{"id":698501,"date":"2026-04-04T21:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/698501\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T21:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T21:48:14","slug":"three-bold-predictions-for-womens-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/698501\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Bold Predictions for Women\u2019s National Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you read our last set of bold predictions<\/a> ahead of Friday\u2019s women\u2019s Final Four, you\u2019ll notice at no point did we guess that UConn coach Geno Auriemma would confront South Carolina coach Dawn Staley<\/a> postgame.<\/p>\n

Yes, March Madness has a way of surprising. The Gamecocks\u2019 clinical 62\u201348 victory over the Huskies<\/a> was a legitimate stunner, as was UCLA\u2019s ugly 51\u201344 win over Texas<\/a> from an aesthetics standpoint. That leaves two teams to battle for all the marbles on Easter Sunday in Phoenix: a South Carolina program that has won two of the last four national championships, and a Bruins team that hadn\u2019t made a Final Four until last year.<\/p>\n

Here are three final bold predictions for this year\u2019s much-anticipated championship showdown.<\/p>\n

Lauren Betts again leads UCLA in scoring\u2014and it\u2019s not that close<\/p>\n

That the Bruins center, the team\u2019s leading scorer each of the last three seasons, would lead UCLA in scoring in the national championship is not a huge surprise. What will surprise: Betts will lead the Bruins by a significant margin. This wouldn\u2019t have shocked last year\u2014in 2025, she led UCLA in scoring by 7.4 points per game, and accounted for 26 of the Bruins\u2019 51 points in a blowout Final Four loss to UConn.<\/p>\n

However, UCLA has become a more well-rounded team in 2026. Guard Kiki Rice is averaging career highs in points, rebounds and field-goal percentage. Forward Gabriela Jaquez is also averaging a career-best 13.3 points per game. It is a testament to the strength of the Gamecocks that the Bruins will have to operate as a bit of a one-woman show Sunday, but Betts is more than up to the task.<\/p>\n

Raven Johnson bounces back in huge fashion, scoring 20<\/p>\n

The All-American South Carolina guard has two primary purposes\u2014to set the table and defend\u2014and she excels at both of them. Her 5.2 assists per game ranked sixth in the SEC this season, and she finished third in defensive box plus\/minus. Against TCU in the Elite Eight<\/a>, she handed out six assists and pulled down eight rebounds while scoring 10 points on 4-for-12 shooting.\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite her strong all-around play and ability to score the basketball, Johnson has topped 20 points just once this season\u2014in a 22-point outing against LSU in the SEC tournament semifinals<\/a> on March 7. There\u2019s a lesson to be drawn from there: the Tigers, like UCLA, were a stronger offensive team than they were a defensive team and goaded the Gamecocks into a high-scoring contest. That drew out the scorer in Johnson, who will render her 1-for-6 outing in the Final Four a distant memory with a potent showing Sunday.<\/p>\n

Despite a small spread and two evenly matched teams, South Carolina wins by double digits<\/p>\n

Can a top 20 defense in the country be a weak point? Per College Basketball Reference, the Bruins are 16th in the country with a defensive rating of 81.4. The Gamecocks are fourth at 77.7. UCLA has the edge in offensive rating, but it\u2019s smaller. We\u2019ve already established that this is going to be a high-scoring contest; the Bruins\u2019 40.9% shooting clip Friday was their third-worst of the season and should be viewed as an outlier\u2014somewhat.<\/p>\n

What the Longhorns proved Friday is that it is possible to slow UCLA\u2019s attack with focused defense\u2014Texas hounded the Bruins so thoroughly that it probably would\u2019ve won had forward Madison Booker not endured a 3-for-23 shooting slog. If we assume no South Carolina player has a Booker-like stinker, and the Gamecocks clamp Jaquez and Rice while conceding an effective scoring day to Betts, this feels like South Carolina\u2019s championship to lose\u2014and another feather in the cap of the great Staley.<\/p>\n

More March Madness from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you read our last set of bold predictions ahead of Friday\u2019s women\u2019s Final Four, you\u2019ll notice at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-698501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116348643177776064","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}