Can anyone stop South Carolina? Breaking down the women's NCAA tournament

Dawn Staley's South Carolina team has been ranked No. 1 for 37 weeks. The team hasn't lost since the SEC title game last year, winning 38 straight games since — including last year's championship at Target Center — and all 32 this year. S.C. is looking to become the first repeat winner since Connecticut won four straight from 2013 to '16. There have been nine undefeated champions in this tournament, six from UConn. Will S.C. be the 10th?

The easy answer: The one South Carolina is in. Seriously, Greenville 1 is tough, with Indiana, Utah and LSU as the top three seeds. But the top Seattle bracket gets the nod. Virginia Tech is on a roll, but they'll have to get past the likes of Ohio State, UConn, Tennessee and Iowa State to make it to Dallas. UConn made it to the championship game last year as a No. 2 seed.

Fans will get a glimpse at four seniors expected to go in the top five of the WNBA draft in Aliyah Boston (South Carolina), Diamond Miller (Maryland), Haley Jones (Stanford), Maddy Siegrist (Villanova) and Rickea Jackson (Tennessee). Lynx fans, in particular, will get a chance to form their opinion on who their team should take at No. 2 after Boston, as expected, goes No. 1. The super-athletic Miller? Jones? Someone else? Let the speculation begin.

A top three seed has won every women's NCAA championship. This year the Big Ten Conference has four such teams: No. 1 seed Indiana, No. 2 seeds Maryland and Iowa and No. 3 seed Ohio State. Carolyn Peck led Purdue to the 1999 national title, the only Big Ten team to do so. Isn't it about time one of the deepest conferences in the land got some more hardware?

You can never call UConn an underdog, but in February it looked like injuries would waylay the Huskies. But now they've got Azzi Fudd back and are rolling.