NCAA Women's Basketball Bracket 2017: Predicting Championship Game

The Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team's quest for perfection has two more hurdles to clear if it is to cut down the nets for the fifth consecutive season. The women's Final Four is set to go down on Friday night with an opportunity to play for the national championship on Sunday. 

The Huskies will meet No. 2 seed Mississippi State in the semifinal matchup, but before that, the No. 1 seed South Carolina Gamecocks will take on another No. 2 seed in the Stanford Cardinal. 

The tournament has already seen some powerhouse programs eliminated. Thirty-plus-win teams Notre Dame, Maryland and Baylor saw early an early demise. Now Connecticut and South Carolina will look to avoid upset bids from the Bulldogs and Cardinal, respectively. 

Here's a quick look at the information you need to know for the remaining games in the tournament along with a breakdown and prediction for each of the Final Four games. 

Date	Time (ET)	Matchup	TV
March 31	7:30 p.m.	No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 2 Stanford	ESPN2
March 31	10 p.m.	No. 1 Connecticut vs. No. 2 Mississippi State	ESPN2
April 2	6 p.m.	Championship game	ESPN

South Carolina vs. Stanford 

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The opening game of the Final Four figures to be a barnburner. South Carolina has been one of the top teams all season, while the Cardinal struggled during the regular season to fine-tune their game and win 12 of their last 13 contests to get here. 

South Carolina had its own set of doubts, though. The Gamecocks lost senior center Alaina Coates in the SEC tournament, which cast doubt on their ability to wind up in Dallas. 

Instead of getting bounced from the tournament, star forward A'ja Wilson stepped into an even bigger role and kept things rolling for South Carolina. 

"I'm super proud to watch her leadership," South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said of Wilson's efforts without Coates, per Mechelle Voepel of espnW.com. "When teams are dealt any type of adversity, people step up. People fill a void. Although A'ja was our leader before Alaina's injury, she's taken it to another level."

The battle on the blocks will be an important one in this game. Wilson was one of the top players in the nation this year with 17.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots per game, but the Cardinal believe that forward Erica McCall can hold her own in the paint. 

The senior leads Stanford in scoring at 14.4 points per game and must have a good performance on both ends of the floor to give the Cardinal a chance. 

While the loss of Coates might not be ideal on paper, Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer believes it has allowed South Carolina to play a more open style, per Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated:

"

They went from basically a two-post team to a four-around-one team. They're more athletic, they spread the floor a little bit more. I think they do a lot of things really well. They have an elite player in A'ja Wilson. They get her the ball. She is a big presence down low. They run well. You have a low block presence, a great rebounding team, you have people that are moving the ball. They're fantastic one-on-one players. I think you're going to be challenged defensively, you're going to be challenged offensively because they're athletic and long. You have to rebound the ball.

"

The Gamecocks have had some close encounters in their tournament run, and this could be another one. They had to stave off a late run from Florida State in the Elite Eight and only beat No. 8 seed Arizona State by three in a game where freshman forward Sophie Brunner put up 20 points and nine rebounds. 

Stanford has also had some close calls on its journey to Dallas. The Cardinal rallied to beat No. 1 seed Notre Dame by one point and only had a five-point lead at the end of the third quarter against Texas in what turned out to be an 11-point win. 

Stanford's balance could be key here, as the team doesn't depend on any one star player to get it going and can score from inside and out. Guarding Wilson is going to be a challenge, but the team is athletic enough to throw multiple defenders at her and force some turnovers. 

Prediction: Stanford 72, South Carolina 68

UConn vs. Mississippi State

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What is there to say about a program that has won 111 straight games?

The Huskies are obviously the favorite against Mississippi State, and it isn't hard to see why. The powerhouse program is simply a juggernaut offensively. It leads the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.99), field-goal percentage (52.9) and three-point percentage (40.4). 

The Huskies showcased their dominance in punching their ticket to the Final Four with a 90-52 win over Oregon. But the margin of victory shouldn't come as a surprise; as ESPN Stats & Info highlighted, this is simply what the Huskies do. 

Geno Auriemma's squad looks to drown opponents in offense, forcing other teams to play catch-up—and it works brilliantly. 

Mississippi State, who only allowed 57.2 points per game all season, has taken a more offensive approach in the tourney. While it might be wise to try to slow the pace to this one, that's not the approach it sounds like head coach Vic Schaefer will take, per Deitsch:

"

I think one thing we've got to do is we got to score. I mean, it's not going to be a 50–48 game. That's where we've been different in the last two and a half weeks. We've kind of maybe not focused so much on trying to hold everybody scoreless We focus more on, O.K., here is how we can attack and score a little bit. If you look at our scores in the NCAA tournament, we've been able to score some points. I think that's what's different about our team right now.

"

That seems like a scary approach, as trading baskets with the most powerful offense in the sport isn't a great idea.

Led by guards Napheesa Collier (20.6 points per game) and Katie Lou Samuelson (20.3), there's not a team with the kind of firepower that the Huskies bring to the table. 

Expect the Huskies to push the kind of pace they'd like to play at and watch the Bulldogs struggle to keep up. 

Make it 112. 

Prediction: UConn 85, Mississippi State 65

Championship Matchup: UConn vs. Stanford