An Anti-Climactic Finish
UCLA's season ends, UConn proves itself as clear top dog, and Hoopla Groupla winners!
I entered the weekend with so much hope for three excellent matchups to close out the tournament. Instead, we got zero. Alas!
Last Week’s Hoopla:
UCLA, the nation’s No. 1 seed and the last Big Ten team standing, was thoroughly outplayed for 40 minutes Friday night. UConn started the game with a 78.0% chance to win, according to Bart Torvik. That was the lowest the Huskies’ win percentage would hit all night, and it was at about 99% by the time these teams went into halftime.
UConn won this game 85-51, then went on to beat South Carolina 82-59 in a game that felt only marginally closer than the one before it. The Huskies, a 2-seed, looked like the most complete team by a wide margin. Its dynamic duo of Paige Bueckers and Sarah Strong — who both finished with two whole wins more than any other player in the country in win shares — was joined by another star in Azzi Fudd to make a truly unstoppable trio that detonated on two of the other best teams in the country with ease.
UCLA’s offense was completely disrupted by the Huskies. The Bruins turned it over 19 times total, 16 of which came across the first 21:19 of this game before it was basically wrapped up. The attack that looked particularly impressive in lead-up games against Richmond, Ole Miss and LSU completely collapsed to a team that could truly only score through its star.
Speaking of that star, Lauren Betts did all she could here with 26 points on 11-of-18 shooting. The rest of her team combined could not match that point total, finishing with 25 points on 9-of-34 shooting. UCLA did an OK job containing Bueckers (16 points, 7/17 FG), but Strong and Fudd combined for 41 points and seven made threes to make sure it didn’t matter.
It was a tough loss to swallow, but it is not all doom and gloom for UCLA, not at all. This Bruins team is going to be a national title favorite from the jump unless the transfer portal does something dramatic. Nearly the entire roster is eligible to run it back, including Betts, Kiki Rice and Gabriela Jaquez. This can and will be a learning experience for the group after a tremendous season to get them that far in the first place.
Watching UConn put South Carolina in the dirt two days later confirmed what my eyes thought they saw Friday: No one was beating *this* version of the Huskies. This was the same Huskies that also beat the Gamecocks by 29 earlier in the season. It also makes USC’s early season win, and the true fight in the Elite Eight over this group, all that more impressive.
One more word on the Huskies from this Big Ten newsletter: Bueckers is incredible and will be incredible in the WNBA, but my takeaway from this tournament was to watch as much Sarah Strong as I possibly can going forward. She does *everything* well already as a true freshman, and I can only imagine where she will go from here.
MINNESOTA!!!
One Big Ten team did win a tournament this week! Don’t worry, this game was also not close, because why would we want to have any suspense at all in any of these matchups!
Minnesota won the WBIT with a 75-63 victory over Belmont. The Gophers led by 14 at half and by 19 after three quarters before the Bruins cut into the lead late, but Minnesota was comfortable most of the way to earn the Big Ten its second straight title in this tournament (Illinois).
It was a fantastic game for freshman Tori McKinney, who was named tournament MVP after finishing with 26 points, 3 assists and 3 steals on 10-of-14 shooting. Mallory Heyer had 18 points and 16 rebounds, and Amaya Battle added 17 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists.
The Gophers were one of the final cuts from the NCAA Tournament, and it’s great to see them stay together as a unit and finish the year with some hardware and needed momentum. With the always constant transfer portal caveat, there is so much reason to be excited about this roster next season. They continue to improve and develop well under Dawn Plitzuweit and that should only be taken to new heights with Mara Braun available to play. This team has the eligibility to mostly stick together once again, and I really hope they decide to do so.
The Hoopla Groupla Winners
Thank you to everyone who participated in another year of The Hoopla Groupla!
We had 76 entrants this time around, but only a few of you were able to earn the coveted shoutout as I ended up correct on the UConn over South Carolina national championship.
First, here are the winners1 of the Homefield prizes!
Free Shirt - Dan_Hope
$20 Gift Card - Dannyiwa
$10 Gift Card - kooms21
Please reach out to me, either in the comments here or in my DM’s on Twitter or Bluesky, if you are one of these three names so I can get you your prizes!
Those three are among the dozen names that were able to finish above my mighty, mighty 1,550 point score. Here are the others who are confirmed to be better than me at knowing ball:
BrittPrinceWhoWasPromised
jabberjaw_bets
UConn Cornelius
vt_ben
MNTylerG
HammerDahnCorey
Ezra -Bracket
Jgibeaut
Emery W
Congrats, you all did it! You all are superior to me forever and always, at least until next year!
As far as who was better than me at picking Big Ten teams, I forgot that ESPN has completely dropped the ball on group Bracketcast. From last year’s Hoopla on the same topic:
I also have unfortunate news for the second way to earn a shoutout here, which is by picking more Big Ten team runs correct than me. ESPN, unless I am missing the solution, has made it extremely difficult to scan through what every bracket picked for any specific game. The Bracketcast only shows the Top 25 of the group from what I can see, and I do not want to individually sift through 70 brackets for these if I’m being fully transparent with you.
This remains the case unless there is a workaround I don’t know about, but I will say how I did so you can check for yourself how much better you are than me.
Illinois - Round of 64 (X)
Indiana - Round of 32
Iowa - Sweet 16 (X)
Michigan - Round of 32
Michigan State - Round of 32
Maryland - Sweet 16
Nebraska - Round of 32 (X)
Ohio State - Round of 32
Oregon - Round of 64 (X)
UCLA - Final Four
USC - Elite Eight
Total: 7 out of 11 correct
I’m absolutely taking that to the bank. Was I wrong about Washington beating Columbia? Absolutely. But that doesn’t count toward the bracket, so I’m not counting it here.
Let me know if you beat the seven correct Big Ten teams threshold, as I do feel like it was possible to go 11 for 11 here.
On Deck
Wow, just like that it’s the offseason. It was another excellent year of hoops for the Big Ten, and I loved writing about it the whole way.
Next week on Tuesday (4/15), I will do a season wrap-up of sorts, as well as a look at the results of the WNBA Draft that is happening the night prior.
The following week (4/21) will be the end-of-season Hoopla 40. After that? Likely a whole lot of nothing for a bit as a break period before it quickly becomes Preview SZN once again! I am still debating whether to wait on a transfer portal look or do one in April, but will make that clear soon. I will also be looking for an alternative to Substack when that break period comes.
As always, thanks so much for reading Hoopla. It means so much to me to have any sort of audience for this, and I can’t wait to keep it going for 2025-26.
Due to the group accidentally being left fully open, a bracket with a South Carolina winner was swapped to a bracket with a UConn winner in the final day. That’s an error on my part for leaving it open, but the rules of the group are to have the brackets in before the first game of the Round of 64 has started, so the changed bracket was not considered for the prizes.
Photo Credit: UCLA Women’s Basketball (@UCLAWBB), Twitter
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This is off topic, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Robin Pingeton hire at Wisconsin. Because even a couple weeks later, I'm still baffled. 4 Tournaments in 15 years at Mizzou, last in 2019. Mostly mediocre to horrible seasons since 2019. No real proof she handles the portal era well. I just don't see how she is the one to turn the program around.