The NCAA women’s Sweet 16 matchups will start on Friday with the Vanderbilt Commodores vs the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. There are three more games on Friday, and the remaining four will be played on Saturday.
The UConn Huskies will go against the North Carolina Tar Heels, the UCLA Bruins against the Minnesota Golden Gophers, and the LSU Tigers against the Duke Blue Devils to complete the Friday schedule.
As the season inches closer to a conclusion, several teams are marred with injuries. However, there are some teams that don’t have big injuries on their rosters or have yet to release the official injury report.
Vanderbilt and Notre Dame, two teams from the first game, haven’t released their injury report. For the second game, the Huskies will be without Gandy Malou-Mamel, who has only played two games this season. Their opponents, the Tar Heels, will go in without Taliyah Henderson and Reniya Kelly.
South Carolina has battled through several injuries this season. They are set to play Oklahoma in the Sweet 16 round. Chloe Kitts has been out with a torn ACL since September, Adhel Tac hasn’t played since February 5 due to a lower-body injury, and Maddy McDaniel didn’t participate in the first round matchup due to illness. In the second game, she only played for two minutes.
Most teams have had players who suffered season-ending injuries, like Taylor Woodson of the Minnesota Golden Gophers. As of now, the detailed injury reports haven’t been published, so it’s difficult to mark which teams will go in with a disadvantage.
Dawn Staley on Facing Oklahoma in Sweet 16
Oklahoma defeated Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks when they first met this season. In fact, they handed South Carolina their only SEC loss of the season. Staley, while recalling their first matchup, was impressed by the opponents.
“I mean they were on, I think, a three-game losing streak, and they wanted to win,” she said. “I mean, it was imperative that they win the game that we played them, just for morale, just for making a run in our league. I thought they wanted it more, and they played that way.”
Staley said that the stakes are higher now. She has made some adjustments to the team’s strategy against Oklahoma, and the Gamecocks won’t make the same mistakes this time.
“Obviously, I know Madina wants to play well. In order for her to play well, we have to play well, we have to put her in position to play well. We’ll work on that throughout this week, and hopefully we can fly out there and play our best basketball because we have yet to play that,” she added.
The South Carolina Gamecocks and the Oklahoma Sooners will meet on Saturday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento.
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