to get to the quarterfinals? The only game that I don’t feel has the juice is North Carolina vs. Boston College. That one seems like an easy UNC and we’ll get some games like these in every tournament every year. Virginia Tech vs. Georgia Tech will be one of the closest matchups of the day, if their regular season games are any indication. Virginia vs. Cal feels particularly interesting given how well UVA has ended the year. In fact, it was the 76-70 loss to the Golden Bears that spurred a four game run which included an upset win in Chapel Hill against UNC. I’ve always been high on Coach Mox and have been surprised the success hasn’t come a bit quicker in Charlottesville but this feels like a good chance to make some headway in March.

America East Playoffs - Quarterfinal

There’s some interesting possibilities for upsets and intrigue in the America East this season. UAlbany is the clear class of the league this season but it was Vermont that managed to score one of the biggest non-conference wins early in the year by beating Missouri. The Catamounts tailed off into the winter months but are 13-3 in America East play. All signs point to them meeting the Great Danes in the title game but, in the meantime, there’s a possible fun upset matchup between NJIT and Maine. The conference tournament is interesting in that the early rounds aren’t at a neutral location. So the Highlanders actually have to travel up to Maine and win on the road to advance. Binghamton has to do the same against Bryant, a game that could also give us a potentially fun ending. It’s a one bid league but who gets that coveted position is very much up for grabs.

Big 12 Championship - Second Round

Credit to Arizona State and UCF, two teams with coaches on some degree of hot seat. They both pulled upsets and now are into the second round, where the quality of opponent gets notably better. But the one thing I’m watching today is Colorado vs. Arizona. Both squads have been nothing if not decent this year and are on the outside looking in to the NCAA Tournament. A bracket run could potentially help their case, especially if they can string together enough to score a massive upset in the following round. The Buffaloes have been decimated by injuries and the fact that they’re still winning games at all is a testament to the coaching job JR Payne has done. When you have six players, most of them starters, out of the mix it would be easy to pack in a season. So kudos to my alma mater for staying the course. Arizona, on the other hand, could use some good vibes. Adia Barnes has established a clear baseline in Tucson even in the worst of years but the juice that existed after their magical NCAA title game run has almost completely evaporated. A run here might help alleviate some concerns about the team long term.

Big South Championship - Quarterfinal

The Big South, to me, is the most chaotic tournament from a numbers perspective. The best team in the league is High Point, with an overall record of 18-11 and 13-3 in conference play. Usually HBCU’s and smaller western conferences end up with 16 seeds but the Big South champ feels like they will be one of those seeds this year. But don’t let the lack of a dominant mid-major here deter you from paying any attention to this tournament. When there’s a bunch of okay teams and no one that’s head and shoulders above their competition, you typically end up with some of the best finishes and the most potential for upsets. Take, for example, this matchup between 9-20 South Carolina Upstate and 20-10 Longwood. Want to take a guess at which team swept the regular season games between the two? You got it! SC Upstate! See what I mean? If you’re into March Madness just for the chaos, look no further than the Big South, especially if the power conference games don’t live up to the early billing.

Big Ten Tournament - Second Round

Washington knocked out Minnesota in pretty convincing fashion, which definitely helps the Huskies with a case to get off the bubble and into the tournament. Another win could seal it and, if Elle Ladine shoots the way she did on Wednesday, they might be able to pull one over on Michigan. The one thing that I love about Thursday’s Big Ten slate is that every game is good-on-good. All of these matchups only happened once in the regular season. Oregon beat Indiana by 7. Michigan handled the Huskies 82-69. Illinois escaped a late Nebraska rally to win in Champaign. And then there’s Iowa, who had a chance to win in a buzzer beater against Michigan State but missed two shots with less than ten seconds to play. In short, basically every game was competitive and each loser from those matchups has a legit reason to think “we could’ve won that one”. That kind of mentality makes for really good games and can almost guarantee at least one banger in the Thursday bracket.

Horizon League Championship - Quarterfinal

The Horizon tournament will be fascinating when we get to the semifinal. It feels like there’s three really good teams here in Cleveland State, Purdue Fort Wayne and Green Bay. PFW and GB, in particular, gave us a classic to end the regular season with the Phoenix winning in overtime. Detroit Mercy and Cleveland State feels like an interesting matchup but I’m not sure if the matchup favors the Titans. CSU won both regular season matchups pretty convincingly. But the reason their game is my one big thing is I want to see just how much potential there is for Cleveland State to upset Purdue Fort Wayne in the semifinal (provided both teams win). What that means is that they have to beat Detroit Mercy, and convincingly, a third time this year for me to really get hyped for that matchup. The Northern Kentucky vs. Robert Morris game is the most evenly matched of the four on the slate but I would say the next round is going to have more appointment viewing.

OVC Championship - Quarterfinal

The OVC is one of those tournaments that has a gauntlet brackets that gives their top teams a better chance of being the one to represent their conference in March Madness. But, luckily for us this year, the OVC is actually pretty deep and kind of fun. Southern Indiana, as expected, won their matchups and now get Little Rock, who also finished 12-8 in league play. Remember yesterday how I talked about Western Illinois? Well, they’re my one big thing in the OVC yet again. Their quarterfinal game is a rubber match with their directional rival Eastern Illinois. The first game was a 70-60 EIU win followed by a 62-52 WIU win. Balance on both ends. As I mentioned at the start of this tournament, Western has the best giant killer potential of the lower seeded teams in the OVC. If they come out and play the way they have the capability to, we could see an upset here that could set them up for another on Friday.

SEC Tournament - Second Round

The one big thing here is the all-Tennessee second round game between the Lady Vols and Vanderbilt. I do have an interest in the Georgia game against Oklahoma given how the Bulldogs have seemingly figured things out in the last week. Mississippi State and Ole Miss is an egg bowl rivalry matchup that has some potential selection implications with regard to seeding. Alabama shouldn’t have much trouble with Florida. Which leaves us with UT - Vandy, my biggest interest of the entire day, let alone the SEC Tournament. The Lady Vols lost two straight games, including a head scratcher to UGA to end the year, before turning around and obliterating Texas A&M in the opening round of the tourney. She told the SEC Network crew that the team got back to their roots (as an aside, interviewing your replacement has to be kind of weird if you’re Kellie Harper, right?). But Vanderbilt has hate in their heart and a chip on their shoulder. No one in the conference has a better claim to being snubbed for awards than Khamil Pierre, to the point that her head coach Shea Ralph put out a statement advocating for her star. The Commodores also beat Tennessee on a Mikayla Blakes buzzer beater putback so there’s some added juice given how the last game ended. Everything about this game says ‘box office’. To me, it’s this game and Iowa vs. Michigan State have the highest watchability of the day but if you have to choose, the eyes are on the SEC this Thursday.

SoCon Championship - Quarterfinal

Trina Patterson is trying to do bring UNC Greensboro to their first NCAA Tournament since 1998 and it feels like they have a good shot to do it this year. Outside of one loss to Wofford in SoCon play, the Spartans have handled just about everyone in the league. While a lot of their wins have been by ten points or less (including their two against Western Carolina, who they play in the Tournament), UNCG feels like the prohibitive favorite. So what’s interesting here? The fact that Wofford is the only significant challenger to UNCG and yet, the Terriers have lost four of their last five games. Samford, a 12-18 team that’s 7-7 in conference, split the regular season series between these two and might be able to make the SoCon’s best team’s path potentially a little easier.

Summit League Championship - Quarterfinal

The Summit is interesting in that it isn’t a gauntlet bracket but instead splits their quarterfinal matchups up over the course of two days. I expect South Dakota State to roll Omaha (en route to what will probably be another Summit League tournament title) and they have my early attention as well. Watching them in their conference reminds me of South Carolina last year. You know there is an inevitability to their wins and it can take some of the fun out of the games but you watch them to just enjoy good ball and a cohesive scheme. I anticipate Oral Roberts will beat South Dakota in the other quarterfinal matchup of the day so SDSU is my singular focus. Mostly because I wonder if they are our March Madness second weekend Cinderella this year. The Jackrabbits have wins over Creighton, Wisconsin, Ball State (MAC champs, mind you), Oregon and only lost to Duke by four. So if you want to do some scouting to look smart in a few weeks, keep an eye on South Dakota State.

Sun Belt Championship - 3rd Round

The Sun Belt is another gauntlet style bracket and, because of that, we are deprived of some of the better matchups until Friday and Saturday. So, in the meantime, we get some good-on-good matchups here. The Ragin’ Cajuns and Thundering Herd played one hell of an overtime game back in early February. If we get a battle of the stars like we did in that one — when Marshall’s CC Mays finished with 27 points and Louisiana’s Erica Lafayette scored 26 — then I’m all in with the action happening at the Pensacola Bay Center. On the other end, we’ve got an in-state rivalry between Georgia State and Georgia Southern. While both teams lack the star power of previous years or even of the other game, I still am always interested in if a rivalry with win-or-go-home stakes has a little more juice.

West Coast Conference Tournament - First Round

Probably the most famous of the gauntlet brackets is the WCC, that has seen Gonzaga manage to maintain a chokehold on their conference for years. But this season, particularly in women’s basketball, there has been more parity in the league than ever so that path might not be as easy as one might think. San Diego and Pepperdine are the first teams to take the floor in the Orleans Arena and, for now, it’s one you can probably keep an eye on from the ESPN app. Both teams are far below .500 and the winner likely won’t get past Pacific on Friday. But, at the very least, I feel that similarly matched teams yield potentially closer outcomes even though the level of play might be a little worse. Pepperdine has won both the regular season matchups but, to the aforementioned point, SD had a chance to tie the game with 20 seconds to play. Hopefully we get something similar tomorrow.