WSU women's basketball team poised for NCAA tournament

The women’s NCAA Division I Tournament will host sixty-eight teams with play-in games for the bottom four seeds for the first time.

The number of teams that qualify for the women’s tournament has changed over the years. When the tournament started in 1982, only thirty-two teams qualified. By 1994, the field grew to sixty-four teams, matching the men’s tournament, and stayed at that level until this year.

In an early tournament prediction by ESPN, the Washington State Cougars were given a #10 seed which translates to a top forty ranking. At this point, six teams from the Pac-12 are expected to make the tournament. A Washington State win against #2 Stanford on February 24 would go a long way in securing a better tournament spot by moving the team into a top 25 ranking. Stanford has only lost three games this season, all to ranked opponents, and is riding a fifteen-game win streak that stretches back to December 31, so it is a bit of a long shot.

Should the Cougars lose to Stanford, they will have another opportunity to improve their ranking at the women’s Pac-12 tournament to be held in Las Vegas March 2-6. How they perform in that tournament against ranked teams in the Pac-12 Conference will go a long way in determining what seed they receive in the tournament. They could be placed in the West bracket, which will be played in Spokane this year. If not an actual home-court advantage, it would certainly be a home crowd advantage for the Cougars.

The women are currently 1-5 against the top twenty teams this season, with the lone win coming last Sunday against #8 Arizona. This win capped off a stretch of eight wins over their last ten games and has moved them into a second-place tie in the Pac-12 Conference with #25 Oregon.

The Cougars feature a pair of sisters from New Zealand, both guards. Charlisse Leger-Walker, a sophomore, leads the team in scoring, averaging 16.1 points per game, and her sister Krystal Leger-Walker leads the team in assists with 4.5 a game and steals with 1.7 per game.

Despite returning most of their team that made the NCAA tournament last year, the Cougars were picked in the preseason to finish only sixth in the Pac-12. Should the team make it this year, it would be only the third time the Cougars have made the tournament. They have yet to win a game at the tournament.