NCAA Women: The Aussie women dancing in 2022
A bumper crop of 22 Aussies will take part in this year's NCAA Division I Tournament.
With well in excess of 100 Aussies in NCAA Division I women’s basketball, a bumper crop of players in the NCAA Tournament was expected, with 16 teams featuring 22 Aussies earning berths to the 68-team Big Dance. The teams are spread throughout the seedings and regions of the bracket as a range of players from Opals and Gems to college veterans and emerging talents all get their chance to perform on the biggest stage. Agnes Emma-Nnopu and defending national champions Stanford are the sole 1-seed with an Aussie on the roster, but six of the teams sit on the 5-seed line or higher, so there are certainly plenty of teams with opportunities to reach the Final Four.
However, there are also plenty of opportunities for teams to upset the apple cart, with teams like Buffalo already having history of Aussies doing exactly that in previous seasons, and there are several intriguing storylines that could develop depending on how the tournament plays out.
The first Aussie to feature this year will be Chloe Storer of Incarnate Word as the inaugural First Four tips off on Thursday morning in Australia, whilst the first round gets started in the early hours of Saturday. Early matches will be shown on watchESPN, available with a Foxtel or Fetch TV login.
A tournament doesn’t exist without teams though, so let’s take a look at the 16 that fans of Aussie hoops will be following this March…
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