One Big Thing In Every NCAA WBB Conference Tournament: Thursday, March 13th

The Southland Tournament final carries historical implications for Southeast Louisiana plus we get primed for a big weekend that will solidify the remaining NCAA Tournament autobids.

Courtesy: Southeast Louisiana Athletics

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!

Wednesday had a slate of fantastic games including a Brawl of the Wild buzzer beater that saw Montana State clinch the Big Sky’s autobid, South Florida end Rice’s Cinderella hopes and San Diego State take the Mountain West crown in triple overtime. Now, we have a table setter day of quarter and semifinal matchups to prepare us for a big weekend of championship games.

In case you missed our big announcement this morning, No Cap Space WBB is now fashionable. Literally! We’ve partnered with Homefield ahead of the NCAA Tournament, curating a collection that is exclusively geared to women’s basketball fans. Use code NOCAP15 to get 15% off your first purchase and get draped up and dripped out ahead of March Madness! You can find it here.

Now to the Thursday slate…

One Big Thing In The…

Big West Championship - Quarterfinal

The gauntlet continues in the Big West and the one thing catching my eye this Thursday is the UC Davis Aggies. Jennifer Gross became the all-time winningest coach in program history back in February and there was a point where UCD looked like they had the chance to win the conference outright. But a bad monthlong stretch between mid-January and February took them out of the running. With that said, they split their regular series with Hawaii and lost both games to UC Irvine by a combined five points. If there is a team that has the potential to be the Oregon State of the Big West, it’s UCD. But that involves getting by UC Riverside, who beat the Aggies as recent as mid February.

CAA Championship - Second Round

How about those Hampton Pirates! The Fighting Chauny’s scored a first round upset and now have a chance to make a bit of a Cinderella run in the second round as they take on 15-14 Monmouth. Outside of that potential run, the story of the day is variance. The other three games in the CAA Tournament all involve teams that finished between 8-10 and 9-9 in conference play. So you could make a fair argument that every matchup is a coin flip (word to Greg Sankey!) and thus we probably have the best opportunity to see some late game heroics come from the CAA today.

Conference USA Championship - Quarterfinal

This lovely Thursday in C-USA, all eyes are on the Western Kentucky Lady Toppers. It’s been 40 years since Lillie Mason’s buzzer beater over top seeded Texas became the first iconic NCAA Tournament shot in women’s basketball history. WKU would end up making the Final Four that year. I don’t think they’ll make a run like that again but it would be some nice poetic justice for them to return to March Madness to celebrate her and that team properly. It would also mark the first time under head coach Greg Collins that the Toppers made the dance after three straight first round appearances under coach Michelle Clark-Heard. They have a plus matchup against Florida International in today’s quarterfinal so I’ll be watching them closely. It’s a fun story to bridge the past and present during a time when women’s basketball needs it.

MAAC Championship - Quarterfinal

Top seeds Fairfield and Quinnipiac advanced, as expected, and it feels like all signs point to them being in the Final of the MAAC Tournament. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some interest remaining in the other quarterfinal matchups. My one big thing is Siena and if their scoring duo of Ahniysha Jackson and Teresa Seppala can pop off at the same time and maybe make things interesting in later rounds. Seppala, a 6’0 Finnish junior, had a couple last couple of games, scoring 5 total points in two losses against Fairfield and Manhattan. That’s a far cry from her 16.5 PPG average and the multiple 20+ games she’s capable of having. If she and Jackson can both combine for some virtuoso performances, they are the best chance to be a chaos agent in the bracket. The first quarterfinal game is a good test to see if that is possible.

MEAC Tournament - Quarterfinal

In keeping with the theme of singular players as the daily interest in a Tournament, may I direct your attention to Coppin State’s Laila Lawrence. The Eagles were on the heels of Norfolk State and Howard in the MEAC standings before losing four of their last five to end the regular season. But even within those losses, Lawrence shined. She’s come within a 20-20 game three times in the last three weeks alone and has been a double-double machine for most of the year. Her 20 points and 9 boards led Coppin to a historic win over Arizona State early in the year. Coppin has the top end ceiling of a team that can make some noise into the semifinals of the MEAC (although I’m pretty sold on Norfolk State going for a threepeat) and, if they do, Lawrence will be a major part of that.

NEC Tournament - Semifinal

Okay, so remember how I mentioned yesterday that the NEC was pretty much Farleigh-Dickinson’s to lose? Well, that’s still pretty much the case. At 27-3 and 16-0 in league play, they’ve steamrolled all but one team in the conference all year. But in what may be nothing more than a peculiarity, the team that’s given them the biggest scare is 7-25 Chicago State, who just last year was one of the worst teams in all of women’s college basketball. Where FDU has won a vast majority of their games by double digits in the NEC, they led the Cougars by just two points with 42 seconds left to play back in February. At the time, Farleigh-Dickinson was 20-3. Chicago State’s record? 3-23. Take it back a few weeks more and you’ll find an almost bar-for-bar situation. 1-17 CSU within two points of 15-3 FDU with 39 seconds in regulation. For whatever reason, the NEC’s best team just has immense amounts of trouble with one of its’ worst. What’s more is Chicago State is on a three game win streak and playing with a degree of confidence. Could we see the biggest upset of March today? I’m rooting for chaos so I hope so!

Patriot League Championship - Semifinal

This is where the Patriot League starts to get interesting. We did in fact get an upset in the bracket after all with 17-13 Bucknell bouncing 23-8 Colgate from the Tournament. And now the Bison see an Army team that they split the series with during conference play. There’s a lot of team-basketball among Patriot programs where you don’t see a ton of singularly dominant players. Rather, there’s a lot of 10-13 point per game scorers as the wealth is distributed pretty evenly among the roster. But Bucknell has always done it differently, churning out a couple league players of the year in recent years and relying this season on the heroics of sophomore forward Ashley Sofilkanich. She played a key role in the upset over Colgate, scoring 28 points on 11/14 shooting. For some reason, she plays particularly well against Army, averaging 24.5 points. 5.5 assists and 7.5 rebounds over the two meetings. They’ll need her to be special to keep the run going. On the other side, Lehigh has a chance to continue their dominance with their own star in Maddie Albrecht. The second regular season matchup between the Mountain Hawks and Holy Cross went to overtime as her 15 and 10 paced Lehigh to a win. Both of these games should be fun ones.

SWAC Tournament - Quarterfinal

The SWAC gets started early in the morning and Dawn Thornton’s Alabama A&M team is the first to watch. I’m really interested in her as an up-and-coming coach in women’s college basketball and in her first season she’s performed pretty well, leading the Bulldogs to a 21-9 record overall and 14-4 in SWAC play. In the second matchup, we see a team that lost their up-and-coming coach and trying to still maintain their program dominance. Jackson State didn’t have the same level of success they’ve enjoyed under Tomekia Reed this year but still finished 13-5 in conference play and have a good shot to make Southern potentially sweat in the semifinal. It’s a tale of two programs from a coaching perspective and that’s what intrigues me today. Is a sustained culture of winning, and players that have been there, enough to keep you going? Or can a singular coach instill that belief in year one? Those are the questions to track as we get deeper into the SWAC Tournament on Friday and into the weekend.

Southland Tournament - Final

I love, love, love this matchup from a narrative standpoint. For the uninitiated, let me put you on some game. While Stephen F. Austin doesn’t have the national title pedigree of an Old Dominion or Louisiana Tech, they are pound-for-pound one of the most historically significant mid-major programs in women’s college basketball history. Through much of the70’s, 80’s and 90’s they were a constant fixture in the second weekend of the AIAW (the first women’s college basketball governing body) and NCAA Tournaments. After some years in the wilderness, they were brought back to prominence by Mark Kellogg, who is now at West Virginia, and now Leonard Bishop. In a lot of ways, they are the giants within this league and it was expected that they’d be here in their first season in the Southland. Conversely, Southeast Louisiana is a program making their own history. Ayla Guzzardo helped the program to their first ever NCAA Tournament bid in 2023 and are looking to go again. Even with her name being in the mix for higher end jobs, the Lady Lions are in the middle of the best season in their history. It would be quite the cap off to beat a power program like SFA to stamp their ticket to the dance. Game of the Day, in my opinion.

WAC Tournament - Quarterfinal

Cal Baptist is one of the more fascinating stories of the year and I’m curious if Jarrod Olson has any tricks up his sleeve now that his team has arrived in Las Vegas. After two years of dominance, the Lancers came out of the gate so slow you wondered if they were even realized the college basketball season had started. It took them until December 7th to win their first game. But by the time WAC play came along they started to string some wins together, finishing 9-7 in conference play and splitting their series with UT Arlington, who they face today. The Mavericks are a fun team thanks to their duo of Koi Love and Avery Brittingham. Love, in particular, has had a wild ride around the world of women’s basketball. A standout at Vanderbilt before an injury sidelined her in 2020-2021, she transferred to Arizona where she found herself in a bench role. She then jumped to USC where she was relegated even further down the pine. Now, under Shareka Wright’s tutelage, Love has rediscovered her basketball and is playing her best since her freshman year. It would be a fun comeback story to see the Mavs make a run behind her performances. Conversely, going from 0-9 to deep into the WAC bracket would be a cool story-within-a-season for Cal Baptist. Win-win!