For the second straight season the same quartet — South Carolina, Texas, UCLA and UConn — has advanced to the Final Four. Since UConn celebrated a title in Tampa a year ago, these four programs were widely regarded as the class of women's college basketball, and their regular-season credentials have held up: combined they are 143-7, and the closest of their NCAA games was UConn’s 12-point Elite Eight win over Notre Dame. UConn’s winning streak sits at 54 games.
This marks only the second time in tournament history that the identical four teams returned to the Final Four, and it’s the fifth occasion that all four No. 1 seeds reached the semifinals (1989, 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2026). Friday’s matchups in Phoenix are UConn vs. South Carolina at 7 p.m. ET — a rematch of the 2025 title game — and UCLA vs. Texas at 9:30 p.m. ET, a rematch of a Nov. 26 meeting in Las Vegas that Texas won. Here’s a look at each team and how they stack up heading into the weekend.
1) UConn Huskies Original seed: No. 1 overall (Fort Worth 1) Tournament path: UTSA 90-52 (R1); Syracuse 98-45 (R2); North Carolina 63-42 (S16); Notre Dame 70-52 (E8)
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