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A few surprises in NCAA bracket
UConn earned the No. 1 overall seed, I know that was a stunning revelation.
Notre Dame, the only other undefeated team in Division I women's basketball, also earned a No. 1 seed. Again, this was not an astonishing turn of events. However, after that things got kind of interesting when the Division I bracket was unveiled on Monday night.
The biggest surprise might have been Stanford being bumped to a No. 2 seed as South Carolina earned the top seed in the Stanford regional.
Next up in the curveballs thrown by the committee was Louisville being dropped to a No. 3 seed.
Duke, despite losing star guards Chelsea Gray and Alexis Jones to season-ending knee injuries, earned the No. 2 seed in UConn's bracket.
One thing the committee did not do was place the Huskies as the top seed in the Louisville regional which could have resulted in a fourth meeting between the conference rivals in the Elite Eight.
"That is probably the right choice if you are going to make the picks that you made and put them when you put them," Auriemma said of Duke. "I thought the committee did a pretty good job. Everybody was talking about we were going to go to Louisville, I don't know where everybody got that. That seemed to be a popular theory but I never thought that
"You don't' even assume anything when you going into these things. It doesn't really matter if you are the No. 1 (overall seed), I don't know that those things are that important."
With American Athletic Conference teams Rutgers and South Florida among the bubble teams left on the outside looking in, the AAC had just two teams make the field of 64.
"There is really nothing you can do about that," Auriemma said. "You have Notre Dame, DePaul, West Virginia, Syracuse, St. John's, we got a bunch of teams in (who used to play in the Big East with UConn) so I will hold onto that for a little while. It reminds me of 1995, we only got two teams in the NCAA tournament and we did pretty well that year. I was really disappointed. I thought South Florida played great down the stretch and I was disappointed for them. The rest, everybody's going to have to figure out how to schedule the right games, beat the right teams and we are going to have to do in our conference what we did in the late '90s in the Big East."
Notre Dame, the only other undefeated team in Division I women's basketball, also earned a No. 1 seed. Again, this was not an astonishing turn of events. However, after that things got kind of interesting when the Division I bracket was unveiled on Monday night.
The biggest surprise might have been Stanford being bumped to a No. 2 seed as South Carolina earned the top seed in the Stanford regional.
Next up in the curveballs thrown by the committee was Louisville being dropped to a No. 3 seed.
Duke, despite losing star guards Chelsea Gray and Alexis Jones to season-ending knee injuries, earned the No. 2 seed in UConn's bracket.
One thing the committee did not do was place the Huskies as the top seed in the Louisville regional which could have resulted in a fourth meeting between the conference rivals in the Elite Eight.
"That is probably the right choice if you are going to make the picks that you made and put them when you put them," Auriemma said of Duke. "I thought the committee did a pretty good job. Everybody was talking about we were going to go to Louisville, I don't know where everybody got that. That seemed to be a popular theory but I never thought that
"You don't' even assume anything when you going into these things. It doesn't really matter if you are the No. 1 (overall seed), I don't know that those things are that important."
With American Athletic Conference teams Rutgers and South Florida among the bubble teams left on the outside looking in, the AAC had just two teams make the field of 64.
"There is really nothing you can do about that," Auriemma said. "You have Notre Dame, DePaul, West Virginia, Syracuse, St. John's, we got a bunch of teams in (who used to play in the Big East with UConn) so I will hold onto that for a little while. It reminds me of 1995, we only got two teams in the NCAA tournament and we did pretty well that year. I was really disappointed. I thought South Florida played great down the stretch and I was disappointed for them. The rest, everybody's going to have to figure out how to schedule the right games, beat the right teams and we are going to have to do in our conference what we did in the late '90s in the Big East."
posted by Jim Fuller at
9:58 PM
1 Comments:
The stars have aligned to create a path for 8 time national champion UConn to play 8 time national champion Tennessee in Nashiville for the 2013-14 national championship.
I would guess other teams and fans are sick of hearing how this might be UConn's greatest team ever. The tables are turned and UConn is the evil empire to many.
Notre Dame fans would love to see the Irish defeat the Huskies for the 8th time in 10 games. If that happened, this Notre Dame team should be ranked along with the 78-0 UConn national champions, the 40-0 Baylor national champions, and the 2001-02 UConn national champions, as the greatest ever.
If by some miracle UConn plays Tennessee for the national championship, the loser would never hear the end of it. If not mistaken, Tennessee has a 3 game win streak against UConn, from a different era.
Prior to the brackets being annouced, I picked UConn, Notre Dame, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The brackets have somehow allowed that to be a possibility. The story lines would be incredible, as mentioned above. Then add the 4th story linke of 4 freshmen and 1 sophomore playing for UNC and coached by an assistant all season.
WCBB would win no matter which team captured the title.
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