Highlights from the final night of second-round play in the women's NCAA tournament:
• No. 4 Iowa State 60 - No. 12 Wisconsin-Green Bay 56
The Phoenix actually led at the half! By five whole points! WGB's Kayla Tetschlag had more points on her own than any two Cyclone players put together! She's only human, and there's only one of her, however, and so Iowa State knocks off the lowest-seeded team remaining in the tournament. Nobody likes teams that do this. Especially the basketball gods. You can tell, because Iowa State has a date with the UConn buzzsaw on Sunday. Bye, Iowa State. (Nothing against them personally, but wouldn't we all have much preferred to see a 12-seed team with their league's first bid take on UConn? You never know.)
• No. 1 Nebraska 83 - No. 8 UCLA 70
Anyone interested in stopping the No. 1s in this tournament? [crickets] Anyone interested in building a healthy lead over the newest No. 1 team only to fritter it away and see their own tourney dreams dashed? UCLA, hey! The pride of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Nikki Caldwell is nurturing a great program out in Westwood, and had four players in double figures tonight, but an 11-3 lead early on turned into a 10-point slide by the end of the first half, and the Huskers never looked back.
• No. 3 Oklahoma 60 - No. 11 Arkansas-Little Rock 44
Dammit, can one hyphenated upstart survive the neat, tidy, and apparently impenetrable seeding order of the women's bracket? Not tonight. A paltry 13 first-half points from ALR aren't going to get you anywhere, even against Georgetown or Baylor. Abi Olajuwon had a double-double evening (yep, she's one of those Olajuwons), which is nice for her. Oh, and one three-point shot went in all game. One. ALR was 0-16 and OU 1-7. Can we bounce both these teams and keep Green Bay alive instead? That'd be all right. Just terrible.
• No. 11 San Diego State 64 - No. 3 West Virginia 55
Will you look at that. One got through! The next-highest seeded teams in the Sweet 16 are 7-spots Gonzaga and Mississippi, and to make the Eight SDSU has only to get by Duke, who were very nearly ejected by a subpar LSU team over the weekend. It could happen. (Note to She-Devils: Jene Morris and Quenese Davis were responsible for about two-thirds of the points scored by SDSU tonight, and so far this tournament it hasn't really occurred to any one to put bodies on them them.) (And a note to those wondering why on earth they should care about a team with "State" on their jerseys: Please understand that, as (presumably) a fan of entertaining sports coverage, you want a team called the "Aztecs" to remain on the air as long as possible, because the more games they play on television, the likelier it is for some announcer to make a human sacrifice joke.
For liveblogs, commentary, and other fine tourney coverage, visit SBN's Swish Appeal.