The top-ranked Baylor Lady Bears’ road map to the Final Four is set.
As expected, the journey starts at home as Baylor will play Abilene Christian at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Ferrell Center.
Baylor is the No. 1-overall seed and sits atop the Greensboro Region. That means, if the Lady Bears (31-1) advance through the first and second rounds, they will travel to Greensboro, N.C., for the Sweet 16.
That’s the scenario that seemed logical leading up to Selection Monday and it worked out.
“I feel like for the first time in a long time that every region got close to an ‘S’ curve, and that just does my heart good for women’s basketball,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “Not just our region, but if you look at the top six to eight teams that could win this whole thing, I think that below them they tried as best they good to cover geography, but also cover the ‘S’ curve.”
The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament selection committee released two projections in the weeks leading up to Monday’s Selection Show. In the second one, the committee indicated it would use an “S” curve in the seeding, meaning the top overall seed would get the eighth-ranked team in the country as the No. 2 seed in the same region. That’s how it went as the No. 2 seed in Baylor’s Greensboro Region is eighth-ranked Iowa.
Baylor’s region has five ranked teams in it, including the No. 1 Lady Bears, No. 8 Iowa, No. 10 N.C. State, No. 15 South Carolina and No. 25 Florida State.
Mulkey said she has found plenty of reasons to question the fairness of past brackets, but she’s happy with this one.
“They didn’t just get it right for Baylor, they got it right everywhere,” Mulkey said. “This entire bracket was done fairly. I believe that and I haven’t said that in many years.”
The other No. 1 seeds in the ladies’ big dance are Louisville in the Albany Region (powerhouse Connecticut is the No. 2 seed there), Mississippi State in the Portland Region and Notre Dame in the Chicago Region.
But Mulkey said her team is only thinking about Abilene Christian right now. If the Lady Bears advance to the second round, they will play the winner of the California vs. North Carolina matchup, set for 2:30 Saturday afternoon.
“This team deserves the No. 1 seed and we’ll take that, but it guarantees us nothing,” Mulkey said. “Our focus will be on Abilene Christian. Should we be fortunate enough to win that, we’ll watch and scout Cal and North Carolina.”
The Lady Bears hosted a Selection Show party at the Stone Room inside the Ferrell Center. But by the time the coaches, players and fans showed up, it had turned into an anticlimactic event.