16 teams remain in the hunt for the women's national championship. Clear favorites have emerged, with UCLA and South Carolina headlining the list of contenders.
But while upsets don't happen too often in the later stages of the women's tournament, they do happen sometimes. It was just two years ago that we saw a pair of No. 1 seeds fail to even make the Sweet 16.
Let's compare the path to the championship for the four lowest seeded teams remaining and figure out which has the best path.
Maryland
Maryland's probably exhausted after playing arguably the greatest second round game that I can personally remember, a double-overtime thriller against Alabama that was an exercise in big-time shotmaking. Sarah Ashlee Barker set an Alabama school record for scoring, but Maryland's high-octane offense still managed to get the win.
Unfortunately for the Terps, their next game is against South Carolina. Maybe the Gamecocks aren't quite as dominant this season as they've been in past years, but they're still the deepest team in the nation as well as the No. 2 team in net rating despite playing an SEC schedule.
Theoretically, life would get easier after this game as Maryland would take on the winner of North Carolina/Duke, with Maryland already beating Duke once this season, but it's hard to really look ahead when you have SC up first.
Tennessee
After struggling to end the season, dropping three of their final four games including their SEC Tournament opener, the Volunteers figured things out on opening weekend, rolling past South Florida and Ohio State.
The reward for that is a meeting with Vic Schaefer's Texas Longhorns. Texas hasn't lost a game against a team that wasn't South Carolina since Dec. 5, though Tennessee did play them tough back in January, with the Horns winning 80-76.
Like with Maryland's path, getting past the No. 1 seed theoretically makes things easier, but not as easy as they'd be for the Terps. Tennessee would face the winner of TCU/Notre Dame, so either a Horned Frogs team that would be a big mismatch in the middle because of Sedona Prince or, more realistically based on how good they looked last weekend, a No. 3 seed Notre Dame team that had no business falling to the No. 3 line and has arguably the best top-end talent in the country with Hannah Hidalgo, Olivia Miles and Sonia Citron.
Kansas State
You never want to see a player get injured. Kansas State would love to beat a full-strength USC team, but that's just not the reality we're in after USC star guard JuJu Watkins tore her ACL in the team's second-round win over Mississippi State.
Still, don't call this a simple path forward. USC has a lot of great pieces surrounding Watkins who can step up in her absence. Kiki Iriafen, for example, scored a season-high 36 points in the second-round victory, showcasing how she could take over this team.
Still, the Watkins injury puts Kansas State in the best position to get past the No. 1 seed in its regional, which is a good start.
After that, the team would face the winner of UConn/Oklahoma. The Huskies have looked great all weekend and should roll past an Oklahoma team that struggles to play defense. But while an Elite Eight game against UConn feels rough on paper, the Huskies have occasionally shown weaknesses this season against power conference teams, losing to Notre Dame, USC and Tennessee, though the Huskies do have arguably the most impressive win of any team in the country, a 29-point victory over South Carolina.
Ole Miss
Ole Miss has a tough weekend ahead, beginning with a meeting with UCLA, the No. 1 overall seed in this year's NCAA Tournament.
The Bruins aren't unbeatable, but the only team they've lost to this season is USC. They defeated South Carolina in November and have wins over Baylor, Ohio State (twice), Iowa, Maryland and Michigan. Maybe if they'd played a tougher non-conference schedule, they'd have had more than two losses. Maybe not.
If an upset happens, the Rebels would then face the winner of NC State/LSU in the Elite Eight. Ole Miss handed LSU one of its only losses of the year, but that was also the only time this year the Rebels have beat a team with a top 15 Her Hoop Stats rating, going 1-8 against such teams. There's no guarantee that a rematch would go Ole Miss' way, while a meeting with NC State would be tough on an Ole Miss defense that ranks 44th in scoring defense this season.
Who has the best path to make a national championship run?
Now, before I answer this question, I should mention that historical trends say none of these four teams will make a championship run. The lowest seed to win the title is a No. 3 seed, most recently two seasons ago when LSU took down Iowa in the title game.
But if one of them was going to break that cycle, the most likely is Kansas State, simply for the fact that the team faces a hobbled USC team in the Sweet 16, then has the size to contend against either UConn or Oklahoma in the Elite Eight. It's unlikely, but the Wildcats just feel like they're in a slightly better position. Without the Watkins injury, I'd have gone with Ole Miss here as the pick, but USC losing Watkins is just a massive loss.
But this is all subject to change. If Maryland somehow upsets South Carolina in the Sweet 16, the Terps suddenly skyrocket to the top of this list because they'd have arguably the easiest path once the Gamecocks were cleared out. That's all hypothetical though. For now, a looming meeting with Dawn Staley's bunch means Maryland can't be the answer.