2013 NCAA Women's Tournament: The Baylor Lady Bears are the #1 Overall Seed!

The Lady Bears will begin their pursuit (in earnest, I mean) of a second-consecutive NCAA Championship this weekend against Prairie View. The path to New Orleans will start in Waco before heading to Oklahoma City, and joining the Lady Bears in the OKC Regional are #2 Tennessee and #3 UCLA, giving Baylor the chance to become the second team ever, after last year's team, to win the Tournament out of Tennessee's region.

The fact that the Lady Bears were once again the #1-overall seed was nothing short of a foregone conclusion from the way they blitzed the Big 12 in regular season play and then again in the conference tournament, on top of winning 30 straight games this season. The only loss in the last 70+ came in a game where All-American and Wooden Award candidate Odyssey Sims was out with an injury. She's not now.

Anybody that starts a sentence about this Baylor team with "I know they're great/awesome/strong/amazing, but" needs to be shut down. They are not vulnerable anywhere before the Final Four, if there. Griner is simply too good, the entire team too focused, to allow a lesser team, of which there are many in the women's game, to jump up and get them. There are really only four or five elite teams in women's basketball in any given year, and this year is no exception. I feel totally comfortable predicting that we're going to be watching 5 games at least in this Tournament, and saying that the Lady Bears should be the absolute favorite to take it all. That's no disrespect to the other three #1 seeds-- UConn, Notre Dame, and Stanford-- that's just how good this Baylor team is.

Still, congratulations, Ladies! This is just another testament to the juggernaut program Kim Mulkey has built in Waco.

As usual, once we have a printable WBB Tournament bracket available, I'll update this thread.