For 14 years and counting, the boys’s Champions Basic has been an annual occasion pinning what many think about blue blood applications – Kentucky, Duke, Kansas and Michigan State – towards each other.
This weekend, girls’s basketball followers will get a style of an analogous occasion.
The inaugural girls’s Champions Basic is about to take over Barclay Middle Saturday, with No. 17 Iowa taking part in Tennessee at 7 p.m. and No. 2 Connecticut taking over No. 22 Louisville at 9 p.m.
The primetime double-header brings up an fascinating debate: Who is taken into account a blue blood program?
The factors to be a real blue blood varies relying on who you ask.
For this train, The Put up outlined a blue blood as a program who has received titles in a number of many years, appeared in 5 or extra championship video games and earned in 10-plus Last 4 berths.
A program might string collectively few-year run. However to string a number of many years of dominance?
That’s what separates an iconic blue blood program from a budding one.
Right here’s the place we landed:
True Blue Blood
Connecticut: In fact the single-most dominant girls’s basketball program within the final three-plus many years is as blue blood because it will get. The Huskies, underneath Geno Auriemma, have performed in 23 of the final 33 Last Fours. They’ve received all of it a whopping 11 occasions, tied with UCLA males’s program for probably the most NCAA Match titles.
Tennessee: With 18 Last 4 appearances over the court docket from 1982 to 2008 and eight NCAA Match titles, the late and nice Pat Summitt made Tennessee girls’s basketball a formidable blue blood. The Girl Volunteers haven’t made it previous a Candy 16 since 2016, however their dominant stretch over practically three many years underneath Summitt is a run that’s been duplicated by just one different program.
Stanford: Legendary Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer surpassed Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski in 2024 because the winningest head coach in school basketball. VanDerveer retired after final season, and her file has since been surpassed by Auriemma. However the Cardinals had been frequently close to the highest of the ladies’s basketball realm underneath VanDerveer. Stanford received three titles (1990, 1992 and 2021) and made it to 13 Last Fours in 31 years.
Notre Dame: Former head coach Muffett McGraw put the Notre Dame girls’s basketball on the map. She led the Preventing Irish to 9 Last 4 appearances and coached in seven nationwide championship video games, profitable two of them (2001 and 2018.) Notre Dame’s most up-to-date title recreation look was in 2019.
Borderline Blue Blood
South Carolina: South Carolina has been probably the most dominant girls’s basketball program within the 20s, having made it to 4 straight Last 4 appearances and profitable two of the final three championships. However the Gamecocks turnaround occurred in solely the final 10 years. If Daybreak Staley’s crew retains it up for one more few years, there’s little question South Carolina will cement itself as an iconic blue blood.
Baylor: The Girl Bears received titles in 2005, 2012 and 2019 and 4 whole Last 4 berths, however they don’t have as deep of a historical past and as dominant of runs because the 4 true blue bloods beforehand talked about.
LSU: Angel Reese led LSU to this system’s first nationwide championship in 2023. That run additionally marked the Tigers first Last 4 berth since 2008. Sure, LSU has six Last 4 berths however hasn’t received the NCAA Match sufficient to be thought of among the many crème de la crème of girls’s basketball applications.
Particular mentions
Outdated Dominion and Louisiana Tech had been as soon as elite girls’s basketball applications.
However they haven’t been capable of muster up the identical nationwide success within the new millennium.
