2023 March Madness: What to watch for as South Carolina faces Iowa, LSU takes on Virginia Tech in women’s NCAA Final Four

This year’s March Madness has lived up to the hype, with defending NCAA champions — the No. 1-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks — riding a 42-game win streak dating back to the 2022 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship. Also back for this weekend’s tournament finale are the Louisiana State Tigers, back in the women’s Final Four for the first time in 15 years, and the Iowa Hawkeyes, who are dancing for the first time in three decades and boast the nation’s top player in Caitlin Clark. The top-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies round out the Final Four, where they’ll play in the semis for the first time ever.

Of note, this year’s Final Four, set for Friday at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, marks the first time in 38 years without any of the sport’s longtime powerhouses — Tennessee, Stanford and UConn. Even South Carolina, who also won the title in 2017 and is making its third consecutive Final Four appearance, is a relative newcomer to tournament greatness: The Gamecocks made their first-ever Final Four appearance just eight years ago.

The fresh lineup — headlined by a matchup of the game’s top stars in South Carolina forward Aliyah Boston and Iowa guard Clark — is an opportunity to celebrate the women’s game and its depth of talent more widely, said Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley on Thursday.

“It’s great,” she told media from Dallas. “It’s been building towards this for a long time. Fortunately for us — not just South Carolina, but us as women’s basketball — we’ve got a lot of star power behind our sport. It increases. [Along with Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark), you’ve got Angel Reese; you’ve got [Georgia] Amoore; you’ve got [Elizabeth] Kitley. You’ve got all these players who have been incredible, just incredible — creating incredible stories for our game.”

Speaking of storylines to follow, Friday’s double-header kicks off at 7 p.m. ET (ESPN) with No. 1 seed Virginia Tech squaring off vs. No. 3 LSU. The Hokies haven’t lost a game since January, while the Tigers will aim to match the lowest seed ever to win the women’s tournament. The only two teams to have won before as the No. 3 seed are North Carolina in 1994 and Tennessee in 1997.

Drawing the biggest buzz to date is Friday night’s second semifinal, where the overall No. 1 seed South Carolina faces the formidable No. 2-seeded Iowa. In the Hawkeyes’ last game against Louisville, Clark set a new tournament record when she notched 41 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists in the first-ever, 40-point triple-double in the NCAA tournament — women’s or men’s.

Clark said afterward that Iowa’s first Final Four since 1993 was the product of a very “Ted Lasso” principle: “When I came here, I said I wanted to take this program to the Final Four, and all you gotta do is dream,” she said. “Then all you gotta do is believe and work your butt off to get there.”

RELATED: Updated bracket, scores and schedule for NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship

No. 3 LSU

Current record: 32-2

Season wrap: LSU finished the regular season 27-1, tying the best regular-season record in program history, matching the 2004-05 team. That LSU team reached the Final Four, but fell to Kim Mulkey’s Baylor team en route to her first national championship as a head coach.

Final Four outlook: LSU is making its sixth Final Four appearance in program history and its first since 2008, which marked the last of five consecutive Final Four appearances for the Tigers with players like Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles. Despite all of LSU’s previous success in reaching the Final Four, the Tigers have never won a national semifinal.

Probable starters: Angel Reese (F), LaDazhia Williams (F), Flau’jae Johnson (G), Kateri Poole (G), Alexis Morris (G)

About coach Kim Mulkey: This year marks Mulkey’s fourth Final Four appearance as a head coach. She holds a 3-1 record in national semifinal games and won three national championships as the head coach at Baylor. She’s the only person in men’s or women’s DI history to win national championships as a player, assistant coach and head coach.

Spotlight on… Angel Reese: Reese, a transfer from Maryland, set an SEC record with her 32nd double-double of the season in the Elite Eight. Through four games in the NCAA Tournament, she’s averaging 22.3 points and 17.3 rebounds. She was extra dominant in the first two rounds, where she averaged 29.5 points, 19.5 rebounds, 4.5 blocks, 3.0 assists and 3.0 steals. In LSU’s opening-round game against Hawaii, Reese tied Fowles’ LSU NCAA Tournament record with 34 points. In the second round, she became the first player to ever record 25 points and 24 rebounds (an LSU NCAA Tournament record) in a NCAA Tournament game.

Coach’s last word: “Last thing I shared with them in the middle of the floor was, you’re getting ready to play a No. 1 seed. We’ve not done that,” Mulkey told reporters in Dallas on Tuesday. “You’re getting ready to play a young lady who is the finalist for not one but two awards. We don’t have anybody on our team that’s a finalist for any award. Are we satisfied? Are we patting ourselves on the back and saying, ‘Hey, this is as far as we can go, or are you still hungry?’ And the responses that I received are, ‘Coach, we’re ready to move on and get to the next game.’

“When you have kids that are hungry and not satisfied to just be there, you’re going to go compete. Whether we win or lose, I know we will compete.”

No. 1 Virginia Tech

Current record: 31-4

Season wrap: This was a season of firsts for the Hokies, who are making their first Final Four appearance in program history after making their Elite Eight debut this past Monday night. The season also marked the first time recording 31 wins in a single season and the first time that Tech has had a two-time ACC Player of the Year.

Final Four outlook: The Hokies’s win in the Elite Eight over Ohio State moved VT to 13-11 in NCAA Tournament games (12 appearances) and marked their 15th consecutive victory, tying their longest win streak since they won 15 straight to open head coach Kenny Brooks‘ tenure at Virginia Tech. Tech is a No. 1 seed for the first time in program history, and their semifinal matchup vs. LSU will be their fourth. Tech owns a 1-2 record all-time vs. the Tigers, and the two sides last met Nov. 14, 2006, with LSU winning 70-40 in Baton Rouge, La.

Probable starters: Taylor Soule (F), Elizabeth Kitley (C), Georgia Amoore (G), Cayla King (G), Kayan Taylor (G)

About coach Kenny Brooks: Brooks is closing out his seventh season with Virginia Tech, which is 155-73 since he joined as head coach in March 2016 and 5-2 in NCAA Tournament games. Brooks is just the third Black male coach to lead a team to the Final Four, joining Winthrop “Windy” McGriff with Cheyney in 1984 and Syracuse’s Quentin Hillsman in 2016. In 2022, Brooks led the Hokies to a program record with 13 ACC victories and five ranked wins, and the team advanced to the ACC Tournament Semifinals for the first time ever.

Spotlight on… Elizabeth Kitley: In her last outing, Kitley scored a game-high 25 points, 11 rebounds and had three blocks, marking her 21st double-double of the season and 56th of her career. She now owns the program record for double-doubles and was recently named second-team All-American. On the season, the two-time ACC Player of the Year, who hails from Summerfield, N.C., is averaging 18.2 points, 10.7 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game this season while shooting 56% from the floor.

Coach’s last word: “I knew we had the talent this summer, and watching them and how quickly they were starting to gel,” Brooks told reporters Tuesday. “They weren’t a cohesive unit during the summer, but we knew we had the makings of it just because we had so many mature kids. And then really we hit our stride obviously with the winning streak (10-0 to start the season), but when we lost to Duke (on Jan. 26), we learned a lot about ourselves. There was no yelling in the locker room after that game. I told the kids, ‘Let this sting. We’ll get another opportunity to play them,’ and I said, ‘Don’t let it bother us. Let it kick us forward.’