SI:AM | The Women’s Final Four Is Running It Back

Good morning, I’m Tyler Lauletta, filling in for Dan Gartland, who was ruled out on an overturned strike call thanks to the ABS challenge system. Good system!

In today’s SI:AM:

🐻 Nicklaus’s 1986 Masters Win

🏈 NFL Owners Meetings

🏀 SI’s Men’s All-Americans

Same Four Teams, Two Different Rematches in Women’s Final Four

And then there were four.

On Monday night, the Texas Longhorns and South Carolina Gamecocks took care of business against lower-seeded opponents to win their respective regions and secure their spots in the Final Four in Phoenix.

Joining Texas and South Carolina are UConn and UCLA. If those teams sound familiar, it’s because they are—not only did they enter the tournament as the top-seeded team in each region, but they also were the exact foursome that reached the final weekend of the tournament last year.

In 2025, the Huskies beat the Bruins and the Gamecocks beat the Longhorns before UConn ultimately lifted the title. This year’s Final Four isn’t an exact mirror of last year’s. Still, between the 2025 championship game and one of the biggest regular-season games we saw way back in November, it provides us with two extremely compelling—and extremely different—rematches.

No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 1 UConn—Friday, 7 p.m. ET; ESPN

No need to oversell this one. Our first game of the Final Four is a rematch of last year’s title game, which the Huskies won 82–59. While the championship served as the exclamation point at the end of an incredible college career for Paige Bueckers before she left for the WNBA, it was actually two of this year’s stars, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong, who led the Huskies shooting that night, putting up 24 points each.

That win was UConn’s 16th in a row. Since then, they’ve won another 38 without dropping a game. If they can win two more to move to 40–0 and the title, this team has a strong case as the greatest in a long line of great UConn teams to have played in Storrs over the years. Their opponents have played the Huskies to a less-than-10-point loss just once this year, and Notre Dame was the first team to come within 20 of them in 10 games—the Irish lost by 18.

Next up to challenge the Huskies is Dawn Staley’s South Carolina. Asked what her team could do to attack UConn, Staley kept it simple. “You’ve got to keep the game close. You’ve got to be able to score,” Staley told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt after the Gamecocks’ win on Monday night. “You’ve just got to try to go pound-for-pound and be unafraid of playing against an undefeated team. You might get them on a bad night, and we’re hoping Friday is a bad night for them.”

Easier said than done, but Staley has taken her fair share of undefeated seasons deep into the year. In last year’s title game, South Carolina wasn’t able to follow the above plan laid out by Staley, taking a 10-point deficit into halftime that extended to 20 by the start of the fourth quarter. If this year’s matchup is going to be different, the Gamecocks will need to find their rhythm fast.

With five different players averaging double-digit points, the Gamecocks have plenty of talent that can find that rhythm, potentially break out with a big game on Friday—it’s just going to have to be a pretty dang big game.

No. 1 Texas vs. No. 1 UCLA—Friday, 9:30 p.m. ET; ESPN

Both teams lost their Final Four matchups last year, but this year, one of them will get to play for the title. On one side, you have UCLA, which has lost just one game all season and has since won 29 straight games. On the other hand, you have Texas, the only team that beat the Bruins this year when the teams met back in November.

Both of these teams have obviously grown a lot since that matchup, which Texas won 76–65, but the star players will remain the same.

What does UCLA have to do to avoid a repeat of its only loss of the season? Nothing stands out more than turnovers. The Bruins gave the ball up 18 times against the Longhorns, more than in any other game this season. Cut that number down closer to their season average, and the game could have flipped. They will also want to contain Texas guard Lori Harmon, who put up 26 points for the Longhorns in their first meeting. That scoring outburst was a bit out of nowhere—it was her season high by 10 points—but it would sting for UCLA to get crushed by the same formula twice.

As for Texas, there is no threat quite like Madison Booker, who put up 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists in the previous meeting between these two sides, and that came on a pretty rough shooting night by her standards.

Having all four one-seeds reach the Final Four isn’t something to get used to, or that we necessarily want to see become a regular thing—there’s a reason they call it March Madness. But this year, it feels right. These are the four best teams in women’s college basketball, and the champion will have to outlast the rest.

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The top five…

…things I saw last night:

5. Miguel Rojas is refusing to let this run score.

4. LeBron and Bronny running plays together is not going to be cool.

3. Did you know the NCAA regional trophy also works well as a phone stand?

2. Victor Wembanyama had the fastest double-double in NBA history, and also did this.

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