The Guru’s Post Season NCAAW Tourney Report: Richmond Falls in Second Half Rally by Top Seed UCLA on Day of Power 4 Sweeps; Rutgers Downs Army in WNIT

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

The first part of round two Sunday of the NCAA women’s tournament got a little spicier though while some mid-majors challenged, in all likelihood by the time the rest of the Sweet 16 is filled Monday the only ranked teams to have been felled will have been by other teams and the upsets will have been by narrow under seeds.

Only two non-Power 4 schools are still alive, and one is an honorary member in second-seed and third-ranked UConn of the Big East which will host 10-seed and 24-ranked South Dakota State, regular and tourney champions of the Summit League conference.

On Saturday an unranked team beat a ranked one, but the one that was successful was Illinois of the Big Ten eliminating 23rd-ranked Creighton of the Big East.

The mid-major making an Alamo vs. Mexican army stand came at the end of the line Sunday night where Atlantic Ten regular season champion Richmond (28-8), which upended Georgia Tech of the ACC on Friday took overall No. 1 seed and top-ranked UCLA (32-2) into a 36-36 tie at the half in the Bruins’ Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles.

But former Stanford star and a leading national player of the year candidate in Lauren Betts was the difference scoring 30 points and grabbing 14 rebounds leading UCLA to an 84-67 victory.

“We had too many mistakes of how we were guarding things in the first half, and they were hot,” said UCLA’s Cori Close, announced last week as the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) coach of the year. “And that combination was tough for us.”

But the home team went on to outscore the Spiders 29-7 in the third quarter and the threat was subdued soon to give the tournament matches the conference challenges held the beginning of the season.

Broomall’s Maggie Doogan, the Atlantic Ten player of the year out of Broomall and Cardinal O’Hara, whose mom starred at La Salle, scored 27 but only two of the points were registered in the third period.

“We got stagnant a little bit but that was just us not making shots,” Doogan said.

Betts was 14-of-17 from the field.

“I was hoping she’d get a little tired and maybe she did but she didn’t show it,” said Richmond coachAaron Roussell.

Kiki Rice added 23 points with seven assists to send UCLA to its seventh Sweet 16 appearance in the last eight tournaments.

“Our belief and our motivation never wavered,” Rice said.

Janiah Barker signaled for help from the crowd of 6,119 who took the cue to get more vocal.

“We needed that energy,” Close said, “and for them to get so excited about how we were defending made all the difference in the world.”

But the Spiders certainly needed to be cooled after opening the game shooting 73% in the first quarter. Then Betts put out the fire.

“That second half we really turned it around,” she observed. “I think we just changed our mentality defensively. We wanted to get stops, and you know we overcommunicated and we had each other’s back, and we played as a unit, and that’s what’s most important.”

Richmond, which had two 7-0 runs in the final period, went down fighting in the fourth with a 24-19 advantage, but way in a deficit by then. Rachel Ullstrom added 18 points and seven boards.

When the bracket was announced last Sunday, defending NCAA champion coach Dawn Staley took umbrage over her second-ranked and No. 1 seed Gamecocks being bypassed for the overall top spot in favor of the Bruins, but South Carolina (32-3), the automatic qualifiers from the SEC, had their hands full from unranked and ninth seed Indiana (20-3) of the Big Ten before taking control in the second half for a 64-53 triumph.

Bree Hall scored 11 points for the home team in Columbia at Colonial Life Arena, while Chloe Kitts, who has become a greater force for Staley in the past month, had all ten of her points after the break.

That’s when the Gamecocks fired away connecting on nine of ten shots and launching a 20-7 run to stop the uprising by the Hoosiers.

Staley referred the locker room scene after the dreadful first half to having a bunch of players addressing the situation.

“It’s not like a board meeting where there’s one person talking all the time,” she quipped. “It is chaos.”

USC who will play the west coast USC during next season is now 18-1 in the four more recent tournaments, the one being the upset national semifinals loss to the Caitlin Clark-led Iowa Hawkeyes in 2023.

“We were all just missing our easy lay-ups, and there wasn’t really flow in game,” Kitts said of the team’s ragged start. “Then the second half, we turned it around.”

Shay Ciezki, a transfer from conference rival Penn State, scored 12 for the visiting Hoosiers, while Sania Fagin added 10 for the Gamecocks who are 18-0 in home wins in the tournament.

Indiana coach Teri Moren, whose team has hosted several opening rounds prior to this season, advocated a return to neutral sites in those games as was tried previous before the lack of crowds when the home team was not involved caused the format to go back to top 16 teams getting home courts.

“Matchups matter. But home-court advantage matters. Again, I’ve been a recipient,” Moren said.

In three tight games Sunday, South Carolina’s SEC rivals went 2-1, two 5-seeds as the road teams pulled victories with 25th ranked Ole Miss winning 69-63 at four-seed and 14th-ranked Baylor 69-63 in Waco, Texas, while 20th-ranked Tennessee did likewise besting 15th-ranked Ohio State 82-67 at the Buckeyes’ Value City Arena in Columbus.

But fifth seed and 19th-ranked Kansas State upset four-seed and 13th-ranked Kentucky 80-79 in overtime.

Former Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks, who moved from the ACC school to Kentucky in the offseason, and former mid-major Marshall coach Kim Caldwell, of the 2024 Sunbelt champions, who was chosen by Tennessee both brought instant turnarounds this season at their new schools but on Sunday night the Lady Vols went a step further while ending a string of non-conference losses to the Buckeyes.

During the season Tennessee (24-9) suffered a bunch of near-upsets losing at the finish under Caldwell’s new helter-skelter hockey line-change stye approach.

Sunday, the Knoxville bunch struck gold forcing 23 turnovers as Talaysia Cooper scored 19 points, had eight boards with seven steals and five assists, while Zee Spearman had 17 points and five boards, Ruby Whitehorn scored 14 with five rebounds, and Samara Spencer scored 10.

“I thought we played really hard, probably the hardest we’ve played all year, which is what we needed,” Caldwell said. “Hats off to the Ohio State fan base. It was loud in there for a period of time. Our huddles were tight. We did a really good job of playing through the runs.

“This is something that we talked about from the very beginning, that we wanted to make it to the Sweet 16. I’m happy for them. I see how excited they are.”

Tennessee will see either SEC regular season co-champion or eight-seed Illinois this weekend in Birmingham, Ala.

Freshman Jaloni Cambridge had 19 points and five rebounds, while Cotie MccMahon scored 17 points and had five boards for the Buckeyes (26-7).

“I think this showed we’re growing,” Caldwell said. “I think we’re playing as a team.”

Tennessee is the only team to appear in all 43 NCAA tournaments from their beginning in 1982 and this will be the 37th Sweet 16 showing.

“This means a lot for the program and the people that are here right now with Coach Kim coming in for her first year,” Jewel Spear said. “For the people that stayed and the transfers that came in, it just talks a lot about the culture that we established from Day 1.”

Next season in the SEC the returning Tennessee players who were not new will face their former coach Kellie Harper, hired this week at Missouri.

“When you give up 37 points off turnovers and allow 21 second-chance points, you’re not really giving yourself a chance to win,” Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff said. “So, credit goes to Tennessee. I thought they played really well, and they deserved to win today.”

In Lexington, the Wildcats’ loss to Kansas State (28-7) ended an instant rebuild achieved by Brooks at Kentucky (23-8).

Temira Poindexter hit eight three-pointers in the back end of the overtime win in a battle of Wildcats, the mascots of both schools, at Rupp Arena.

Georgia Amoore, who followed Brooks to his new school, missed three shots in the final 21 seconds.

Poindexter had 24 points.

“Give her credit,” Brooks said. “She knocked down some very tough shots and we had a couple of situations where we had miscommunication, and she got free.”

Serena Sundell scored 19 with 14 assists for Kansas State, making a turnaround jumper with eight seconds left to force the extra period. Ayoka Lee, who returned from a month’s absence with a leg injury on Friday, scored 16.

Clara Strack scored 22 for the home team while Amoore scored 18.

“You go the last ten minutes of the game and there were just huge shots by both teams and different players,” Kansas State coach Jeff Mittie said.

In Ole Miss’ win at Baylor, Madison Scott scored 14, including the lead basket in the final minute over the Bears.

Baylor (28-8) got 16 points from Aaronette Vonleh, while Jada Walker scored 15.

Ole Miss, which had its highest seed at five, since 1994 moves on to Seattle 1 this weekend.

The Rebels will meet UCLA.

“I’m at peace with what happened in the past because for me, that’s all part of being here and that’s what makes it special,” said Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin.

“I thought down the stretch both teams made plays, one play after another, to keep it tied, take a two-point lead, tie it up, take a two-point lead,” said Baylor coach Nikki Collen, who left WNBA Atlanta to go to Baylor when Hall of Famer Kim Mulkey, who had built the program into a national power, left for her home state to rebuild the fortunes of LSU.

“They made one more play than us tonight and made it at the right time.”

Big 12 champion and two-seed TCU at home in Fort Worth, Texas, beat seven seed Louisville 85-70 as Hailey Van Lith beat her original team which she left for LSU last season before transferring to the Horned Frogs, for whom she had 16 points and 10 assists.

Agnes Emma-Nnopu scored 23 for TCU.

Van Lith went to a Final Four and two Elite Eight games with Louisville from 2021-23 before making an Elite Eight at LSU last season.

“To make it to the Sweet 16 is really, really hard to do,” said TCU coach Mark Campbell, who has built the program over two seasons after serving as an assistant at Oregon. “Somehow Hailey just seems to do it every year, so it’s normal for her. But for everyone else, it’s not normal.”

Oregon, a 10 seed, which upset No.  7 Vanderbilt 77-73 in overtime Friday, lost to two-seed Duke 59-53 on the Blue Devils’ home court in Durham, N.C., at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The home team (28-7) won without star freshman Toby Fournier, the ACC rookie of the year from Canada who was ill. Ashton Jackson scored 14 of her 20 points in the third quarter.

The Ducks (20-12) got 20 points from former North Carolina star Deja Kelly.

Merchantville’s Hanna Hidalgo scored 21 points for three-seed Notre Dame (28-5) in a 76-55 win at home in South Bend, Ind., over nearby Michigan, the six seed.

The Fighting Irish will face TCU this weekend after losing to the Horned Frogs in November in the Cayman Islands.

Pitt transfer Liatu King had 18 points and 15 boards, while Sonia Citron scored 16.

Looking Ahead

The rest of the Sweet 16 field for weekend games in Spokane, Wash., and Birmingham, gets filled Monday night.

No. 4 Maryland with Villanova transfer Christina Dalce hosts No. 5 Alabama in a match of two ranked teams at the Terrapins’ XFINITYCenter in College Park at 5 p.m. on ESPN2, while two-seed NC State in Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh hosts 7-seed Michigan State at noon on Monday on ESPN.

No. 2 UConn at home in Gampel Pavilion in Storrs hosts No. 10 South Dakota State at 8 p.m. on ESPN, while No. 1 Texas hosts Illinois, an eighth seed, at 2 p.m. on ESPN in Austin.

Three seed and nationally ranked Oklahoma at home in Norman hosts six-seed Iowa with Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen at 4 p.m. on ESPN, while three-seed LSU hosts six-seed Florida State at 6 p.m. on ESPN in Baton Rouge, La.

Three seed North Carolina hosts six seed West Virginia at 7 p.m. on ESPN2, while top seed Southern Cal with JuJu Watkins hosts 9-seed Mississippi State in the Galen Center in Los Angeles at 10 p.m. on ESPN, which has six of the eight Monday games, the other two on ESPN2.

Rutgers Advances

In the WNIT, Rutgers (12-19), which had a first-round bye, took a big lead and held off Army (25-8) at the Scarlet Knights’ Jersey Mike’s Arena to advance with a 71-60 victory Sunday afternoon as JoJo Lacey scored 17 points, while Destiny Adams had 12 points and 10 boards.

Zachary Perkins added 13 points as did Awa Sidibe.

Rutgers will meet Monday’s winner between Charleston and Howard later this week at a site and tip time to be determined.