Brittney Griner and Baylor’s path to a second straight national championship will have a familiar feel.
Then again, so will the whole NCAA women’s basketball tournament. For the first time ever, the top four seeds are the same for consecutive seasons. Baylor, Connecticut, Notre Dame and Stanford all earned No. 1 spots when the field was announced.
Unlike the men’s side, where it was a topsy-turvy season with major upsets seemingly every week, women’s basketball hasn’t had the same parity. The top six teams in the final Associated Press poll only had two losses outside of each other, the fewest by far since writers began voting for the AP’s No. 1 in the 1994-95 season.
The women’s basketball madness gets started Saturday — the first step en route to the Final Four, which begins April 7 in New Orleans.