There are plenty of clear winners, and clear losers, with the first and second rounds of the women’s NCAA tournament now in the books.
While the clear winners are those at the top, including all four No. 1 seeds, and the rare “Cinderella” that is Virginia, Iowa, it’s arena and Clemson’s Mia Moore are among those who struggled over the first four days.
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Let’s take a look at the biggest winners and losers from the first two rounds of tournament play:
Winner: Hannah Hidalgo
Notre Dame has a weapon like none other in college basketball in Hannah Hidalgo. Fairfield and Ohio State each found out the hard way.
Fairfield, an 11 seed, was a popular first-round upset pick over the 6th-seeded Fighting Irish. Hidalgo was having none of it. Hidalgo flirted with a quadruple-double to lead Notre Dame’s 79-60 win with 23 points, nine rebounds, six assists and eight steals.
Notre Dame then faced 3 seed Ohio State in the second round. The favored Buckeyes raced out of the gates with an 11-0 run, putting the Irish in peril. But once again, Hidalgo took over. This time she finished with 26 points, a career-high 13 rebounds, 2 assists — and 8 more steals. When it was over, Notre Dame had pulled away for an 83-73 win that wasn’t as close as the game’s final margin.
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This is what Hidalgo does. She’s a three-time All-American and a three-time NCAA steals champion. She applies constant pressure on both sides of the floor.
Notre Dame faces 2 seed Vanderbilt next in the Sweet 16 and projects as an underdog in each game as long as it advances through the tournament. But it’s hard to imagine that the Irish don’t have a chance any time Hidalgo steps on the floor.
Loser: Cotie McMahon fouling out
Cotie McMahon had an early exit to her Ole Miss career on Sunday in the Rebels’ stunning loss to Minnesota.
McMahon, the Rebels’ best player, fouled out with four minutes left in the game. The fifth one was an offensive one, and head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin absolutely ripped the officials for it after the game. The last call, she said plainly, was “incorrect.”
“I was in the locker room thinking about other star players on teams. I’ve just never seen them fouled out in a March Madness game. I just haven’t. Paige, Caitlin,” McPhee-McCuin said. “I just haven’t seen the best players get fouled out.”
McMahon, who transferred in from Ohio State for her senior year, had 75 personal fouls this season and fouled out two other times. She’s undoubtedly one of the more physical players in the country, but it led to hear fouling out down the stretch in a critical moment for the Rebels.
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Minnesota, which entered the final period in a nine-point hole, then hit a game-winner to advance to its first Sweet 16 since 2005.
While McMahon being on the court could have changed the final play, McPhee-McCuin isn’t blaming the loss on the officiating. She’s just not happy about it.
“And it’s disappointing. These fans deserved more than that,” she said. “The game deserves more than that, and I just think a officiating as a whole really needs to be looked at. I really do. I’m not just talking about this game. Something has to be done. It has to be better.”
Winner: Virginia, the lone ‘Cinderella’
We only have one true “Cinderella” this season, but it’s a good one.
Virginia has made it all the way from the First Four round to the Sweet 16, something the school hasn’t pulled off since 2000. The Cavaliers are now the first school to ever reach the Sweet 16 after starting in the First Four, too. Somehow, they simply won’t go down.
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The Cavaliers snuck past Arizona State by just two points in that first game, and then needed overtime to beat No. 7 Georgia in the first round. That set up Monday’s matchup with Iowa, which ended up being a two-overtime battle in Iowa City. Eventually, the Cavaliers outlasted the No. 2 seed to pull off the 83-75 upset win behind 28 points from Kymora Johnson and another 20 from Paris Clark.
This is just Virginia’s second NCAA tournament appearance in the past 16 seasons. They finished in eighth in the ACC with an 11-7 record in the league, too, and just barely made the tournament at all.
“We’re a confident team and we believe in all the work that we put in,” Johnson said. “Not a lot of people have and they’ve kind of written us off. But we came into March trying to show what Virginia is about.”
Virginia is one of five ACC teams that reached the Sweet 16, though they’ve played 135 minutes so far compared to just the usual 80 that most others through to that round have had to play. They’ll now have to take on Olivia Miles and TCU in the next round, which won’t be easy, either.
But regardless of how far the Cavaliers end up going, they’ve made it. That’s what matters.
Jan Jensen and the Hawkeyes have now failed to reach the Sweet 16 in back-to-back seasons. (AP/Charlie Neibergall)
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Loser: Iowa, and everyone who had to play at Carver-Hawkeye Arena
The Hawkeyes losing is one thing, though it’s hard to fault any team that can’t pull out a win in a double-overtime thriller. That sent the Hawkeyes home before the Sweet 16 for a second straight season.
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But the real loser is everyone who had to play at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday.
The venue in Iowa City that hosted the NCAA tournament pod isn’t equipped with air conditioning. The arena was built in the 80s, and is largely situated underground, so that’s typically not an issue during basketball season. So on Saturday, when a rare heatwave hit Eastern Iowa, it was rough inside the arena.
Temperatures on the floor peaked at almost 90 degrees at times during the first two games. Fairleigh Dickinson’s Ava Renninger said it felt like “a smack in the face” when she hit the court for warm-ups.
“It wasn’t great, it wasn’t ideal, but some kids probably handle it a little bit better than others but what are we going to do?” Iowa coach Jan Jensen said, via The Athletic. “I don’t think we can fault Iowa. We can’t fault the NCAA. We’re mad at Mother Nature when it’s too cold. Now we get it warm and now we’re mad because it did it.”
While it was undoubtedly rare, it’s well past time that Carver-Hawkeye Arena gets an upgrade.
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Winner: Brenda Frese
The Terrapins lost in the second round of the tournament, but Maryland coach Brenda Frese had perhaps the best moment in the entire first weekend.
Frese erupted in the face of guard Oluchi Okananwa during the team’s loss to North Carolina in the second round. At first, it looked like Frese was lighting her player up over a mistake or some other on-court issue. But a closer look, and their comments after the game, made it clear the exchange was anything but problematic.
“The best of the best, the elite of the elite wanna be coached hard,” Frese said after the game. “At that moment, I kind of had watched Luchi struggle, within this tournament, and she’s just too gifted. So, you know, I kind of wanted to implore just how much belief I had in her, and just kind of challenge her. I know what a winner and competitor she is, and just challenge her, ‘Do you want the moment?’
“Sometimes that’s where you gotta know your players and the relationships you have. You can’t have those conversations if you don’t have a relationship with them.”
Okananwa finished with a team-high 21 points. The Terps were attempting to reach what would have been their fifth Sweet 16 in the past seven seasons.
“I love to be coached hard, and that’s what she does with me every single day,” she said. “And really what that was, was a regroup moment for myself and her telling me she believed in me, because sometimes that’s really all you need to hear to get back out there.”
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Loser: Clemson’s Mia Moore
Let’s be clear here: Mia Moore is only a loser on this list because her shot was just milliseconds late. That’s it.
The Clemson guard hit what looked like a wild, off-balanced buzzer-beater on Saturday afternoon in South Carolina. The shot, which sparked a huge celebration on the floor, would have lifted the Tigers past USC in the opening round and gone down as one of, if not perhaps the best shots of the entire tournament.
But a closer look showed that the ball was just barely still in Moore’s hand when the buzzer sounded.
So, the game went into overtime and the Trojans ended up escaping with the win. If Moore was even slightly faster at throwing the shot up, the Tigers would have advanced to the second round of the tournament for the first time since 2019.
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Brutal.
Winner: The No. 1 seeds
This one was expected, and doesn’t need much of an explanation. But all four of the top seeds in the NCAA tournament rolled easily into the Sweet 16.
Texas went first, and beat both Missouri State and Oregon each by 42 points. Star Madison Booker dropped a career-high 40 points against the Ducks, too. UConn, the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, followed suit on Monday. The Huskies, after a blowout win over UT-San Antonio in the first round, out-scored Syracuse 33-8 in the first quarter, and went on a wild 31-0 on Monday before cruising to the 53-point win.
Neither South Carolina nor UCLA had any trouble, either. The Gamecocks, who outscored Southern by 69 points in one of the largest blowouts in tournament history, beat USC handily on Monday night. UCLA, fresh off a blowout over Cal Baptist, beat Oklahoma State similarly to end the second round.
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Only nine No. 1 seeds have failed to reach the second weekend of the tournament in the event’s history, so this isn’t much of a surprise. But these four teams absolutely count as winners in the opening weekend. And, after this start, anything less than a Final Four run for each of these programs will be incredibly disappointing.
