With the University of Washington and Seattle University men playing substandard and at times unwatchable basketball, the women’s teams provide our only hope for local March Madness.
The Husky women have enjoyed a resurgence under second-year coach Kevin McGuff. Star point guard Jazmine Davis (favorite hobby: writing poetry) is second in the Pac-12 in scoring and passed 1,000 points for her career in just her 58th game, playing a slashing, aggressive, get-to-the-basket style. Senior Kristi Kingma (road-trip must-haves: “my blankey and my Bible”) is the outside threat, she hit 11 three-pointers in a game earlier this season, setting a new Pac-12 record and finishing just one shy of the all-time NCAA mark. Both, it was announced Tuesday, were selected to the All Pac-12 team.
The Huskies likely played themselves out of an NCAA tournament at-large bid with four consecutive losses to end the regular season, but they can play themselves back in at the Pac-12 Tournament, which for the first time will be held here in Seattle. The tournament begins Thursday with a quadruple-header of games, of which the Huskies will be last, playing Oregon at 8:30 p.m. Tickets for a single session of two games each are as low as $10.
The Seattle U women play their final home game Saturday at 4 p.m. at Connolly Center on the SU campus, and could wrap up the WAC regular season championship with a win — a tremendous achievement for a team playing their first season in the conference.
Redhawks coach Joan Bonvicini is rightfully one of 30 finalists for the Naismith Coach of the Year award (and was the subject of a terrific Jerry Brewer profile in the Times this weekend). Granted, the WAC is a very weak conference for women’s hoops, and so the Redhawks will need to win the WAC conference tournament to make the NCAA field. As they’re guaranteed to finish no worse than second in the conference, the Redhawks will have a first-round bye in the tournament. Their first game will be Wednesday, March 12, with the fateful final Saturday, March 16, at noon.
Junior Kacie Sowell (“enjoys surfing”) is the Redhawks top player; she leads the team in points and rebounds.