Written by Tim Hoffstatter
This year has been filled with a lot of excitement both on and off the court! As of this article being written we still have two elite 8 games left between Iowa vs. LSU and Uconn vs. USC. An interesting fact about this Elite 8 is that all games have been between #1 and #3 seeds. Let’s recap the major games and then give a preview of the last two Elite 8 games.
To start off we need to talk about the dominance of the University of South Carolina, Dawn Staley is the best coach in the nation and looks to be heading to another championship game soon. In the four games they have played they have an average margin of victory of 28.75 points!! The only closest game they have had up to this point was against Indiana in the Sweet 16 where they at one time had a 22-point lead. The best part about this team is how deep they are as they have had a different person each game lead them in scoring. Nothing other than how dominant they have been can be said about this team.
The rest of the tournament has been high-level competition as well despite only a couple of major upsets, Middle Tennessee beating Louisville, and Duke beating Ohio State. Middle Tennessee was an 11 seed beating a 6 seed and Duke was a 7 seed beating the 2cd seed. These two upsets are what busted the most brackets and my personal bracket. However, I am personally most upset about Virginia Tech losing to Baylor in the round of 32 because we found out that Coach Kenny Brooks is leaving to go to Kentucky and it seems like he will be taking star Georgia Amoore with him. This means we will no longer have one of the best Division 1 basketball countries in the nation right down the road from us.
Moving onto these last few Elite 8 games we have two great games ahead of us with Iowa vs. LSU being the more anticipated of the two because it is a rematch of the championship game from last year. Last year’s championship game was a dominant performance by LSU with two 20-point scorers and a double-double from Angel Reese. Last year LSU was the 3 seed and Iowa was a 2 seed but this year Iowa is the 1 seed and LSU is still the 3 seed. This means Iowa is the favorite once again and I can’t wait to see what happens. The final Elite 8 game is a star-studded matchup as well, USC has star freshman JuJu Watkins leading the charge against Uconn’s monster duo of Aaliyah Edwards and Paige Bueckers. Uconn has experience in this game as their duo has been to a championship game before while JuJu hasn’t had the chance but that doesn’t mean to count her out yet. Both of these games will be amazing showings for the games best players and programs and will be absolute cinema and I can’t wait to watch.
