Women’s basketball power rankings: If LSU can’t beat South Carolina, is it a tournament threat?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the most hectic. It’s also the time of the season when the best games are between teams that don’t have numbers next to their names.

This is a top-25 column, and we’ll get into how those teams fared during championship week, but their contests lacked the juice of the conference tournaments where every team was fighting for its NCAA Tournament life. The stakes of Michigan State losing to an unranked Illinois are mitigated when both teams will hear their names on Selection Sunday.

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But in the world of the must-win automatic qualifiers, the drama delivered.

There was Lindenwood — which made the Ohio Valley title game despite giving up nine first-quarter 3-pointers in its semifinal matchup — trying to make an NCAA Tournament in its first year of Division I eligibility but falling short against Western Illinois. Two of the top three players in win shares in the country (both trail UConn’s Sarah Strong) faced off in the Summit League title game, when Brooklyn Meyer and South Dakota State denied Avery Koenen and North Dakota State a chance at their first NCAA berth.

An under-.500 South Alabama team gamely battled for four wins in the Sun Belt tournament despite losing players to suspension, falling short on the fifth day to a fresh James Madison squad. In the SoCon, a league with a tournament less stacked toward top seeds, another sub-.500 team, Samford, punched its ticket to the Big Dance and could be joined by fellow lucky loser Air Force if the Falcons can maintain their run in the Mountain West tournament.

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Boise State needed a midrange jumper in the final six seconds to keep its postseason alive, while Radford had two point-blank looks for a tying 3-pointer but couldn’t force overtime against High Point.

Watching these players persevere through the weight of the moment is what makes March special. Even if their postseasons last only one more game, the journey to get that point is so fun to…

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Publish date : 2026-03-09 10:16:00

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