What to know for women's March Madness

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The women's March Madness tournament tips off this weekend

After a one-year hiatus, college basketball's annual single-knockout frenzy returned yesterday (sort of) with the four play-in games for the NCAA men's tournament. And it truly got going today with the start of the 64-team men's bracket in the Indianapolis area.

Another 64 teams will join the mayhem Sunday when the women's event opens in Texas. Here are some things to know about it:

UConn is the top-ranked team.

No surprise there. Connecticut is the most successful program in the history of women's college basketball. The school has won the tournament a record 11 times — including 10 in a 17-year span from 2000-2016 that ended with four consecutive championships. UConn fell in the semifinals of the last three tournaments, but it still managed to extend its Final Four appearance streak to an incredible 12 years.

The Huskies head into this year's tournament with a 24-1 record and one of the game's biggest stars. Freshman guard Paige Bueckers is averaging 19.7 points and 6.1 assists per game and making close to half of her three-point attempts. She's the only player in UConn women's history to score 30 or more points in three straight games — which is saying something when the program has produced future WNBA stars like Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore. Bueckers also set the UConn record for assists in a game with 14.

UConn also has a key Canadian player in freshman forward Aaliyah Edwards. She averaged 10.2 points and 5.4 rebounds off the bench this season to win her conference's Sixth Woman of the Year Award.

But UConn is not the favourite.

Somewhat surprisingly, the betting market has No. 2-ranked Stanford favoured over UConn. They're on opposite sides of the bracket, and no one else's odds of winning the tournament are even close, so a Stanford-UConn showdown seems to be in the offing for the April 4 championship game.

Stanford went 25-2 this season and is coached by Tara VanDerveer, who in December broke the legendary Pat Summitt's record for most wins in women's college basketball history. Meanwhile, UConn's own big-name coach, Geno Auriemma, is in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19. He claimed to be symptom-free but is expected to miss the first round or two.

Stanford is led by senior guard Kiana Williams, who's averaging team highs in points (14.3) and assists (2.9), and the Cardinal have three other players averaging double figures in points. They also have a Canadian player near the end of their bench. Senior forward Alyssa Jerome is averaging seven minutes of playing time, 1.8 points and 1.1 rebounds.

There's a Canadian player on each of the four No. 1 seeds.

In addition to UConn's Edwards and Stanford's Jerome, freshman guard Rebecca Demeke averages about 11 minutes and three points a game for North Carolina State, and sophomore forward Laeticia Amihere averages around 17 minutes, six points and five rebounds for South Carolina.

Amihere, who's listed at 6-foot-4, is believed to be the first Canadian woman to dunk in a game. She did it four years ago, as a 15-year-old high schooler.

Amihere and Edwards are two of four players in the tournament who were invited to the Canadian national team's virtual training camp last month. The others are Merissah Russell of 2-seeded Louisville and Shaina Pellington of 3-seeded Arizona. They're all in the running to play in the Tokyo Olympics, where the fourth-ranked Canadian team has a shot to make the podium for the first time.

In total, 27 Canadians are on the rosters of women's tournament teams — two more than in the men's. Read more about Amihere, Edwards and the other Canadian women to watch during March Madness in this story by CBC Sports' Myles Dichter.

Quickly...

The NCAA is under fire for unequal-looking facilities at the men's and women's tournaments. A Stanford women's coach put out an Instagram post showing a photo of a rather sad-looking set of dumbbells and a pile of yoga mats in the women's bubble, next to a pic of a sprawling and much-better equipped workout room in the men's. The NCAA released a statement saying the difference was due to "limited space" but that it was "actively working" to beef up the women's amenities. Read more about the controversy here.

And finally…

The NFL is truly in a league of its own. Its new set of U.S. TV/streaming rights contracts are reportedly worth $113 billion US over 11 years. That's an average of about $10.3 billion a year — up (way up) from $5.9 billion under the current deals, which expire after the 2022 season. These numbers are hard to wrap your head around, so let's break them down a bit. The new deal works out to about $322 million dollars per team per year. Comparing that to what teams in other sports get from their leagues' national TV contracts isn't really fair because NHL, NBA and MLB franchises also have their own local deals. All NFL games are sold nationally by the league. But, just for fun, the NHL's current exclusive U.S. national rights deal with NBC averages out to just $6.5 million per team per year. And, according to the latest valuations by Forbes, three entire NHL franchises are worth less than what each NFL team will make every year from their new TV deal.

This weekend on CBC Sports

Winter Olympic sports: CBCSports.ca and the CBC Sports app are live streaming the World Cup season finales in alpine skiing, ski and snowboard cross, and ski and snowboard halfpipe. Plus, the second-last World Cup stops for ski and snowboard slopestyle. See the full schedule here.

Olympic women's handball qualifiers: The final six spots in Tokyo are being decided at three qualifying tournaments involving a total of 10 teams. Canada is not one of them and will not be in the Olympics. See the live streaming schedule here for match times.

Road to the Olympic Games: Saturday's show opens with the snowboard big air world championships in Aspen, where Canadians Laurie Blouin and Mark McMorris swept the gold medals in the women's and men's events. It also includes snowboard cross, snowboard slopestyle, ski slopestyle and alpine skiing. Watch it from noon-6 p.m. ET on the CBC TV network, CBCSports.ca or the CBC Sports app. Sunday's show features World Cup events in ski cross and ski halfpipe. Stream it from noon-2 p.m. ET or check local listings for TV times.

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