Until The Game Is One: Iowa WBB Receives Historic 1-Seed in March Madness

IOWA CITY — The generational talent has delivered another generational milestone.

Buoyed by reigning Player of the Year guard Caitlin Clark and a stellar group of experienced teammates, the No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes (28-4, Big Ten Tournament champions) were awarded a 1-seed in the Albany 2 region on Selection Sunday, the program's second-ever 1-seed and its first since 1992.

Iowa's fellow 1-seeds are South Carolina, USC and Texas. South Carolina joins Iowa in the Albany regional, while USC and Texas will be in the Portland brackets.

Iowa will face the winner of Thursday's First Four play-in game (8 PM CT, ESPN2) between 16-seed Holy Cross (20-12) of the Patriot League conference and 16-seed UT-Martin (16-16) of the Ohio Valley Conference. Iowa's first round game will be played on Saturday and is scheduled to tip off at 1 PM CT on ABC.

The full bracket is available here.

Even as Iowa came into the season ranked 3rd with All-Everything Clark back and somehow even better at basketball, the Hawkeyes' coronation as a 1-seed was by no means assured.

Iowa dropped a non-conference tilt with then-unranked Kansas State in its fourth game of the season; KSU would work its way up to #2 in the AP poll itself as late as January 29 before settling at No. 16 in the last AP Poll and a 4-seed in the Albany 2 region.

For most of February and March, Iowa tracked closer to a 2-seed (its seed for last year's Final Four run) or even a 3-seed in Charlie Creme's bracketology for ESPN. Only the Big Ten Tournament run, capped by a thrilling overtime victory over Nebraska, helped push the Hawkeyes ahead of Big Ten rival (and regular-season champion) Ohio State and future Big Ten foes UCLA and USC. LSU rounds out the 2-seeds.

Iowa weathered a rough patch of four games with starting guard Molly Davis hampered by injury late in the conference schedule, going 2-2 and dooming itself to a tie for second place in the B1G as Ohio State ripped off 16 straight victories in conference play.

Iowa's Senior Day win over OSU with College GameDay and Travis Scott in the house was enough to put Iowa back in position to pass the Buckeyes for 1-seed consideration, and Iowa's BTT title — coupled with OSU getting drubbed by Maryland in quarterfinal action, sending the Buckeyes into March Madness on a two-game losing streak — helped put the Hawkeyes back into 1-seed consideration.

Davis injured her knee in that OSU game, though, raising the same specter of doubt and cuing Big Ten opponents to throw a box-and-one defense at Clark and the Hawkeyes without the team's second-best creator on the court. Iowa cruised in the first two rounds of BTT action though, and took the Huskers' best shots in the title game before Clark's heroics (along with Kate Martin) helped win the day — and the banner.

"I think we do deserve a No. 1 seed," Bluder said after the win over Nebraska last Sunday. "If we don't get it, oh, well. It's okay. That's life. We can't control that. But I think it would just mean a lot to our program and how far we've come to have that recognition."

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Iowa is in the Albany 2 region, and if favorites win out, Iowa will have the following opponents for a return trip to the National Championship game in Cleveland:

First round: 16-seed Holy Cross or UT-Martin

Second round: 8-seed West Virginia

Sweet 16: 4-seed Kansas State

Elite 8: 2-seed UCLA

Final Four: Portland 3 region 1-seed USC

Championship Game: Albany 1 region 1-seed South Carolina

Additionally, LSU is the 3-seed in the Albany 2 region as well and a potential Elite 8 opponent for Iowa, should both teams advance that far.

Of course, if Iowa makes it back to the title game, the odds of this being its exact path are slim at best — which is a good thing. Even in the women’s tournament (historically friendlier to chalk than the men’s), upsets have a funny way of adding chaos to the mix. Iowa was a gleeful beneficiary of that chaos last season, facing no opponents placed higher than 5-seed Louisville before the Final Four.

Clark had a 41-point triple double in that win over Louisville, handily dispatching then-star Hailey Van Lith and the Cardinals; Van Lith has since transferred to LSU where she averages 12 points a game.

Paradoxically, aside from Holy Cross or UT-Martin thanks to the First Four play-in game, right now the surest bet of these six potential opponents seems to be the furthest away: South Carolina, who is still undefeated and looks as ready as ever to avenge Iowa's historic victory in the Final Four last season.

As mentioned, this is Iowa’s first top seed in the NCAA Tournament since 1992 — the heyday of former Iowa head coach and Hall-of-Famer C. Vivian Stringer.

Iowa was a 2-seed last season for its magical run to the National Championship; Stanford, the 1-seed in Iowa’s region that year, lost in the Round of 32 to Ole Miss, clearing Iowa’s path to the Final Four.

In 1992, the women’s tournament was only 48 teams, so as a 1-seed Iowa’s first game was against 8-seed Southwest Missouri State (now named Missouri State) — the Lady Bears pulled a shocking 61-60 overtime upset over Iowa en route to a Cinderella run to the Final Four.

Don't weep too hard for Stringer and the Hawkeyes, though; they made their first Final Four run in program history the very next year.

In addition to the regional pod, Carver-Hawkeye Arena will host a first-four NCAA Tournament game on Thursday for the first time in arena history. 16-seeds Holy Cross and UT-Martin will meet Thursday evening (8 PM CT, ESPN2) for the right to face Iowa on Saturday. Iowa's game against the winner of Holy Cross and UT-Martin is scheduled to tip off at 1 PM CT on Saturday, March 23, with TV coverage from ABC.