S. Carolina-LSU III for the national title?

March Madness is here! It’s time to fill out brackets, bursting with hope, only to have them bust by the end of the first week of play.

Here at Swish Appeal, we’re sharing some of our brackets, along with takes that range from the measured to the mild to the hot.

We kick things off with Cat Ariail’s bracket breakdown:

Click here to see Cat’s bracket

The Tree falls in the first round?

Only once has a No. 1 seed lost a first-round game in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, with Stanford falling to Harvard in 1998. Could the Cardinal repeat ignominious history, becoming the first No. 2 seed to lose a first-round game? (Last year, Stanford, a No. 1 seed, became only the eighth No. 1 or No. 2 seed to lose before the Sweet Sixteen.)

This prediction is not intended to pick on Stanford; rather, it’s about boosting Norfolk State. The regular season and tournament champions from the MEAC are led by a scoring star with high-major cred, senior guard Diamond Johnson. A Big Ten All-Freshman honoree in her first collegiate season at Rutgers who transferred to NC State where she won ACC Sixth Player of the Year in 2021-22 before earning All-ACC recognition last season, Johnson has averaged better than 20 points per game for 27-5 Spartans, thriving as a high-volume scorer from all three levels of the floor. The MEAC Newcomer of the Year and MEAC Tournament Most Outstanding Player also had formed a dynamic duo with MEAC Player of the Year Kierra Wheeler. The junior forward is a near-automatic double-double, averaging 17.6 points and 9.7 boards per game.

Yes, Stanford has their own dynamic duo of senior forward Cameron Brink and junior forward Kiki Iriafen. But if either encounters foul trouble, the Cardinal could find themselves in a closer game than expected. And in clutch moments, Johnson has the potential to drain the dagger, stunning the Stanford faithful in Maples Pavilion.

If the Spartans pull off the improbable and spark a Cinderella run, they could even meet one of Johnson’s former squads, NC State, in the Sweet Sixteen.

Bueckers will be the tourney’s best

Among the stars expected to shine in this year’s NCAA Tournament, UConn redshirt junior Paige Bueckers will be the brightest.

Bueckers’ brilliant Big East Tournament—where she was named MVP after scoring 27.7 points per game on better than 50 percent shooting from the field while also averaging 8.3 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 4.0 blocks and 3.0 steals per game—was merely the appetizer for the main course: carrying the depleted Huskies back to the Final Four. By the time the Huskies arrive in Cleveland, the prevailing question from the women’s hoops commentariat will be: Is Paige—not Caitlin, not Cameron, not anyone else—the best player in the women’s college game?

South Carolina vs. LSU III

Another South Carolina-LSU showdown? Yep, another South Carolina-LSU showdown.

While South Carolina will take care of NC State in the Final Four, LSU will survive a national championship game rematch with Iowa in the Elite Eight before outlasting UConn in the Final Four, giving us a third and final chapter of a burgeoning rivalry that has dripped with drama.

The regular-season contest was marred by LSU junior forward Angel Reese fouling out, allowing South Carolina to escape Baton Rouge unscathed. In the SEC Tournament championship game, overflowing emotions resulted in an absurd number of end-of-game absences and an oddly anti-climatic ending, with the Gamecocks again victorious. Let’s hope round three brings more heroics than histrionics, with a fair, fully-loaded fight that goes down to wire.

But in the end, the result will remain the same, with Dawn Staley’s squad coming up bigger and better in the game’s closing moments to finish off a perfect season and capture the program’s third national championship.