Iowa head coach Jan Jensen is reaping the rewards from her first season at the helm of the Hawkeyes.

On Wednesday, she was named the 2025 2025 Spalding Maggie Dixon NCAA Division I Rookie Coach of the Year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WCBA). The honor is bestowed upon a coach who leads their team to success in their first year. The Hawkeyes finished the season 23-11 and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

WBCA Executive Director Danielle Donehew said of Jensen:

Jan led Iowa to a remarkable season. We celebrate her effort and effectiveness on the basketball court as a teacher and equally applaud the extensive role she plays in impacting the lives of her student-athletes.

Brian Collins, Spalding vice president, added:

This award is a symbol of inspirational leadership and the positive influence sports can have on individuals, teams, and communities, which Jan has embodied in her first season. We want to congratulate Jan on the commitment to excellence shown at the University of Iowa and look forward to watching her continued impact on student-athletes on and off the court.

In May of last year, Jensen was named head coach following the retirement of Lisa Bluder, whom Jensen had served under as an assistant for twenty years, first at Drake and then Iowa. Jensen also was the program’s recruiting coordinator, catapulting the Hawkeyes into top recruiting classes. She also is credited with helping to develop post players into real game changers, including Megan Gustafason and Monika Czinano.

After Bluder’s retirement, Jensen was left with the daunting task of taking the program in a new direction following the Caitlin Clark era, when the Hawkeyes were in the glare of the national spotlight as they reached back-to-back national championship games.

Jensen made it her mission to mix the talents of a vibrant group of incoming freshmen (Aaliyah Guyton, Taylor Stremlow, Ava Heiden and Teegan Mallengi) with a core veteran talent (Hannah Steulke, Addison O’Grady, Kylie Feuerbach, Sydney Affolter and AJ Ediger) who were used to the Hawkeye system. She also created space for Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen to thrive in her last college season.

As a result, the Hawkeyes exceeded expectations and continued to play before sold-out crowds at Carver Hawkeye Arena.

Texas women’s basketball has made history by reaching the Final Four, their first appearance since 2003.

Under head coach Vic Schaefer, the Longhorns have been building toward this moment, advancing to the Elite Eight in three of the last four seasons before finally breaking through this year. The Longhorns’ success has been fueled by standout performances from forward Madison Booker and guard Rori Harmon. Booker, averaging 18.8 points per game in the NCAA Tournament while shooting 50 percent from the field, has been pivotal in key moments, including an 18-point performance against TCU where she made several clutch midrange shots to put the game out of reach.

Texas will play South Carolina on Friday for a chance to reach the national championship game for the first time since 1986. They faced South Carolina three times this season, with the Gamecocks winning two of those matchups, including a decisive victory in the SEC Championship game. However, Texas did secure one win over South Carolina at home, thanks to dominant interior play and second-chance opportunities generated by offensive rebounds—one of three keys to victory if this Longhorn team wants to make history.

1. Control the paint

Texas thrives on scoring inside, with over 80 percent of their points coming from in the paint and the midrange. During the tournament, that number is up to 90 percent. This team does not shoot a lot of 3s. In their win against TCU, they only attempted three 3-pointers—which sounds absurd for 2025—but the Horned Frogs, who took 20 3s, only scored six more points from beyond the arc.

Texas as a team shoots an absurd 47 percent from the midrange on the season, which is very good for collegiate standards and will be the difference maker if they are going to beat the Gamecocks. However, Texas has struggled finding the stroke so far this postseason, shooting an abysmal 36 percent, which will not cut it in the Final Four. Thankfully, Texas has held opponents to only 68 points per 100 possessions during this stretch, which is the second-best mark of all 64 teams in the tournament.

2. Defense

Photo by Elaina Eichorn/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

South Carolina boasts a deep roster of positive defenders, but they’ve struggled mightily on offense in the tournament. The Gamecocks have an offensive rating just over 90 during the tournament, which is very concerning, while boasting a ludicrous 22 percent turnover rate.

This benefits Texas in a big way because the Longhorns are one of the best teams in the sport at forcing turnovers. Against TCU, the Longhorns broke out a full-court trap, forcing 21 turnovers, which was more than the number of field goals made by the Horned Frogs.

If Texas wants to win this game, they will need to slow down the pace and win the possession battle. Texas took 16 more shots than TCU. That massive gap will have to be the difference against South Carolina.

3. Rebounding wins

Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Legendary NBA coach Pat Riley once coined the famous mantra, “No rebounds, no rings.” Throughout his experience as a championship-winning head coach, he recognized how crucial rebounding is to winning at the highest level. It limits extra possessions for the other team and gives your team more chances to score.

Texas has been one of the best rebounding teams all season, averaging just under 16 offensive rebounds per game. South Carolina also has been a solid rebounding team, but Texas is better. If this game comes down to a possession or two, the Longhorns will need to key in on their identity, which is creating second chances on the glass and limiting them for the other team.

South Carolina enters Friday’s semifinal as the defending champions, and while Texas may be underdogs against the Gamecocks, the familiarity with their style and personnel advantages give them a fighting chance. If they can dominate inside while limiting mistakes and finding offensive contributions beyond Booker, they could pull off an upset and advance to their first title game since 1986.

For the first time in NCAA Tournament history, the UCLA Bruins are headed to the Final Four.

UCLA’s recent victory over LSU in the Elite Eight avenged a loss to the Tigers in last year’s tournament and is the Bruins’ latest accomplishment in what has been a banner season for the program. Whereas the Bruins failed to close things out against LSU in 2024, they came out on top Sunday’s rematch, building a lead with seven minutes remaining in the second quarter and never letting go—something UCLA head coach Cori Close pointed to as a sign of team-wide maturity.

“I think the game was won in the poise and the choice to go back to neutral, get ourselves refocused, and make the next right step,” Close told media, referencing the Bruins’ mentality at a point when LSU had trimmed a 14-point lead to just five. She went on to say that improving the team’s chemistry had been a season-long effort and that the Bruins had to “become a group that’s better together than the sums total of [their] parts.”

Indeed, UCLA is a scary enough team on paper. 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts is perhaps the most physically dominant back-to-the-basket post player in the country. Point guard Kiki Rice is a dynamic athlete who controls the transition game and has developed into a top-tier midrange scorer. Gabriela Jaquez and Angela Dugalić bring both size and outside shooting to their respective positions. Add in transfers Janiah Barker and Timea Gardiner—players who would start for the vast majority of teams in Division I but come off the bench for UCLA—and you have a deep, talented roster with no glaring weaknesses.

For most of the season, that talent has been more than enough. UCLA breezed through its first season in the Big Ten, winning the conference tournament and finishing 30-2 overall. Betts, in particular, has been spectacular, averaging 20 points, 9.6 rebounds and three blocks per game while shooting 64.9 percent from the field. She was named the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and earned All-American honors from the Associated Press and the USBWA.

Unlike in 2024, however, the Bruins have carried that regular-season success into the NCAA Tournament. They’re thriving in the high-pressure situations they would have previously wilted in, with their Elite Eight win showing that they can dig deep and win even when they’re not playing their best basketball—a strength typically displayed only by the country’s truly elite programs.

This is what Close wanted to see. She had described last year’s Bruins as “way too mechanical” in their approach and that while she wants a team that’s disciplined, she’d rather them play like “an art project, not a scientific formula.” In other words, UCLA needed to be able to adjust to the flow of a game and play with a mental fortitude that matched their individual strengths.

To be clear, the scientific side of things is still there. The Bruins excel in several key statistical categories, leading Division I in total rebounding rate (58.4 percent; Her Hoop Stats) and ranking eighth in assisted shot rate (68.6 percent). They score efficiently, take care of the basketball and defend at a high level, which any basketball coach will tell you is a winning formula.

Where UCLA has grown the most, though, is nowhere to be found on the stat sheet. Rather, it’s in how the Bruins carry themselves, and it was a common theme in the postgame media availability after their Elite Eight win: confidence.

Close stated that UCLA had “earned a different level of confidence” during the regular season. Betts expressed full confidence in her teammates to put in the necessary work when she’s on the bench. Jaquez said that she has confidence in herself to knock down open shots that could decide a game.

To put it simply, the Bruins are the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, and they know it. They demolished first-round opponents Southern, won by double-digits against second- and third-round opponents Richmond and Ole Miss and, most recently, overcame a challenge in LSU that they were previously not ready for.

Entering their first-ever Final Four, the confidence that the Bruins now share should be at an all-time high.

The transfer portal is messing with the emotions of women’s college basketball fans.

But for fans of the Maryland Terrapins, who had experienced the heartbreak of seeing so many talented players leave in recent years, it messed with our emotions in a good way in 2024-25.

Prior to this season, we suffered the whiplash of seeing a bunch of key contributors star in red, black and gold. Shakira Austin. Taylor Mikesell. Ashley Owsu. And, most of all, Angel Resse. But for only a brief time. So it messed with us. That’s not to say the transfer portal hasn’t been bringing us joy from the jump. Who could forget Abby Meyers, Katie Benzan, Jakia Brown-Turner, Chloe Bibby, Brinae Alexander, Mimi Collins, Lavender Briggs and Elisa Pinzan?

But this was a year to truly stand up and cheer for the transfer portal if you root for the turtles. Head coach Brenda Frese’s squad was almost completely made up of transfers. Of eight rotation players, only senior Shyanne Sellers and junior Bri McDaniel started their college careers in College Park. You had newcomers Kaylene Smikle, Sarah Te-Biasu, Saylor Poffenbarger and Christina Dalce, as well as second-year Terp Allie Kubek, all making huge contributions. Newbie Mir McLean also chipped in for a team that got off to the fourth-best start in program history (14-0) and quickly made a jump from No. 18 to No. 11 in the AP Top 25 poll after the first week of the 2024-25 season before peaking at No. 7 during their undefeated stretch.

The team would go on to be hindered by a season-ending ACL tear suffered by McDaniel, arguably the team’s third-best player, as well as injuries to arguable-best-player Sellers and key 3-point threat and rebounder Poffenbarger that caused those two to not be 100 percent down the stretch, ultimately resulting in a Sweet 16 exit at the hands of defending champion and No. 1-seed South Carolina.

It was a disappointing finish. The Terps came within four points of the mighty Gamecocks despite their injury woes, and had they won, they would have felt like they could have won the whole tournament.

Endings are always disappointing unless your team wins it all. Every year has been disappointing as a Terp fan since 2006. 2023—making the Elite Eight!—was a bit less disappointing. But Maryland beat an Olivia Miles-less Notre Dame team in the Sweet Sixteen to get there. It felt a little lucky. Well, this year, the Terps were unlucky because McDaniel would have made up that four-point difference, meaning we would have been making a hard-earned Elite Eight trip and could have gone even further.

I felt like the Terps had championship potential ever since a five-point loss to USC on Jan. 8. If we make smarter plays down the stretch of that game against the then-No. 4 Trojans, we carry momentum over, beat Wisconsin and Minnesota more soundly in our next two contests and maybe don’t drop all of the three games after that against No. 7 Texas, No. 12 Ohio State and No. 1 UCLA. Of course, the beginning of that three-game losing streak also coincided with the beginning of McDaniel’s absence. With a win over USC, we would have maintained a confidence that would have prevented our eventual losses to lesser teams. With that confidence and with McDaniel healthy, I think we remain in that top 11 all season long—and maybe even join the big six of UCLA, South Carolina, Texas, USC, UConn and Notre Dame, becoming a seventh team that the media considers to be a tier above the rest of the country.

That’s part of the story of this season for the Terps: We were better than what our Sweet 16 finish indicates, and it’s hard to let that go. However, the other part of the story is that incredible 14-0 start—led mostly by transfers—and the incredible way we responded to McDaniel’s injury, with Te-Biasu capturing vengeance over Ohio State with an overtime, game-winning 3 to close the regular season, followed by her and fellow transfers Smikle, Kubek and McLean (DEFENSE!) coming up clutch again in a double-overtime classic against No. 5 seed Alabama that allowed us to at least get to our fourth Sweet 16 in five years and 12th under Frese. McDaniel was, of course, also huge in the time that she played, and what a senior season it was for Sellers, who I think was really Maryland’s best player despite Smikle being our leading scorer.

But the real story is how 15 young women, including nine transfers, came together—most playing with each other for the first time—and formed a chemistry that would have put them in position to compete for a championship had injuries not gotten in the way.

Maryland fans have lost Austin, Mikesell, Owusu and Reese to the transfer portal. In the case of Austin, Mikesell and Reese, they all became bigger stars away from College Park, which was tough to watch. One moment you feel a connection to them because they play for your school, and you root for them like crazy; the next you’re confused about how to feel about them as they don a different jersey. Going further back, you could also point to Lexie Brown and Natasha Cloud, who both turned out to be WNBA players like Austin and Reese. I know what it was like to go to Maryland at the same time as those two, root for them and then see them leave.

But I’ve also seen the other side of it with all those transfers from the past and then with Smikle, Te-Biasu, Kubek, Poffenbarger, Dalce and McLean. Meyers was so key during our 2023 Elite Eight run and Benzan shot 50 percent from 3 with 93 makes one season! And so many great personalities. (Did you see Dalce this year?!) I’ve learned that you can make lasting memories, and a lasting impact on a program and fanbase, in just one or two seasons.

Whiplash, yes. But also excitement.

And don’t forget that special feeling of seeing a player come home, as we experienced with Meyers, Brown-Turner, Poffenbarger and McLean; meanwhile Kubek was already home when she played at Towson University in Maryland. (Not saying this was the case with all of the players I just mentioned, but some transfers dream of playing for Maryland and only go somewhere else initially because they’re not recruited by the Terps out of high school.)

The question now is where do the Terps go from here? Can they really plug in a roster full of transfers and expect the same amazing chemistry over and over? It seems unlikely to me.

Frese has continued to recruit very well. It goes without saying that getting the No. 4 recruit in Austin (2018) and the No. 2 recruit in Reese (2020) were huge accomplishments. But both of them transferred away before they were able to bring Maryland past the Sweet Sixteen. In the case of Austin, she never helped us out of the Round of 32, though she was a key part of a No. 4 AP poll finish to the NCAA Tournament-less 2020 season. Other top recruits from the DMV area in Azzi Fudd and Kiki Rice went elsewhere, partly contributing to Maryland’s 10-year-long Final Four drought and 19-year-long national championship drought.

Should we hope for more four-year Terps? Or, is it actually possible to plug in a ton of transfers every year and consistently make it to the Sweet 16 and beyond? Is this the new normal in college basketball?

I do know this: In the past two seasons since our Elite Eight appearance, we have overachieved. We weren’t expected to do much in 2024 and beat a top-five team for the first time since 2014 en route to a NCAA Tournament appearance that would have turned into second-round appearance had No. 7 seed Iowa State not made an incredible comeback. And this year, we started of ranked No. 18 before proving ourselves worthy of an Elite Eight bid or beyond.

Previously, Frese had only overachieved at Maryland (according to tournament seeding, at least) in 2004 (taking a No. 12 seed to the second round), 2006 (winning the title with a No. 2 seed) and 2014 (taking a No. 4 seed to the Final Four). More often, her Terp teams have underachieved: 2007 (No. 2 seed losing in the second round), 2008 and 2009 (No. 1 seed losing in the Elite Eight both years), 2011 (No. 4 seed losing in the second round), 2016 (No. 2 seed losing in the second round), 2019 (No. 3 seed losing in the second round) and 2021 (No. 2 seed losing in the Sweet 16).

Does the recent overachievement indicate that the Terps have a little extra fight in them of late? Can they capitalize on this renewed energy and finally build all the way back up to another championship, which would be Frese’s second. At best, we’d win it next year and it’d be 20 years later, which would be similar to Notre Dame’s Muffet McGraw’s 17-year gap between first and second. (Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer had a 29-year gap between second and third.)

Someone who’s been eliminating gaps lately—and not just in Aflac commercials—is Dawn Staley. Staley has won three chips in the last eight years and her South Carolina program seems like it’s going to be the go-to destination for recruits for the foreseeable future. Does this mean she could chase Tennessee’s Pat Summitt (eight titles) and UConn’s Geno Auriemma (11)?

Frese is a third-tier all-time coach who is hoping to boost her legacy. Geno and Pat make up the first tier. The second tier includes Kim Mulkey (4), Staley, VanDerveer and McGraw. Though she doesn’t have the long-term body of work of these others, Linda Sharp is the other multi-championship coach, having taken USC to the promised land twice over her 12 years (1977-89) at the helm. Frese is one of nine coaches with one chip.

Seeing if Frese and the Terps can capitalize begins next year, when hopefully McDaniel, Smikle and Poffenbarger will be back. That’s not bad for a big three, especially since they now have experience playing together.

And who knows? Maybe we’ll see some new Maryland heroines emerge from the transfer portal once again.

With Texas and UConn winning on Monday, the 2025 Final Four is set. The Longhorns and Huskies join UCLA and South Carolina in Tampa Bay as the last teams vying for the national title.

Here is how Texas and UConn were able to win their Elite Eight games:

Texas toasts TCU

No. 1-seed Texas defeated the No. 2-seed TCU 58-47 to advance out of the Birmingham 3 Regional. It is the first time Texas has reached the Final Four since 2003.

Longhorn star Madison Booker was elite in this contest, scoring 18 points, grabbing six rebounds and earning two steals. Rori Harmon also came up big as the only other Texas player to score in double figures, scoring 13 points in the win.

For TCU, it was all about Hailey Van Lith. She did the best she could and scored 17 points. As she struggled from the field, shooting just 3-for-15, she did most of her damage from the charity stripe, going 10-for-11 from the free throw line. While HVL’s and TCU’s tournament run ends in the Elite Eight, it has to be considered an overall success since this is the furtherest the Horned Frogs have ever advanced in the NCAA Tournament.

Texas controlled the game from the opening tip. They never trailed and led by as many as 14 points, ending the game with a double-digit victory to earn (another) matchup with South Carolina in the Final Four.

UConn ends USC’s run

No. 1-seed USC valiantly competed without JuJu Watkins, but the underdog story died when No. 20-seed UConn defeated them, 78-64.

Paige Bueckers continues to write her storybook ending, scoring 31 points in the win. Sarah Strong was unstoppable inside. She had 22 points and a whopping 17 rebounds against the Trojans. With that performance, Strong became only the second Husky to score more than 600 points as a freshman; the other UConn alum to have achieved the feat is the great Maya Moore.

Rayah Marshall did her best to keep USC in this one, leading the team with 23 points in the loss. Kiki Iriafen played every minute, but struggled offensively; Iriafen had 10 points on 3-for-15 shooting.

Without Watkins, USC didn’t have enough firepower to keep up with UConn. But despite the obvious disadvantages, the Trojans didn’t just roll over and die in this game. They went on an 11-0 run to end the third quarter, giving them a fighting chance in the fourth. However, in the final frame, UConn showed its dominance, starting the quarter on an 11-2 run. Bueckers and Azzi Fudd spearheaded the run, and USC was unable to make it a game again.

It’s been a long road for Bueckers, who has dealt with injuries and disappointments at UConn, but now she is just two wins away from her main collegiate objective: a national title. To get there, she and UConn will have to take down top-seeded UCLA in the Final Four.

Key takeaways

The Final Four is set. This weekend will be one for the ages.

On Friday, April 4, No. 1-seed Texas will play No. 1-seed South Carolina (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), followed by No. 2-seed UConn competing against No. 1-seed UCLA (9 p.m. ET, ESPN). The title game then will take place on Sunday, April 6. With the quality of teams remaining, we’re sure to get some great games.