Like you, I agree… mostly. It may be a matter of who we listened to leading up to the tournament. There’s also two separate arguments layered across one another: was UConn favored, and was Paige an AA? I think you agree with me that they weren’t favored to win it all or even to get past Stanford.
At the start of the tournament, I think UConn wasn’t favored to get past NC St. That’s what being a #2 seed literally means. But there were also lots of
believers out there, and many who wanted to read the placement of the regional in Hartford as a sort of sign.
After the UCF game, however, some of that confidence was shaken. We scraped out a close win in a game that exposed again the outside shooting woes that had plagued us at our low points in the season. This is why some experts, including Gabe and Kristi and the staff at HerHoopStats picked Indiana in the Sweet Sixteen. They were not alone.
In any event, I think you have a case for thinking we were some sort of favorites in that region. But I don’t think it’s absolute. There’s room to disagree.
The same is true for your remarks about Paige:
Bueckers didn't make an AA team last year due to missing most of the year, but she was surely one of the top players in the country come tournament time even if she wasn't on award lists.
Yes, this is clearly true. But there’s more. Paige didn’t just miss a lot of games. She was also a clearly depleted player when she returned, with minutes restrictions, and often limping off the floor during games only to return later.
Prior to the Elite Eight game, she was primarily an inspirational player, and didn’t have to simply carry the team. She played really well against Indiana, but others played well too. Against NC St and Stanford, she revealed once again the Paige of her freshman year, the one who put the team on her shoulders and beat Tennessee and SCar that year with late game heroics. That was “peak” Paige. And she limped off the court at times, too.
But that Paige, the one who would play through injury and pain to win, needed great games from Liv and Aaliyah and Evina and Christyn and even Azzi to win those games, and she inspired them to play that way. Two years earlier, she engineered the two wins I mentioned even with not-so-great games from the others. She had a bum ankle then, but freshman Paige was not as depleted as sophomore Paige.
Was she AA caliber at that time? I’d say yes, but it would be a sentimental judgment. Yes, she hadn’t played enough games to really register her sustained excellence. But she was also clearly the MVP on a team she carried to the NC game. And it was heart warming to watch her, and inspirational too.
But finally, it wasn’t surprising at least in hindsight, that a depleted Paige couldn’t carry the team over the last challenge. For the second time, she wasn’t quite enough to get us all the way when her team couldn’t support her. In the first season it seemed to be youth and inexperience that undid the others, in the second it may have been injury and illness.
Every time Paige steps onto a basketball court, she is an AA in spirit. But she isn’t always able to bring her broken body along. This is why we all long to see the healthy season — just to see the full resplendent glory of who Paige really is.
seeds are based on what a team has accomplished leading up to the NCAA tournament, not an indication of how people predict they will do. So while being a 2 seed usually means the 1 seed is expected to beat you, this isn't always the case, and it was not the case last year.
I forget exactly why I included this quotation. I guess I think seeds are really both things — they’re earned by prior accomplishments in the regular season, NET, etc., but also express some expectation of what will make for the beast matchups. You’re right to say they’re not predictions, and also to concede that they express what is widely expected. In this, I think we agree.
Sorry for the long post. You gave me a lot to think about.
