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It was a nice and fun Monday for everyone as we waited around for the NCAA women’s basketball selection show on ESPN at 6pm Central.
And then someone in Bristol got twitchy with the buttons and accidentally shoved the entire women’s bracket out onto televisions across America.
In what can only be described as remarkable, the #NCAAW bracket was just on ESPNU by mistaken. I’ve managed to grab three sections of it if anyone else wants to help fill it out.
— Blake DuDonis (@BlakeDuDonis) March 18, 2019
Spoiler: UCF & Tennessee are IN pic.twitter.com/xzpKpGpjdT
AND THUS, we got the bracket officially released on ESPN2 two hours earlier than expected, which means we can move straight into official announcements!
Marquette women’s basketball has earned a #5 seed in the NCAA tournament this year, picking up an at-large bid to the national championship tournament. As a #5 seed, they have to go play at a neutral site in the first round, and in this case, they’ll be headed to College Station, Texas, where Texas A&M will be the host.
The Chicago regional! #ncaaW pic.twitter.com/NUFf1GtzWP
— NCAA WBB (@ncaawbb) March 18, 2019
The opposition will be Rice, the regular season and tournament champions out of Conference USA. Rice is 28-3 and is currently on a 21 game winning streak after going 16-0 in CUSA regular season play and winning the tourney title, too. Upon doing a google search to find the Rice athletics website, the first link I got was for the WBB roster page, which led me to find that Rice has a 6’9” woman named Nancy Mulkey on the roster. She plays 26 minutes a game and averages 13.7 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 3.9 blocks per game.
This is the only thing I know about Rice women’s basketball right now, and I am already deathly afraid of them, given Marquette’s problems defending the interior anyway. Oh, wait, I forgot I know a second thing about Rice women’s basketball, although this is technically just a thing about Rice University. It’s in Houston, Texas, and Google Maps tells me it is approximately 100 miles away from Texas A&M’s basketball arena.
Super.
Marquette has gone from a #3 seed and hosting games at the McGuire Center to having to play in Rice’s backyard in the span of five weeks. This stinks.
The MU athletic office has already confirmed that the game will tipoff at 1pm Central time on Friday, March 22, and it will be broadcast on ESPN2. If Marquette defeats Rice, they’ll advance to play either #4 seed and host Texas A&M or #13 seed Wright State on Sunday at some point.