March Madness live updates: Iowa takes on South Carolina in 2024 ...

Dawn Staley has been here before — the Gamecocks inimitable leader is one of women’s basketball’s most decorated individuals and has led South Carolina to four straight Final Fours and two total national titles, as is looking for a third today. 

Staley, who has been in coaching for more than two decades, also has extensive Final Four experience as a player, leading her Virginia team in the late '80s and early '90s to three Final Fours and one title game. Staley averaged 16.3 points per game across her four-year college career before a much-celebrated professional career for Team USA, the American Basketball League and ultimately the WNBA.

Staley entered the college coaching ranks as coach at Temple, where the Owls made six NCAA tournaments before leaving for South Carolina, where she’s been since 2008. In total, Staley coached Gamecock squads have been to six Final Fours.

CLEVELAND — From the noise, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse sounds like an Iowa home game, despite being a neutral site.

The NCAA final between the Hawkeyes and South Carolina Gamecocks has been hugely hyped, in part due to Iowa star Clark.

South Carolina can earn the 10th perfect season in Division 1 basketball tournament history with a win over Iowa, having never lost a game this season.

Caitlin Clark needs no introduction, and needed less than 5 minutes to record 13 points in her final collegiate game. This burst out of the gate for the Iowa senior is particularly notable because during Friday night’s Final Four, it took an entire half for her to get to just six points.

Clark's done it from all over the court, already with two three pointers, points from the paint and in the mid-range.

Kate Martin with the Hawkeyes sunk a three to earn Iowa the first points on the board after South Carolina won the tip-off and missed its first shot.

The women of NASA are holding the American flag on the court during the national anthem minutes before tipoff.

"@astro_watkins and some of the incredible women at NASA kicked off the @MarchMadnessWBB Championship Game!" NASA administrator Bill Nelson posted on X.

"They represent our amazing workforce who enable us to inspire through discovery."

Jesse Kirsch and Will Ujek

CLEVELAND — The crowd in the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse is clearly pro-Iowa, proving to be far louder as chants of "Go Hawks" echo throughout the arena with the band playing in the background during team warmups on the court.

For Iowa to win its first national championship here are a few keys:

Clark effect

Clark has always seemed to play her best on the brightest stage. She had 41 points, eight assists and six rebounds in the win over South Carolina last year in the Final Four. Her coach has run out of words to describe her brilliance on the court. She’ll need to have one more big game for Iowa to have any hope of capping off her historic career with a national championship. South Carolina has the length and athleticism as well as the depth to make Clark work for her shots.

Rebounding

Iowa averages 41.6 rebounds a game, about five less than South Carolina. The Hawkeyes can’t let South Carolina dominate the boards like they did last year when the Gamecocks outrebounded them 49-25. This season they’ve punished opponents with easy putbacks and that would be tough for Iowa to overcome.

“I think going into that game last year, to say we’re going to beat South Carolina on the glass is probably something that’s not going to happen every single time we play them. But you have to be able to manage it the best you can,” Clark said. “And I think we did that versus LSU, and that’s where you get confidence from is just you kind of weather the storms on the glass, you try to come up with big ones when you can.”

For South Carolina to win its third national championship and second in three seasons here are a few keys:

Inside dominance

South Carolina has a distinct advantage inside led by 6-foot-7 center Kamilla Cardoso. She had 14 points and 14 rebounds in the semifinal meeting last season. She’s only gotten better. It’s not just Cardoso as the Gamecocks have other talented post players like Ashlyn Watkins and Chloe Kitts.

Depth

The Gamecocks routinely have dominated their opponents with outstanding play off the bench. South Carolina reserves are outscoring their opponents by 27.6 points in the postseason and 21.9 on the year. The Gamecocks have seven players averaging more than eight points a game, and in Friday’s win over N.C. State, the reserves had 30 points and 25 rebounds. Iowa got only three points from its reserves in the win over UConn.

“We pick ’em off the bench, and we didn’t miss a beat,” Raven Johnson said. “And that’s what makes us a great team.”

The NCAA women’s basketball national championship is set to smash viewership records as star players and greater TV coverage drive more fans than ever to the sport.

On Saturday, TickPick said the “get-in” price for today's women’s final was $555 — a record.

Read the full story here.

Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark was invited to Team USA’s women’s basketball team training camp, but her team’s appearance in the Final Four and championship berth meant that she couldn’t attend.

Iowa beat Colorado on March 30 and LSU two days later to advance to the Final Four game held Friday, when they beat UConn 71-69. The training camp was held Wednesday to Friday. 

The training camp is one step in Team USA’s process for selecting members to play for USA in Paris this summer, the Olympics said in its announcement of the invitation.

Clark said last week that she was honored to be extended the invitation.

“People that are on that roster are people that I idolize and have idolized growing up. Just to be extended a camp invite is something you have to be proud of and celebrate and enjoy,” she said, according to The Associated Press.

It's been quite the season for Caitlin Clark.

The Hawkeyes guard spend her senior year sinking threes and breaking records. Here's a look at all of the titles she now holds as she heads into her final college basketball game, according to the NCAA.

CLEVELAND — With less than an hour to go before the game starts, crowds are pouring in to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

Iowa guard Gabbie Marshall said Saturday she received “hate comments” from people upset about her role in a much-discussed foul call late in the Hawkeyes’ Final Four win over UConn.

Marshall responded by “kind of” deleting her social media apps from her phone, she said.

Referees called Huskies forward Aaliyah Edwards for an illegal screen on Marshall with 3.9 seconds remaining and UConn trailing by one. The Huskies never got the ball back as Iowa held on for a 71-69 victory Friday night and a spot in Sunday’s title game against unbeaten South Carolina.

Marshall was trying to guard UConn star Paige Bueckers when Edwards attempted to set a screen that would have freed up space for Bueckers to get off a shot. Edwards was not set — as the rules stipulate — when Marshall arrived, with the 5-foot-9 Marshall catching a portion of the 6-3 Edwards’ left elbow.

The contact was enough to draw a whistle, and Marshall was animated in her reaction, pointing down the court as if to say “our ball.”

The sequence drew plenty of criticism from fans and onlookers.

Raven Johnson couldn’t stop herself. One viewing of South Carolina’s loss to Iowa in the Final Four last spring would lead to another. And another. And another.

The image of Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark waving Johnson off when the Gamecocks guard had the ball at the top of the key, as if to say “no threat,” became seared into Johnson’s mind. It hurt in ways that left Johnson wondering if she even wanted to do this anymore.

And still, she couldn’t hit pause. Or delete.

“People were like ‘Can you stop watching that game?’” Johnson said yesterday. “And I was like ‘I can’t, I just can’t.’”

It wasn’t until senior Laeticia Amihere basically staged an intervention that Johnson found the strength to move on.

“I don’t even know how she got in my room,” Johnson said. “I thought I locked the door. But she got me closer to God ... She’s really the one that really helped me get over that hump.”

A year later, Johnson believes she’s a different player. One eager for a chance at redemption on Sunday when the unbeaten Gamecocks face Clark and the Hawkeyes in the NCAA championship.

Looking back, Johnson doesn’t see all those viewings of the biggest loss of her still burgeoning career as some form of punishment. She has reframed those dark days. They weren’t torture, even if it might have felt like it at the time amid all the tears. She was growing, even if she wasn’t aware of it.

“I think I was learning from the game, learning what I could have done better, what the team could have done better,” Johnson said. “Looking at how they scouted us. Looking at how they played me. Looking at how they played my team.”

Johnson doesn’t blame Clark for giving her an ocean of space to let it fly, knowing she likely wouldn’t. It’s what Johnson would have done if the player she was guarding made just 24% of her 3-pointers, as she did as a freshman.

It didn’t matter that Johnson actually played well that night, scoring 13 points and making half of her six shots from behind the 3-point arc. She wasn’t a threat from the outside. Not consistently anyway, and she knew it.

Even worse, so did Clark.

A year later, things have changed. Johnson is 7 of 13 from 3 during the NCAA Tournament. She knocked down three of her five attempts from behind the arc in a blowout win over North Carolina State in the Final Four on Friday.

They were looks she might not have taken — heck, she didn’t take — a year ago. It’s unlikely Clark will treat her so dismissively in a rematch 12 months in the making.

“She got in the gym, and she got better, and I admire that,” Clark said. “I think that’s what makes great players great. And that’s exactly what she did.”

Johnson allowed there was a time, however brief, in the aftermath of the loss when she considered “quitting.” She never took those concerns to South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. Maybe she didn’t have to.

Staley understands the young women that arrive on campus as 18-year-olds will evolve during their time with the program. Yes, having the game’s biggest star humiliate you on the sport’s biggest stage — as South Carolina’s Bree Hall put it — was difficult. Yet Staley never worried about Johnson’s ability to turn the experience into an opportunity to grow.

“She’s in such a learning phase of her life,” Staley said. “She’s open to learning -- not just basketball, but history. She’s learning what she likes. She’s learning a pathway of who she wants to be. And she’s unafraid to go out there to say or do some things that, it will rock you a little bit, it will make you laugh, but it is who she’s becoming.”

The next step, a vital one, awaits against the Hawkeyes. Johnson admits she was “definitely hoping” for another shot at Iowa. However it goes, she is unlikely to watch it “100 times,” though she has no regret on the path she took to get back to this moment.

“Like Coach says if you don’t watch the bad stuff why watch the good stuff?” Johnson said.

And there has been plenty of “good stuff” during the 37-game win streak that Johnson and the Gamecocks will carry into the final. Her assists are up this season. Rebounds and shooting percentage, too.

The player who was “so nervous” to go out and play last spring hardly looks it this time around. The notes of encouragement she received from Amihere in the aftermath of the Iowa loss have stuck with her. The cards talked of confidence and courage. Of what it takes for a flower to bloom.

The seeds were planted during that time spent holed up in her room, a time whose lessons have propelled her forward.

“Like it made me mentally strong,” Johnson said. “I feel like if I can handle that, I can handle anything in life.”

Iowa’s 71-69 win against UConn in Friday’s NCAA Final Four game drew 14.2 million viewers, the most in women’s college basketball history, according to ESPN.

The matchup produced the largest audience for a basketball game — college or professional — and was the second-best non-football telecast ever for the network.

Friday’s figure is higher than every World Series and NBA Finals game last year. ESPN said the game peaked at 17 million viewers.

Iowa vs. UConn bested a viewership record set just days prior when the Hawkeyes defeated LSU in the Elite Eight on Monday with 12.3 million viewers.

Read the full story here.

Last night, the last standing men's teams battled it out on the court to try to earn their spot in the championship game on Monday, but only two prevailed.

In the first game, Purdue ultimately stymied N.C. State's Cinderella story and knocked out the 11-seed to advance to the championship. The Boilermakers held a steady lead throughout the entire game, proving their worth as a top seed.

Then UConn and Alabama went back and forth on the court in a tough match that saw No. 1 UConn advance to the championship game, sending the No. 4 Crimson Tide back down South.

On Monday, we'll see a battle of No. 1 seeds in Glendale, Arizona, and some real on-court talent from rising stars Zach Edey and Grant Nelson. While UConn has a bit of an edge, according to the bookmakers, it could be anyone's game.

This women’s college basketball season, which has pushed the sport to unprecedented popularity, will conclude today with a dream NCAA title game matchup — Iowa and superstar Caitlin Clark against unbeaten South Carolina.

Clark, who has become something of a national treasure while shattering scoring records, will play for the NCAA title that eluded her last season with a loss to LSU.

For the Gamecocks, it’s a chance to avenge their only defeat last season — 77-73 to Clark in the semifinals. Clark scored a Final Four-record 41 points as Iowa ended South Carolina’s 42-game winning streak.

The Iowa Hawkeyes and South Carolina Gamecocks will play for the championship title at 3 p.m. ET.

The game will air on ABC.