Written by: Jacob Nevis
With the arrival of baseball and the spring season, the major basketball seasons begin to come to a close. With the conclusion of the March Madness for the NCAA Women’s and Men’s tournaments, the NBA playoffs also appear on the horizon as well.
The Gamecocks, who are coached by Dawn Staley, finished the season with a perfect 38-0 record as they captured their third national championship title. Staley has been nothing short of one of the best coaches in women’s basketball within the last three seasons posting a record of 109-3, including another national championship title in 2022.
Clark, one of the most dynamic and most recognizable women’s basketball players, will declare for the WNBA draft and will almost certainly be picked first overall. The Iowa vs. South Carolina game broke ESPN’s women’s basketball ratings record, pulling in around 14.2 million average viewers.
On the men’s side of the tournament, last year’s national champions UConn Huskies made it back to the championship game where they faced the Purdue Boilermakers. UConn captured their second consecutive national championship after beating Purdue in the final.
The NBA regular season looks to come to a close, as playoffs loom over the Eastern and Western Conferences. In the Eastern Conference, Jaysum Tatum and the Boston Celtics will finish with the best record in the NBA along with capturing the Eastern Conference’s first seed.
Other teams in the Eastern Conference who will look to make deep postseason runs include the Milwaukee Bucks, Orlando Magic and the New York Knicks. While these three teams currently hold the second through fourth-best records in the eastern conference, other teams will look to change seeding in the last few games.
In the Western Conference, the Minnesota Timberwolves are currently tied with the defending champions, the Denver Nuggets, in a tight race for the first seed. The third-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder are right on their tails as the regular season starts to come to a close. The first round of the NBA playoffs will begin on April 20th with the play-in games being played April 16-19.
