NCAA Tournament: South Carolina is locked at No. 1 before shuffling

As spring approaches, women’s college basketball is inching closer and closer to a symbolic milestone. It’s one that many people might never have noticed, and one that won’t have any impact on the quality or intensity of games.

But for the first time since its debut 40 years ago, the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament will be officially called March Madness — the popular term that, until last fall, the NCAA had technically reserved exclusively for the men’s tournament.

The start of the first official women’s March Madness is just a few weeks away. Many of the teams at the top of the heap are familiar, yet plenty of questions remain.

Can anyone — besides Missouri, which managed to hand South Carolina a loss, by a single point — challenge the Gamecocks? Will Connecticut, long the front-runner, emerge in the postseason after its worst regular season in recent memory? Will the reigning champions, Stanford, earn longtime coach Tara VanDerveer her first repeat?

As the regular season draws to a close, here’s what we know — and what’s next.

Aliyah Boston is the front-runner for player of the year.

South Carolina has been the top-ranked team in The Associated Press poll since the preseason thanks in large part to the efforts of 6-foot-5 junior forward Aliyah Boston. Despite being the focus of every opposing team’s defense and getting persistently double-teamed by their most physical players as she fights to get in the paint, Boston has been nearly unstoppable. She leads the nation in win shares, according to Her Hoop Stats, and has recorded a double-double in points and rebounds in 20 consecutive games, breaking a Southeastern Conference record set by highly decorated WNBA star Sylvia Fowles at Louisiana State.

A top recruit out of high school, Boston has been a contender for national honors since she was a freshman. Last year, though, her stellar sophomore season was overshadowed by the prolific scoring and preternatural talent of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, whose national player of the year awards as a freshman were unprecedented.

This year, Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, who in January became the first Division I player to record back-to-back 30-point triple-doubles, has drawn some attention away from Boston’s dominance — and that of her own team. Clark’s gaudy point totals and splashy hot streaks — she has hit at least four 3-pointers seven times this season — make for irresistible highlight reels and have sparked conversation about her place in the player of the year race.

Boston, though has the numbers (16.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game), and South Carolina (26-1, 14-1 SEC) has the wins.

“It’s hard for me to imagine not having her and her contributions in so many different areas outside of the stat sheet,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley told reporters last week. “She’s a communicator, she’s a captain, she’s a leader, she’s a great teammate, she’s a great competitor on top of the stats.”

Some top seeds could have a particularly tough road to the Final Four.

Barring a massive upset loss in the SEC Tournament, the Gamecocks appear to be firmly in control of the top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. They’re better poised than ever to win Staley’s second national championship, with the South Carolina faithful — who have posted Division I’s best home attendance since 2015 — ready to pack the stands should they end up in the Greensboro, North Carolina, region.

The most recent top-16 reveal from the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee, on Feb. 10, projected that the rest of the No. 1 line would fill out with familiar faces. After losing to South Carolina in December, Stanford (23-3, 14-0 Pac-12 Conference) has cruised through conference play with relative ease — only Arizona, its championship game foe last season, and Oregon stand as other Pac-12 teams ranked in the AP poll.

The Cardinal are currently projected as the No. 2 overall seed. That would probably place them in the Spokane, Washington, region, close to home and with limited upset potential.

With the third and fourth overall seeds, the action is concentrated in the Atlantic Coast Conference. North Carolina State (25-3, 16-1) and Louisville, who have both been top seeds in recent tournaments, are neck and neck. The third-ranked Wolfpack are holding onto a narrow edge over the fourth-ranked Cardinals (24-3, 15-2) in the conference. One will probably play in the Wichita, Kansas, regional, and one in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, regional.

What both of those teams are hoping to avoid is something of a perfect storm brewing in Bridgeport. If UConn, projected as a No. 3 seed, is assigned to Bridgeport, either North Carolina State or Louisville — which has already beaten the Huskies once this year — could face what will essentially be a fervent home crowd at a purportedly neutral site.

But even if UConn (20-5, 14-1 Big East Conference) winds up in Wichita, it will probably be playing with its healthiest team since the start of the season. Bueckers, who was sidelined after suffering a tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear in her left knee on Dec. 5, returned to the court Friday in UConn’s 93-38 victory over St. John’s.

The Big 12 and Big Ten are deeper than ever.

This season’s parity has been remarkable, especially across the Power Five conferences, where upsets have kept even the top teams from going on cruise control. Nowhere has that been more apparent than in the Big Ten and the Big 12, which are crowding the national rankings and positioned for exciting conference tournaments.

In the Big Ten, where Maryland has won five of the past seven tournaments, the top teams — No. 6 Michigan, No. 17 Ohio State, No. 21 Iowa, and No. 13 Maryland — are separated by just a win or two, and their position is still changing by the day. Seven of the league’s teams are projected by ESPN to make the NCAA Tournament, a group that now includes Northwestern, which fought to a double-overtime win over Michigan this month.

In the Big 12, Baylor’s grip on the conference has been even tighter: The Bears have won nine of the past 10 tournaments. Yet right now, the fifth-ranked Bears (22-5, 12-3) are fighting for the top spot with No. 9 Iowa State.

Close at their heels are No. 20 Oklahoma, which is second in the country in points per game, with 84.9; No. 11 Texas, which managed one of the NCAA Tournament’s biggest upsets last year by knocking off Maryland in the round of 16; and Kansas, which is in the mix despite landing 10th in the conference’s preseason poll.

The last week of the regular season will be a tightly contested window into March.

On Sunday, Louisville and North Carolina State will each close the regular season against ranked opponents whom they have already beaten. The Cardinals will face No. 14 Notre Dame (noon, ESPN2), and the Wolfpack will take on No. 23 Virginia Tech (6 p.m., ACC Network). An upset loss for either team could take them out of the top four overall seeds and create a steeper road toward the ACC title.