Women’s March Madness: 1 reason each Final Four team will win the NCAA Tournament

Women’s March Madness is down to the Women’s Final Four with UConn, South Carolina, Stanford and Arizona. Here’s who is going to win and why.

The women’s Final Four field is now set, with UConn, Arizona, South Carolina and Stanford surviving the first four rounds of the tournament. Will UConn win their 12th championship? Can Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks, the preseason No. 1 team, end up on top? Or can either Arizona or Stanford bring the title home to the Pac-12 for the first time since 1992 when Tara VanDerveer led the Cardinal past Western Kentucky?

The 1 reason UConn will win the NCAA Tournament: Paige Bueckers

You might be tired of hearing about Paige Bueckers, but the freshman guard is the best player in the nation. Bueckers became the first freshman to win the AP AP women’s basketball player of the year on Wednesday.

If she’s at the top of her game, the UConn Huskies are nearly impossible to beat. Bueckers averaged 20.1 points per game this season, plus 5.9 assists per contest this season. Her ability to run the point like a seasoned veteran has been the fuel for UConn.

There’s a lot of good players on this team — Evina Westbrook, Christyn Williams, Olivia Nelson-Ododa, and fellow freshman Aaliyah Edwards — but none have had the consistent highs that Bueckers has had. Even in bad matchups, Bueckers finds a way to impact the game.

Take the Elite Eight contest against Baylor into account. Even matched up with arguably the nation’s best perimeter defender, Bueckers had 28 points, with much of that coming before Richards left the game with a hamstring injury.

It wasn’t her most efficient night as she was 10-for-22 from the field, but her ability to get going early despite Baylor’s elite defensive team doing what they could to limit her is just another impressive notch in Buecker’s belt.

Only three players in the Big East have a higher true shooting percentage than Bueckers at 63.2 percent; neither of those players has a higher usage rate than Bueckers. She combines some heavy on-ball minutes with some really efficient shooting, which forces defenses to always account for her and opens up space for the team’s post players to succeed, like Aaliyah Edwards, who had a 70.1 true shooting percentage.

The 1 reason Arizona will win the NCAA Tournament: Aari McDonald

The Arizona Wildcats have Aari McDonald. You can never count out a team that has Aari McDonald.

The Adia Barnes-coached Wildcats are making their first-ever Final Four appearance. In a tournament where the other teams that ended up near the top are all powerhouses, Arizona — the 2019 WNIT champions — have managed to break into the party.

Arizona went 20-5 this season, but three of those losses came in their last four pre-tournament games. Losing early in a conference tournament and falling to Arizona State in the regular-season finale isn’t really the path you expect to see from a Final Four team.

But Arizona got into the tournament and just dominated. They’ve won three of their four games by double-digits, including handing Texas A&M a 74-59 loss, just the third defeat for the Aggies all year. McDonald had 31 points in that game; she followed that up with 33 points against Indiana in the Elite Eight and also grabbed 11 boards.

There was a narrative around McDonald earlier this year that she wasn’t the best shooter. Well, she’s gone 11-for-18 from 3 over the past two games, showcasing that she’s the most dangerous guard left in this tournament.

McDonald has also won two Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year awards. She’ll get a chance to showcase that defensive prowess against UConn, where McDonald will be tasked with slowing down Paige Bueckers. McDonald’s probably the one guard left who we can actually trust to do that.

1 reason South Carolina will win the NCAA Tournament: Aliyah Boston

South Carolina has the best center left in this tournament — which would probably be true no matter who the other three teams were because sophomore Aliyah Boston is just that good.

Let’s run through some rankings for Boston, per Her Hoop Stats. She’s 18th in offensive rebounds per game. 15th in total rebounds per game. 17th in blocks per game. And for the advanced stats crowd, she’s fifth in win shares, including fourth in defensive win shares. And per CBB Analytics and their metrics, Boston is in the 97th percentile in Hakeem Percentage, a measure that combines block rate and steal rate. Here’s how Boston rates against all other SEC players in a measure of her block percentage and true shooting percentage:

Boston has had some huge games this year. In the first round of the tournament, she put up 20 points with 18 rebounds. Against Georgia in the SEC title game, she had 27 points. And in a loss to UConn during the regular season, Boston had 17 points and 15 rebounds in a close defeat. Boston’s also been taking some 3-pointers lately, attempting at least two of them in three of the past six games.

If there’s an issue with Boston, it’s that struggled some against Georgia Tech in the Sweet 16, scoring just nine points and grabbing five rebounds, tying a season-low and followed that up by going 2-for-11 against Texas in the Elite Eight. But that’s where the rest of this Gamecocks team has shown they can step up: Zia Cooke had 16 points against Texas, while Laeticia Amihere came off the bench to block nine shots.

1 reason Stanford will win the NCAA Tournament: Depth

For the other three teams in the Final Four, you can pinpoint one big name who can take over a game, and while those teams have many talented players who can show up big if those stars struggle, none are as deep as Stanford.

Sure, Kiana Williams averages 14.5 points per game and has been the team’s top player, but they also have three other players averaging double figures in Haley Jones, Lexie Hull and Cameron Brink. They have a great 3-point shooting duo in Anna Wilson and Hannah Jump, though Jump played just three minutes against Louisville.

The Cardinal also got 16 points out of Ashten Prechtel in that Elite Eight matchup. That’s the beauty of this team: anyone can step up and have a huge showing. Prechtel had just two games all year with double-digit points, so of course, she was 6-for-6 from the floor in 16 minutes against the Cardinals.

As a whole, Stanford ranks highly on both ends of the floor. They have the fourth-best offensive rating and sixth-best defensive rating in the country. They’re only 12th in points scored, but that’s because they play at such a methodical pace, ranking 222nd in pace. Tara VanDerveer’s squads have always slowed the game down and they have the talent to control both ends of the floor and beat high-paced teams.

Stanford is also 8-1 against teams with a top-25 Her Hoop Stats rating. They’ve consistently shown they can beat good teams. If depth is what wins a title this year, Stanford’s the top pick to come away with the championship.