Leigha Brown Hits Her Stride as Michigan Earns First Trip to the Women's Sweet 16

Plus, Iowa's Caitlin Clark couldn't be stopped against Kentucky and Stanford contained Natasha Mack in a comfortable win over Oklahoma State.

As the final buzzer sounded in the Alamodome on Tuesday, Michigan guard Leigha Brown ran to embrace her coach, Kim Barnes Arico.

“This is why I came here,” the junior told her as they hugged. “I believed that we could do this, and I believed in you.”

No. 6 seed Michigan had just knocked off No. 3 seed Tennessee for the program’s first trip to the Sweet 16—a victory that would have seemed unfathomable when Barnes Arico took over the program in 2012. At the time, Michigan had qualified for the NCAA tournament just once in the last 11 seasons, and there had been few signs of forward progress. (In that one trip to the tourney, unsurprisingly, Michigan had been booted in the first round.) But Barnes Arico had worked to change the reputation of the program slowly, and on Tuesday, in her ninth year on campus, she saw the biggest win yet for Michigan.

The upset victory required a notable effort from Big Ten Player of the Year Naz Hillmon—19 points and 15 rebounds—who has been putting up such efforts all year. Beyond Hillmon, however, the team had one of its most balanced performances of the season. That included 23 points from Brown, who seems to have finally hit her stride after being sidelined this season for more than a month with issues related to COVID, and 14 from Hailey Brown. The Wolverines also benefited from Danielle Rauch's five steals.

It made for a statement win over a strong Tennessee team. But the Lady Vols struggled after their two biggest players were largely absent in the first half—Rennia Davis and Rae Burrell combined for just four points while shooting 2-for-12. While both got warmer in the third quarter, Tennessee never shrunk the gap below nine.

This marked the second game in a row where Leigha Brown has been the leading scorer for Michigan. (She scored a near-career-high 28 in the first-round win over Florida Gulf Coast.) It’s a welcome sign from a player who has not been able to have a consistent presence on the court this year.

Brown missed four games in January after testing positive for COVID-19—only to see the program put on pause to deal with additional coronavirus cases before she could return. The disruption was difficult for the whole team, of course, which went three weeks without playing a game. But the timing meant that Brown’s layoff was longer, and she ultimately went 35 days not just without game action, but without so much as being able to step foot in a gym. When she returned in mid-February, she took some time to work back to the level she had been playing at before contracting the virus and sitting out for so long. But she seemed to take one big step forward with her performance against Florida Gulf Coast on Sunday and another Tuesday night against Tennessee.

“She’s back and she’s better than ever,” said Barnes Arico.

Brown’s 23 points included hitting 11-of-11 from the free-throw line. But her biggest impact on the floor is perhaps not what she does herself but what she does for her teammates—to take some of the pressure off National Player of the Year candidate Hillmon, to open up opportunities for everyone else, and to create more of the balanced attack that was on display Tuesday.

“She brings a spark. She brings energy and she brings offense,” said Hillmon. “The biggest thing with our team, and where we’re at our best, is when we have multiple scorers, and that’s one thing she does very well. I think it opens things up for everyone that she can penetrate and pass, score, and is an added defender… We’re definitely happy to have her back.”

The win was an emotional one for Hillmon. After a season that has been so full of individual accomplishments for her, this was one that belonged to the team, and a sign of the progress that she had originally hoped to be part of at Michigan under Barnes Arico.

“I believed that we could do something special here,” Barnes Arico said of arriving on campus almost a decade ago at Michigan. “They had done it in every other sport—softball is great, and football is great, and men’s basketball is great, and gymnastics and field hockey and tennis, and you can go on. Every sport there was great except one.”

That one, of course, was women’s basketball—but, it seems, no more.

“We’ve been talking a lot about building the foundation of our program,” said Hillmon. “And this is another building block.”

Courtesy of NCAA Photos

No. 5 seed Iowa 86, No. 4 seed Kentucky 72

First: Kentucky is a good team. Its 108.0 offensive rating, per Her Hoop Stats, is among some of the strongest in the country. Rhyne Howard is SEC Player of the Year. 

It’s important to keep all of that in mind. Because it was very easy to forget during Tuesday’s performance from Iowa’s Caitlin Clark. The freshman dropped 35 on the Wildcats—outscoring the entire team all on her own in the first half. If you thought she looked electric in the Hawkeyes’ first-round win over Central Michigan—when the broadcast showed her getting called “the most exciting player in college basketball” by none other than Sue Bird—she proved Tuesday that she can do even more.

No. 1 seed NC State 79, No. 8 seed South Florida 67

The Wolfpack had to play without senior starter Kayla Jones—who left the team’s first-round game with a knee injury and still does not have a set return date. That’s unfortunate, considering that Jones is like a “Swiss Army Knife,” in the words of coach Wes Moore: “She does everything well.”

But Jones’s absence provided an opportunity to step up for ACC Sixth Player of the Year Jada Boyd, who started in her stead, and the result was a well-distributed offense: All five starters finished in double figures. For the second game in a row, NC State got off to a rather slow start, trailing by one point at halftime Tuesday before locking in for the last two quarters. But Moore said he’s not particularly concerned about that, especially if they can continue to show a balanced offense, as they did on Tuesday.

“We’ve got to be able to do that, have balance, if we’re going to keep going deep,” Moore said.

No. 1 seed Stanford 73, No. 8 Oklahoma State 62

The key to beating Oklahoma State is containing Natasha Mack. Stanford did that better than any other team had this season.

Mack was limited to just two points in the first half—a jumper in the final minute—and her typically strong defense as the nation’s top shot-blocker was limited, too. Although she ultimately finished with a double-double, it was one of her toughest performances of the year, and overall No. 1 seed Stanford was able to cruise to a comfortable victory. 

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