Gamecocks picked as top seed in early top 16 of NCAA Tournament

The Pac-12 has five teams in the NCAA women’s basketball selection committee’s early reveal of the top 16 seeds, led by Oregon, which was No. 4 on the list. The committee released its projection at halftime of Monday night’s games.

Joining Oregon from the Pac-12 are Stanford, Oregon State, UCLA and Arizona. The Wildcats are seeking their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2005.

Oregon’s home base in Eugene is about an hour and 45 minutes from the Portland Regional, and No. 3 overall seed Louisville is about 3½ hours from the Fort Wayne Regional in Indiana. In short, even without a traditional Northeast regional site to feed off UConn fandom, the tournament projects to have strong local draws for all its regionals.

UConn is No. 5 overall, which would put the Huskies as the No. 2 seed in Fort Wayne behind Louisville. That would repeat the seeding of last season’s Albany Regional, when No. 2 UConn defeated No. 1 Louisville to advance to the Huskies’ 12th consecutive Final Four.

Things could look different next month — the committee will do one additional reveal, on March 2 — but here are how the regionals project now.

Greenville: 1. South Carolina, 7. NC State, No. 11 UCLA, No. 15 Iowa The Gamecocks, with big contributions from their freshmen class, are currently leading the SEC at 9-0. South Carolina was the 2017 NCAA champion.

Dallas: 2. Baylor, 6. Stanford, 12. Gonzaga, 13. Arizona The defending national champion Lady Bears, who’ve dominated the Big 12 for the past decade, lead the league at 8-0.

Portland: 4. Oregon, 8. Maryland, 10. Mississippi State, 14. DePaul The Ducks are tied atop the Pac-12 with Stanford at 9-1; those teams will meet for the second time this season on Feb. 24. Oregon beat Mississippi State in the Portland Regional final last year.

Fort Wayne: 3. Louisville, 5. UConn, 9. Oregon State, 16. Northwestern The top three seeds here were all in the Albany Regional last year. Northwestern is seeking its second NCAA tournament appearance since 1997; the other was in 2015.

The top four seeds — which would be the No. 1 seeds — are all slotted into regionals that are within driving distance of the schools. South Carolina is the No. 1 overall seed and is in the Greenville Regional, about an hour and a half from the Gamecocks’ campus in Columbia, South Carolina. No. 2 Baylor, the top team in the Dallas Regional, is about the same distance from its campus in Waco, Texas.