Fans had to wait until the Elite Eight, but finally a couple of mini-upsets jolted the women's basketball world.
In a tournament in which the final eight teams were comprised of the four No. 1 seeds - the Tennessee Volunteers, UConn Huskies, North Carolina Tar Heels and Maryland Terrapins - and the four No. 2s - the Texas A&M Aggies, Rutgers Scarlet Knights, Stanford Cardinal and LSU Tigers - a lack of surprises in the opening rounds promised exciting later-round action.
And finally, a higher seed fell from grace. Monday night, Maryland fell victim to Stanford's Candace Wiggins, a senior guard playing out of this world throughout the tournament. Wiggins had 41 points in the team's 98-87 victory, the second time this tournament that the three-time Pac-10 Player of the Year sprung for over 40.
LSU kept the ACC from earning two Final Four spots, stifling the explosive Carolina offense and scrapping out a 56-50 win Monday. All-American center Sylvia Fowles had 21 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks to pace the Tigers.
The win puts the LSU women in the Final Four for the fifth straight year, though none of the previous four squads have won the championship. At the risk of becoming women's basketball's version of the 1990s Buffalo Bills, the Tigers will need to win a title to solidify their status as an elite team.
Their quest begins on Sunday against the Volunteers, the SEC rivals they beat during the regular season but lost to in the finals of the SEC Tournament. Tennessee enters the game as a slight favorite, largely because of Candace Parker but also because of role players such as Alexis Hornbuckle, Shannon Bobbit and Angie Bjorklund.
Parker scored 26 points in the team's 53-45 victory over Texas A&M on Tuesday - impressive not only because it was nearly 50 percent of her team's total output, but because she returned to the game after dislocating her left shoulder with 3:50 left in the first half.
The Volunteers' offense outshines the Tigers', as LSU has no prolific scorer to match Parker or her teammates. Defensively, though, LSU is extremely tough, and if Tennessee center Nicky Anosike cannot outplay Fowles, LSU could very easily emerge from this matchup with a win.
While Parker has been capable in the past of putting the Vols on her back, she will not be able to pull this one out alone. For proof, just go back to the teams' Valentine's Day matchup in Knoxville, Tenn., where despite 26 points from Parker, the Vols still lost by 16.
Logic points to Tennessee in this one, as the Vols boast the edge in talent. The game is comparable to the Rutgers-UConn battles of recent years. Rutgers, like LSU, is probably the fiercer competitor, but Tennessee, like UConn, is the better team. If the Vols slip for any extended stretch of time, LSU can catch them, but look for Tennessee to take its season into the national championship game.
On the other side of the bracket, Stanford squares off with UConn, two teams that met in November. UConn won that game 66-54, but since then Stanford has piled up out-of-conference wins over Rutgers, Tennessee, the Old Dominion Monarchs and the Baylor Bears.
Many felt the Cardinal were deserving of a No. 1 seed in the tournament, as they haven't lost since Jan. 6 and dominated the Pac-10 Tournament. They've done nothing to discredit their believers, destroying the Cleveland State Vikings and the UTEP Miners in the first two rounds and beating the Pittsburgh Panthers by 19 in the Sweet Sixteen.
Meanwhile, UConn has been the best team in the nation for most of the year. Freshman Maya Moore became only the second first-year player ever to make the All-American team, and sophomore center Tina Charles was named to the third team.
Yet Wiggins, herself a first-team All-American, is outplaying everyone as of late. If Stanford can get production from Jayne Appel, Kayla Pederson, J.J. Hones and Jillian Harmon, it may prove to be UConn's toughest opposition thus far. The Cardinal are peaking at the right time, becoming less and less of a long shot to win in the Final Four. If they continue playing their game, they could be staring at Tennessee on Tuesday with the national championship at stake.
