NCAA Women's Basketball Bracket 2015: Results, Seeds and Twitter Reaction
On Monday night, the field for the 2015 NCAA women's tournament came into focus.
The top-ranked Connecticut Huskies will look to defend their crown. They received a nice boost in the shape of potential Sweet 16 and Elite Eight dates in Albany, New York, a little over two hours away from Storrs.
As if UConn needed any help, those would be pretty much home games.
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Many eyes will be on Geno Auriemma's team this March. The Huskies have the players to go all the way again, and their road to the Final Four couldn't be much easier.
Here's a look at the top five seeds from each region.
| 1 | Connecticut Huskies | Notre Dame Fighting Irish |
| 2 | Kentucky Wildcats | Baylor Lady Bears |
| 3 | Louisville Cardinals | Iowa Hawkeyes |
| 4 | California Golden Bears | Stanford Cardinal |
| 5 | Texas Longhorns | Oklahoma Sooners |
| 1 | South Carolina Gamecocks | Maryland Terrapins |
| 2 | Florida State Seminoles | Tennessee Volunteers |
| 3 | Arizona State Sun Devils | Oregon State Beavers |
| 4 | North Carolina Tar Heels | Duke Blue Devils |
| 5 | Ohio State Buckeyes | Mississippi State Bulldogs |
The NCAA posted the full bracket:
As is the case on the men's side, one team casts a major shadow over the women's tournament this year. The Huskies have lost once all year and are riding a 31-game winning streak into the Big Dance. They played the then-No. 1 South Carolina Gamecocks at home back on Feb. 9 and beat them by 25 points.
Not to mention UConn has won the national championship in each of the last two seasons. The Huskies are gonna be a tough out.
As SportsNation joked, at least it makes the women's bracket extremely easy to project:
To nobody's surprise, they own the top seed in the tournament. It's the ninth year in a row UConn is a No. 1 seed, which ties the current record, per ESPN Stats & Info:
A national title win this year would mean UConn picking up its 100th win in tournament history in the process, per the team's Twitter account:
The Huskies' toughest competition from the Albany region will be the Kentucky Wildcats, who are no strangers to UConn in the tourney. Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio bemoaned the Wildcats' rotten luck with the draw:
UConn bounced Kentucky from the tournament in 2013 and 2012, so Jones might be onto something there. At least Wildcats fans have the men's team to cheer on as well this March should the women's team exit in the Elite Eight.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are generally viewed as the biggest threat to the Huskies this year. They finished runners-up last year, losing to UConn by 21 points in the title game.
Muffet McGraw's team wasn't helped out by the selection committee, though. Angelo Di Carlo of WNDU-TV in South Bend presented the potentially dangerous road to the Final Four for Notre Dame:
Chuck Carlton of The Dallas Morning News believes the Baylor Lady Bears have a great chance to make the Final Four with the Elite Eight so close to home:
The Gamecocks and Maryland Terrapins round out the No. 1 seeds.
One of the more interesting teams to follow in the tournament will be the Princeton Tigers. They haven't lost a game yet this year, which was only good enough for an eighth seed. Princeton could face the Terps in the second round.
CBS Sports' Matt Norlander tried to put the perceived slight in perspective:
Princeton alumna Stephania Bell of ESPN doesn't care where the Tigers are; she's just excited to see if the unbeaten streak can stay alive:
UConn will garner most of the attention surrounding the NCAA women's tournament, and rightfully so. The Huskies are far and away the best team in the country and two-time defending national champions.
Whether or not they can reach the summit again will make this year's tourney fascinating.
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