West Virginia women’s basketball will be dancing their way down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as the 6th seed to take on the winner of Columbia and Washington in the NCAA Tournament.
West Virginia’s Women’s Basketball team is on one of the toughest routes to Tampa as they share the Birmingham bracket with powerful competition. West Virginia shares the Region Two bracket with the reigning national champions, the number one seeded South Carolina Gamecocks.
Despite losing Kamilla Cardoso to the WNBA Draft last year, the Gamecocks have put together yet another dominant season under the coaching of Dawn Staley. The Gamecocks have the home court advantage and will most likely come out victorious in their first-round matchup against Tennessee Tech. The way the Gamecocks control the paint with their size down low they are a favorite to go deep into the tournament and to possibly win back to back championships.
The next two formidable opponents that stand in the Mountaineer’s way at a National Title are teams from the ACC, the Duke Blue Devils, and the North Carolina Tar Heels. The Blue Devils are set to host No. 15 Lehigh in the first round of the tournament in Durham North Carolina. However, just a short car ride away, Duke’s in-state rivals the Tar Heels will host the fourteenth-seeded Oregon State Beavers in Chapel Hill. The North Carolina natives have both had dominant years and have proven to be formidable foes in college basketball. Duke is more equipped to make a deep run due to their staggering size but the Tar Heels have proven to be an extremely resilient and scrappy team in clutch moments.
The Birmingham Region may be the most challenging bracket region in the entire tournament. Between the reigning national champions and the North Carolina powerhouses and other teams such as Vanderbilt, Indiana, and Lehigh, who could all play upset, this bracket is set to have some of the wildest matchups in the entire tournament.
If the Mountaineers want to win, they will have to take one game at a time, so now all they can do is wait to see who they will be facing, and once they find out, it will come down to how hard they prepare and how well they execute on the court.
