The Guru NCAAW National Report: Batten Down the Hatches Cause This Month May Go Beyond Madness

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

Upsets galore continued to happen on the final regular season day of the major conferences causing shuffling for positions as the league tourneys begin getting under way with the upper half of the NCAA bracket to be clear by the weekend.

But whatever is thought as likely to happen now could be as much different conversation in seven days.

Whatever last season was, as predicted it was actually a bridge to this one and a few coming right behind.

Will there be a run of bid stealers?

Just look back at the season timeline from opening day.

Going off the launch pad in November the championship was South Carolina’s to lose.

 Then the Gamecocks’ got whomped at UCLA, to the point that Dawn Staley tipped her hat to the Bruins for the performance.

For the first time UCLA  got to number one and stayed there over three months and was  the last unbeaten until upended by its cross-town rival and émigré from the former world  of Pac-12 in Southern California.

Then it looked like nobody could stop Notre Dame and a two-game losing streak in November  was viewed as a hiccup, until it happened again in the ACC.

And suddenly with revenge on South Carolina for a welcome to SEC  paddy whacking Texas was No. 1 and holding it at the moment and looking like  vintage mid-1980 but wow what a two-time show Southern Cal has made on  UCLA.

And great things were happening at Tennessee under new leadership and it was just a matter of time before the Lady Vols would break through and then they broke a long drought on UConn and smooth sailing lie ahead until they were suddenly nailed in situations not expected  and where a seed way above the SEC preseason seven forecast was considered an undersell, for the moment at nine seed its an oversell pending what happens this week.

Oh, and then Connecticut struck South Carolina hard in the Gamecocks’ home.

How many had these teams on their bingo club from missing the Big Ten and ACC tourneys: Purdue, Northwestern and Penn State with Rutgers barely escaping by way of a sweep of long time rival PSU being the potent to become the 15th team and last team above the cut while over in the ACC, no Miami, maybe Wake Forest a mild surprise over a month ago, and once upon a time newbie SMU was making headway in the American Athletic Conference.

Then there was the rise of California in Berkeley and dive of Stanford as if the Bay flipped the coastlines.

So what is clear in both team and player achievements is that nothing is clear now and for the moment and wide open may soon start showing as the common stories about to be written previewing everything.

Considering that it took all night to set up some schedule spreadsheets, get the last set of USBWA players determined, write the overnight locals roundup, going to go home and take a two-hour catnap to be ready to update the AP poll database when the new rankings come out in a couple of hours and get those teams defined on the bracket schedules and then come back in the next 24 to take a brief look back at the upsets and set the course of all the brackets already out.

Cheers! Your Guru.