Happy Monday, everyone!

I’m going to be trying something different with a newsletter this week, making it a bit more of a traditional all-in-one place to find all our content. That doesn’t mean it’s strictly a newswire piece, because we’ll still be including new content with it. But if you like what you see, let us know! We’re always refining as we go to make sure you get the best women’s basketball news possible.

Our team’s month on the road continues with Greer and Tyler wrapping up in Sacramento and Fort Worth, respectively. Once the Final Four is officially set, they’ll meet up with Chauny and take our coverage to Phoenix. If you see our crew on the road, feel free to say hello!

In the meantime, if you’re in need of some narratives or subjects to help guide your interest tonight, we have just the thing for you…

Locker room access (powered by readers like you, I might add!) from UConn, courtesy of Tyler…

From UCLA, courtesy of Greer…

And a postgame live which includes one of the funniest interactions a No Cap Space staffer has had while on the road!

For those that want last night’s postgame in pod form…

While a bit lost in the news cycle due to Michigan’s men’s basketball team having one of their best seasons in a very illustrious program history, the Wolverine women are on the edge of doing something remarkable too. It’s kind of bizarre, given how many national championships the athletic department as a whole has won, but Michigan women’s basketball being good is only a relatively new phenomenon. This is just the second Elite Eight run in tournament history, the other being in 2021. So to even make it this far is further confirmation of two things: that Kim Barnes Arico is a top coach in the game and that Michigan appears ready to really invest in their women’s basketball program.

It doesn’t carry the same weight given that these players weren’t all top five recruits out of high school but the sophomore class at Michigan is genuinely special. A Fab Five, if you will. There’s Syla Swords, Olivia Olsen, Mila Holloway, Kendall Dudley and Te’Yala Delfosse. It’s a genuinely enjoyable, up-tempo, pace-and-space type of game and boy, it’s fun to watch when it’s firing on all cylinders. Swords, especially, is a total gamer who lives for moments like this one.

40 years ago, Jody Conradt and her Texas Longhorns were the first undefeated national champion in NCAA women’s basketball history. How cool would it be to see the historical symmetry in action? Not to mention, there’s also the storyline of Vic Schaefer and one particular player. Much like Dawn Staley and Raven Johnson (more on that in a second), Vic Schaefer has had a diminutive and dynamic point guard stably running the ship for the last half decade. Rori Harmon’s been to two Elite Eights, one Final Four and now has a chance to do it again in her fifth and final year. Additionally, you’ve got Madison Booker, who has met the moment time and time again since her head coach called out the team in what could age into one of the most legendary press conferences in women’s college basketball history (video below, for your viewing pleasure).

There’s a lot of strong narrative behind Texas this year. If you’re a student of history and love the George Lucas-ian ‘Poetry that rhymes’, then this is your team tonight.

If you line up the statistics, Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo both have exceeded already lofty expectations for this tournament. While Hidalgo and Notre Dame are headed home after a valiant effort against Notre Dame, Miles and her Horned Frogs have a shot to cement TCU as the Big 12’s standard bearer. Her dazzling performance in the Sweet Sixteen turned some heads and now, against the death machine that is the South Carolina Gamecocks, she has a chance to really make a statement in the national spotlight she’s been seeking.

TCU is a program on the rise. Mark Campbell is, at best, a top five and, at worst, a top seven coach in the country and is proving that the Big 12 can still field teams that can punch in the Big Ten or SEC’s weight class. Now he gets another opportunity to make history, the way he has at previous stops. If his Horned Frogs are somehow able to upset South Carolina, it vaults TCU, and Campbell, into an entirely different national conversation.

“Does Dawn Staley’s system allow for guards to showcase their skills to the fullest extent?”

That was a pretty major talking point through most of the offseason and early regular season this year. On the surface, there was some validity to the idea. Not that guards were worse off in the system, mind you, but that the stars of the system were the frontcourt players. Two bigs, a lot of post entry passes, dominating the glass and then getting out in transition. In 2023, I think it was fair to question the notion. But now? It should be clear, if it hasn’t been already, that Dawn Staley knows more ball than you. Or me. Or nearly anyone else on the planet.

While many eyes will be on former NCAA scoring champion and transfer guard Ta’Niya Latson, who exploded in the Gamecocks dominant Sweet Sixteen win, the exemplar of Staley’s evolving work with her backcourt players is Raven Johnson. Whatever you want to say about the senior’s WNBA prospects, there is absolutely no denying that she’s one of the most decorated players in the recent women’s basketball era and is a legitimate Mt. Rushmore candidate in SC athletics lore. Another Final Four trip would make it five in five years — Johnson had a season ending injury her freshman year, but the Gamecocks won a title anyway — and a shot at a third championship in the same time span.

Her phoenix rising moment of being a wave-off punchline at the mercy of Caitlin Clark to winning a title a year later, to now being the lynchpin that Staley turns to in key moments. That’s jersey retirement type stuff if she and South Carolina can finish the job.

UCLA celebrates with some confetti angels…

‘Gene Lasso’…

And what might as well be an official hard launch!