Undefeated South Carolina are the top overall seed in the women’s NCAA tournament, while the reigning male champions, Connecticut, have secured the No 1 overall seed in the men’s tournament.

The Gamecocks are looking to become the 10th women’s basketball team to go undefeated for an entire season. They had a chance last season before falling just short against Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the Final Four. The Hawkeyes received the other No 1 seed in the Albany Regional. The two teams wouldn’t potentially face off until the national championship game this time. Iowa are a one-seed for the first time since 1992. USC and star freshman JuJu Watkins earned their first No 1 seed since 1986 as the top choice in a Portland Regional. Texas earned the fourth No 1 seed, it’s first since 2004, and will play Drexel in the other Portland Regional opener.

Clark, who became the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer this year, is trying to win her first title. The Hawkeyes open up against the winner of Holy Cross and UT Martin. Joining the Hawkeyes in their region are No. 2 UCLA, defending champion and third-seeded LSU and fourth-seeded Kansas State.

Tennessee continued its streak of appearing in all 42 women’s NCAA tournaments. On the other end, Presbyterian, California Baptist, Columbia and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi are all making their first appearance.

In the men’s tournament Connecticut, along with Houston, Purdue and North Carolina, are the top seeds in a March Madness bracket that started going haywire even before the pairings came out on Sunday.

Of the four top men’s seeds, only UConn head into the tournament coming off a win. That played into the Huskies receiving the No 1 overall seed. The other three top seeds lost in their conference tournaments.

Those were hardly the only surprises over the final weekend of hoops before the sport’s main event hits center stage.
Unexpected titles placed teams like Oregon, North Carolina State and even Duquense, none of whom were projected to make the field, into the field of 68 via the automatic bid that goes to conference champions. The teams they beat gobbled up a handful of the 34 at-large bids, thus shrinking the number of spots available to teams on the so-called bubble.

The last teams in included Colorado, Virginia and, surprisingly, Boise State, who weren’t widely considered a bubble team. Those missing out included Oklahoma, St John’s and Pittsburgh, all of whom were projected by many to make it as recently as Friday.

The shrinking men’s bubble took its toll on the selection committee.

“This year is harder than all my previous years combined. Just gut wrenching knowing some very good teams will unfortunately not be dancing,” Jamie Pollard, the athletic director at Iowa State in his fifth year on the committee, said on Saturday night on social media.