One Big Thing In Every NCAA WBB Conference Tournament: Saturday, March 15th

Multiple Finals dot the TV schedule this Saturday as we prepare for the most wonderful time of the year. Who will punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament?

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!

We’re almost there, everyone! This time tomorrow, we’ll be watching the last sets of conference tournament finals ahead of Selection Sunday. But today we’ve got big time matchups all over the country and some major storylines in each.

One Big Thing In The…

ASUN Championsip - Final

After a few days off, we finally get the conclusion of the ASUN Tournament with the top two teams facing one another as intended. Central Arkansas has had a great season but in their lone matchup against the Eagles in the regular season, they got beaten pretty handily. That, to me, is the big story of this game. We’ve seen FGCU absolutely demolish everyone in their past for years and years under Karl Smesko. After he left to take the Atlanta Dream job, it was a legitimate question as to whether or not the Eagles would be able to just pick up the success and keep it going. As of now, they absolutely have, going undefeated in regular season ASUN play and rolling through their Tournament games as well. The Sugar Bears (still one of the greatest names in college sports) are a worthy opponent for FGCU but do they really have enough to knock around a team that has been the class of this league for over a decade? Or is the machine really just the machine?

Big West Championship - Final

How about UC San Diego’s Sumayah Sugapong?? Her buzzer beater against Hawaii saw the Tritons win in an upset over Hawaii and head to the Big West Final. On the other end of the bracket, Tova Sabel’s 21 points on 7/16 shooting helped power a 26 point third quarter which got UC Davis out from under a 22 point halftime hole to beat UC Irvine. In short, we got two singularly excellent performances that helped bring underdog teams within one game of the NCAA Tournament. That is the exact kind of stuff March is all about. Now, the one big thing will be who wins the final duel: Sugapong or Sabel. To me, this game comes down to which of those star players shows up for their respective team when the lights are the brightest.

CAA Championship - Semifinal

Down went the top seed in the CAA! William & Mary beat North Carolina A&T 74-66 in what might be one of the biggest upsets of this year’s conference tournament season. Now they get to see Drexel, who has won this tournament as a lower seed in past years by playing stifling defense and slowing down their opponents to a crawl. Does the Tribe have a little more in the tank to make a finals run? And who might be meeting them on the other side? My biggest thing to watch in the CAA is the team that I believe is the answer to that question. The College of Charleston has put up 93 and 87 points in the first two rounds of this Tournament, with the Barbot twins combining for 47 and then 36 points in each game. I’m honestly a bit embarrassed to say I haven’t really thought much of CofC this year but I’m certainly interested now. They play a pretty fun brand of basketball and I’d like to see them in the NCAA Tournament. But they aren’t immune from upsets either and Campbell is playing some seriously good basketball at this point in the year.

Conference USA Championship - Final

In what was probably one of the best and most back and forth games of the last week, Mid Tenn State ended Western Kentucky’s March Madness hopes by turning on the gas late in the 4th quarter to make it to the Conference USA Championship Final. It’s during these times of year where the experience of players that have been there before is what matters more than anything and Jaylynn Gregory took a 59-59 stalemate with less than 2:30 to play and singlehandedly put the Blue Raiders on her back. That’s what will be required to get back to the NCAA Tournament if you’re MTSU. What I’m most curious about is their opponent, who I really don’t have a great read on in spite of the fact that they just keep winning. When you look at their non-con’s, their counting stats and advanced metrics, it’s odd that the Flames are 16-2 in C-USA play. Their non-con wasn’t particularly great and yet here they are. They split the series with MTSU this year so I’ll be watching with a keen eye. How good are they really? Has this season been a mirage? Or does Liberty have the juice? I guess we’ll find out.

Ivy League Tournament - Final

This is the game of the day. 3:30 PM ET on ESPNU. The three top teams in the Ivy League have proven themselves at multiple junctures to be worthy of NCAA Tournament bids. While I’m not sure they all make it, it would be a travesty if they didn’t at least find themselves in serious bubble consideration. Regardless, Columbia and Harvard feels like it’s going to be an absolute banger. For starters, Harmoni Turner is playing and she’s must-see TV any time she’s on the floor. Don’t believe me? Well, in the semifinal win over Princeton she put up 44 points on 14/27 shooting including a ridiculous 7/11 from 3 point range as well as a critical assist that pushed the lead to 3 with less than a minute to play. The Crimson split the regular season series with Columbia, who have managed at multiple points to find ways to win even when their leading scorer Riley Weiss isn’t connecting. But, much like the Big West, March is about your dawgs being dawgs. And there aren’t many players that are more dawg in nature than Turner. Tune in and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a serious show.

MAAC Championship - Final

If Harvard and Columbia is the game of the day, Quinnipiac and Fairfield have a case that they’re the 1B. Both teams have rolled through the MAAC while picking up some pretty major non-con wins that keep them in contention for an at-large spot. I’m not quite sure if the selection committee will see it the same way but these are two NCAA Tournament teams, full stop. But if you asked either coaching staff, they’d probably tell you that winning this game leaves no doubt and that’s what they are going to do. Both teams are fun as hell, play a really aesthetic style of basketball and have their own high scoring stars powering their offenses. To add to that, it’s the rubber match for QU and Fairfield, having split the regular season series in MAAC play. These types of games are what makes rivalries and there could be a budding one assuming Carly Thibault-DuDonis is in it for the long haul. Folks don’t realize but prior to COVID Tricia Fabbri’s Quinnipiac Bobcats were legit. They made the 2017 Sweet Sixteen! If you get a second team like Fairfield in the mix then we have a fun storyline in the conference year in and year out. You can build some of that story today.

MEAC Tournament - Final

We got our Howard vs. Norfolk State rematch after all. As it’s been through most of this Tournament, my eye is on the Spartans and if they can finish the season 30-4 before heading to March Madness. It took Hampton, the last HBCU program that was higher than a 13th seed in the NCAA Tournament, multiple years of sustained conference dominance to make a case. A win here for Norfolk State would put the same type of exclamation point on their run that Hampton had which gave them that 12 seed about a decade ago. Narratively, I want this win for the Spartans because this is truly one of the greatest HBCU women’s basketball seasons we’ve seen since the turn of the millennium. Their only head scratching loss is to Washington State. The others are Alabama on the road, North Carolina on the road and a one point loss to Horizon League champ Green Bay. Pretty understandable ones! Diamond Johnson has been instrumental in trying to change a paradigm for P4 players in the transfer portal and the coaching carousel has shown us, from Vanessa Blair-Lewis to Tomekia Reed, that HBCU’s are a legit breeding ground for good coaches. So with that in mind, I’d love to see Norfolk get the chance in the big dance to put that on display.

MVC Tournament - Semifinal

Now we have become chaos, the destroyers of worlds. With the top four MVC programs all present in the semifinal, it’s time to set off the atomic bomb of craziness. Drake vs. Murray State on one end. Belmont vs. Missouri State on the other. Both of these matchups are toss-ups and that’s my one big thing here. There is no level of advanced metrics, stats, narratives or otherwise that will help you predict these matchups. Throw it all away. These are the types of games where you just have to find the ballers, where coaches need to have their best scheme and strategy and programs figure out what they’re made of. I’m always going to promote Katie Dinnebier because I think she’s one of the most underdiscussed elite guards in the country but there is a lot of talent spread all over these four teams. Belmont and Missouri State is a matchup of the name brands of this conference, who have won big in March and look to do so again. Drake and Murray State are regular competitors with star power of their own which means we might get an elite duel between Dinnebier and Katelyn Young. ESPN+ was made for these types of matchups. It’s a chance for the nation to proactively tune in should they so choose. I am. You should too.

SWAC Tournament - Final

Alcorn State is one win away from capping off one of the most improbable Cinderella runs of the conference tourney season. From entering the SWAC Tournament with an 11-17 record to knocking out Arkansas Pine-Bluff, Alabama A&M and Texas Southern, the Lady Braves are knocking on the door of their first NCAA Tournament since 2005. On the other end, Southern managed to oust Jackson State in the SWAC semifinal and is ready to punctuate their best season in recent memory with a title that will send them to March Madness. The last time they made the dance was in 2023, as a four seed in the conference tournament that managed to make a run. This time, they’ve been the hunted and have conquered every challenge thrown at them. It’ll either be a coronation for the Jaguars or March glory for the Lady Braves. That in itself is a really fun narrative to get behind and tune into if the game is close come the 4th quarter.

WAC Tournament - Final

Grand Canyon continues to power through even as discussions over Molly Miller’s job status persist. I’m really impressed with her and how she’s kept the team stable in the midst of all the uncertainty. Ironically, if I’m Arkansas or Arizona State, it would just make me want her more as the head coach of my program. What I’m curious about in this final against UT Arlington is if GCU’s Alyssa Durazo-Frescas can keep shooting the way she has. The all-time 3 point scoring leader with the Lopes, she went 7/11 from range on 9/13 shooting in the win over Utah Valley, finishing with 28 points. The UNLV transfer is a bonafide sharpshooter and when she gets hot, she scorches the earth. Will UTA sell the farm to try and keep her contained and run her off the line? Or do you hope the law of averages means she shoots the Lopes potentially out of a game? That’s a pretty big risk if you go with the latter considering she doesn’t really miss all that often. This feels like it’ll be something of a final coda to GCU’s incredible season and while I’d love to see Miller stay and build a southwestern mid-major power, I can accept what the limitations of the sport are. If it ends with a win, then what a run it’s been to get here.