The Gamecocks were chosen as the No. 1 overall seed and will play in one of the two Albany regions. The rest of the field will look to top the Gamecocks, who enter March Madness having won all 32 of their games. Although this year\u2019s group has an entirely new starting lineup from the South Carolina team that also entered last year\u2019s NCAA Tournament undefeated, the current iteration sports an offensive and defensive rating that ranks top-two nationally.<\/p>\n

Coach Dawn Staley has relied on her roster\u2019s depth, with five players averaging double-figure scoring and nine averaging double-digit minutes. Senior center Kamilla Cardoso, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year and a first-team All-SEC selection, has been central to their success on both ends. Cardoso, however, will miss South Carolina\u2019s first NCAA Tournament game after being ejected for fighting late in its SEC tournament championship victory.<\/p>\n

The Gamecocks are looking to advance to their fourth consecutive Final Four, and a national title victory would be their second in three years.<\/p>\n

Below are the full matchups in Albany 1:<\/p>\n

No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 16 Sacred Heart\/Presbyterian<\/p>\n

No. 8 North Carolina vs. No. 9 Michigan State<\/p>\n

No. 4 Indiana vs. No. 13 Fairfield<\/p>\n

No. 5 Oklahoma vs. No. 12 Florida Gulf Coast<\/p>\n

No. 3 Oregon State vs. No. 14 Eastern Washington<\/p>\n

No. 6 Nebraska vs. No. 11 Texas A&M<\/p>\n

No. 2 Notre Dame vs. No. 15 Kent State<\/p>\n

No. 7 Ole Miss vs. No. 10 Marquette<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

GO FURTHER<\/p>\n

South Carolina nabs women\u2019s NCAA Tournament top seed; Iowa, USC, Texas get other No. 1 seeds<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the women\u2019s NCAA Tournament bracket started its reveal Sunday night, there was little uncertainty about who would be the field\u2019s top seed. South Carolina, the SEC\u2019s regular-season and conference tournament champion, is looking to become only the 10th team to complete an undefeated campaign with a national title. The Gamecocks were chosen as the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}