2023 March Madness: What to watch for as South Carolina faces Iowa, LSU takes on Virginia Tech in women’s NCAA Final Four

This year’s March Madness has lived up to the hype, with defending NCAA champions — No. 1-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks — riding a 42-game win streak dating back to the 2022 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship. Also back for this weekend’s tournament finale are the Louisiana State Tigers, back in the women’s Final Four for the first time in 15 years, and the Iowa Hawkeyes, who are dancing for the first time in three decades and boast the nation’s top player in Caitlin Clark. The top-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies round out the Final Four, where they’ll play in the semis for the first time ever.

Of note, this year’s Final Four, set for Friday at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, marks the first time in 38 years without any of the sport’s longtime powerhouses — Tennessee, Stanford and UConn. Even South Carolina, who also won the title in 2017 and are making its third consecutive Final Four appearance, is a relative newcomer to tournament greatness: The Gamecocks made their first-ever Final Four appearance just eight years ago.

The fresh lineup — headlined by a matchup of the game’s top stars in South Carolina forward Aliyah Boston and Iowa guard Clark — is an opportunity to celebrate the women’s game and its depth of talent more widely, said Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley on Thursday.

“It’s great,” she told media from Dallas. “It’s been building towards this for a long time. Fortunately for us — not just South Carolina, but us as women’s basketball — we’ve got a lot of star power behind our sport. It increases. [Along with Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark), you’ve got Angel Reese; you’ve got [Georgia] Amoore; you’ve got [Elizabeth] Kitley. You’ve got all these players who have been incredible, just incredible —