Miami is aiming to extend its wild run against LSU
Miami (Fla.) was only a few hours removed from pushing deeper in the women's NCAA tournament than ever before. Another big matchup loomed. Yet coach Katie Meier needed some time.
“First thing I said is, like, give me an hour to be human,” the coach said.
That's why she followed the program's first-ever trip to the Elite Eight by spending time with her mother and nieces in her hotel room afterward. It was an example of how the Hurricanes are savoring a wild March Madness ride even while determined to keep winning — next against LSU today to reach the Final Four.
The ninth-seeded Hurricanes (22-12) can join Arkansas in 1998 as the lowest-ever seed to get there.
“There's a balance,” but I think just being where our feet are,” Hurricanes guard Hanna Cavinder said. “I mean, obviously we have a lot to celebrate, but we're not done. And I think we all understand that.”
The Greenville 2 Region final presents the first ticket to Dallas for the national semifinals, and it's a matchup between teams with vastly different postseason histories.
Third-seeded LSU (312) is one of eight programs to reach at least five Final Fours. Coach Kim Mulkey won three national championships at Baylor and is in her second year with the Tigers, who pushed past No. 2-seeded Utah on Saturday to reach their first Elite Eight since 2008.
“You'd better listen,” Tigers star forward Angel Reese said. “Kim Mulkey not playing. We listen to her, we respect Coach. She knows better than anybody else.”
Still, Mulkey has cautioned her team is “overachieving” in its rapid rise so early in her tenure with nine new players, noting LSU “might be feeding that monster too quickly” with outside expectations.
Still, her players “want to please.”
“They allow me to coach them, and I've got some strong personalities on this team,” Mulkey said. “I've said it all along: I don't care, just bring me a competitor. I can handle a strong personality . ... If they love basketball and they're a competitor, I can coach them.”
For Miami, the rise is sudden: Its only previous Sweet 16 came in 1992. LOUISVILLE IN FAMILIAR MARCH MADNESS SPOT ❯❯ By this point, Louisville resume of NCAA tournament success should have the Cardinals getting mentioned in the same breath as South Carolina, UConn and the other powers in the sport.
Instead, Jeff Walz feels like the Cardinals are regularly a team picked to get bounced early in March Madness.
“We're not always the sexy choice, we're not the one that everybody's like, `Oh, you got it, this is a shoe-in, put them in your bracket, pencil them in,'” Walz said. “We're normally the one that everybody's like, `Oh, I think they're going to lose in the first round, they might get beat in the second round,' and then they're pissed that we keep winning.”
Walz and the No. 5 seed Cardinals will play in their fifth straight regional championship game facing highscoring Caitlin Clark and No. 2 seed Iowa in the Seattle 4 Regional today.
The Elite Eight has become the expected destination for Louisville, even in a season like this one where that didn't seem a likely result. After a rough start to the season that didn't match preseason expectations, the Cardinals (26-11) have found their stride winning 11 of their past 14 with the only losses during that stretch to Notre Dame and Virginia Tech.
The Cardinals outlasted upstart Mississippi in Friday's Sweet 16 and continued the quest for a second straight Final Four and fifth overall.
“You work your whole life for to be playing on a national stage in the Elite Eight with a packed house. You can't trade it for any other scenario,” Louisville standout Hailey Van Lith said.