2010 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament

The 2010 NCAA Division I women's basketball tournament started Saturday, March 20, 2010 and was completed on Tuesday, April 6 of the same year with University of Connecticut Huskies defending their title from the previous year by defeating Stanford, 53–47.

Tournament procedure

Pending any changes to the format, a total of 64 teams will enter the 2010 tournament. 32 automatic bids shall be awarded to each program that wins their conference's tournament. The remaining 36 bids are "at-large", with selections extended by the NCAA Selection Committee. The tournament is split into four regional tournaments, and each regional has teams seeded from 1 to 16, with the committee ostensibly making every region as comparable to the others as possible. The top-seeded team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, etc. (meaning where the two seeds add up to 17, that team will be assigned to play another).

The basis for the subregionals returned to the approach used between 1982 and 2002; the top sixteen teams, as chosen in the bracket selection process, hosted the first two rounds on campus.

The Selection Committee will also seed the entire field from 1 to 64.

Notable events

The top seeded Tennessee Lady Vols faced the Baylor Lady Bears in the Memphis Regional semifinals. This was a rematch of the season open for the two teams, a game won by Tennessee 74–65. Earlier in March, the freshman center for Baylor, Brittney Griner had broken the nose of Jordan Barncastle in a game against Texas Tech, which resulted in Griner playing more tentative, concerned about drawing attention to the referees. She was not tentative in the game against the Lady Vols, scoring 27 points and recording ten blocks. Despite her performance, Tennessee led by five points with under eight minutes to go in the game. Baylor then went on a 21–1 run to take a 15-point lead, and command of the game. Baylor won 77–62 to advance to the regional finals.

Stanford more than doubled up Georgia, winning 73–36 in the regional semifinal, then faced Xavier. Although Stanford opened up an early five-point lead, Xavier cut the lead to one. The Cardinal extended the lead to five again, and the Musketeers cut the lead to two points at the half. Stanford opened up a six-point lead in the second half, but Xavier responded to take a lead. With just under a minute to go, Xavier took a two-point lead and Kayla Pedersen hit a jumper to tie the game at 53 points apiece. With 18 seconds left, Xavier ran a play that opened up Delaquese Jernigan under the basket. She received the ball, and missed a point-blank uncontested layup. The rebound came out beyond the three-point line to Amber Harris. The Cardinal were trying to cover the Xavier players, but missed Jernigan standing by herself under the basket. Harris passed the ball in to Jernigan who took an uncontested layup and missed it again. With only four seconds left in the game Jeanette Pohlen drove the length of the court, weaving among defenders, and threw up a shot with under a second left. The shot went in and the Cardinal won 55–53 to advance.

In the Kansas City Regional, both top seeds were upset in the semifinal round. Kentucky, led by 21 point from A'dia Mathies, opened up a lead ant he second half, extended it to 19 points, and were victorious, beating Nebraska 76–67 to advance to the regional finals. The regional semifinal game was a second of the season for Oklahoma and Notre Dame, a game the Irish has won in the regular season. In this game the score was tied early, while Oklahoma took a slim lead at the half. They extended the lead to eight points in the second half, but Notre Dame took the lead back at 50–49. With less than a minute to play, Oklahoma took a three-point lead, but Skyler Diggins hit a three-pointer to tie the game at 66 points each. Oklahoma had the ball for the last possession, but never got a shot off, so the game went to overtime. The game was tied with 72 points for each team with seconds to go when Oklahoma had another chance. This time, Nyeshia Stevenson hit a three-pointer, giving the Sooners a three-point lead with just over four seconds to go. Notre Dame tried a long inbounds pass, but were unsuccessful, and Oklahoma won 77–72.

In the Dayton Regional, Connecticut prevailed easily. They held their first three opponents to under 40 points each. While Florida State, in the regional final, managed to 50, the Huskies scored 90. This set up a game against Baylor in a semifinal game. The Baylor Bears would not go so easily. The Huskies seemed to be on the same track as prior games, with a 13-point lead at halftime. Kalana Greene scored the first basket of the second half, extending the lead to 15 points. However, Baylor then scored the next twelve points, cutting the lead to three. Connecticut, which had missed eight consecutive shots, began hitting again, and their defense held Baylor without a field goal for over seven minutes. UConn scored 16 points during the stretch and rebuild the lead. UConn would go on to win the game 70–50, to reach the championship game.

After the close call against Xavier, the Cardinal seemed in control in their game against Oklahoma in the second half when they led by 18 points. However, the Sooners, concentrated on defense, and cut the lead to three points with only 16 seconds left in the game. On the inbounds play, Oklahoma failed to guard Nnemkadi Ogwumike, and Kayla Pedersen made a long pass to an open Ogwumike who made an open layup to extend the lead to five points. Then Stanford stole the ball, was fouled, and hit the final two free throws to complete the victory 73–66. Ogwumike scored 38 points, including the final seven of the game for Stanford.

Stanford entered the national championship game on a 27-game winning streak. The last game they had lost, occurred in December 2009. It was against Connecticut. The UConn team entered the national championship game on a 77 winning streak. The last game they had lost, occurred in April 2008. It was against Stanford.

UConn was no stranger to low scoring halves in an NCAA game. There had been, up to this point, eleven halves of basketball in NCAA tournament history with twelve or fewer points. UConn was involved in four of them. On three occasions, involving Southern University in 2010, Long Island University in 2001, and Temple in 2010, the Huskies held their opponents to twelve or fewer points. However, on this day, Connecticut would be on the opposite side of the ledger, scoring only 12 points against Stanford in the first half. The first two minutes gave no indication of this result. UConn held a 5–0 lead just over two minutes into the game, but they would not score again until after the media timeout with under eight minutes to go in the half. Connecticut hit but 5 of their 29 shot attempts in the first half for a shooting percentage of 17% described by the New York Times as "laughable". However, their inability to hit a basket did not prevent them from playing defense, and they held the Cardinal to 8 baskets on 31 shots, a percentage the Times called "abysmal". Stanford ended the half with an 8-point lead.

The second half proved to be very different. UConn scored 17 of the first 19 points in the half and took a lead. They held Ogwumike, who had scored 38 points in the semifinal, to eleven points. They held Jayne Appel, one of the nation's leading centers, to zero points on 0–12 shooting. Appel was playing on a sore ankle that required pain killers during the game. Maya Moore scored 23 points for UConn and Tina Charles contributed eleven rebounds. In the end, Connecticut won 53–47 to win their seventh national championship and complete the first back-to-back undefeated seasons in NCAA history.

2010 NCAA Tournament schedule and venues

First and Second rounds (Subregionals)

The format is the same as the Men's Tournament, except that there are 64 teams and no play-in game. There are 31 automatic bids for conference champions and 33 at-large bids available.
The subregionals, based on the "pod system" keeping teams at or close to home, will be at these locations from March 21 through 24. Prior to the committee's decision to expand the number of subregional sites to sixteen, eight sites were chosen. This list included the Sun National Bank Center in Trenton, New Jersey

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