No. 6 Notre Dame, No. 7 NC State headline the ACC women’s tournament field featuring 5 ranked teams

By Canadian Press on March 4, 2025.

Sixth-ranked Notre Dame spent nearly the entire Atlantic Coast Conference slate rolling along toward an outright regular-season title.

Things changed dramatically.

Now it’s seventh-ranked N.C. State owning the top seed in this week’s ACC Tournament after running down the Fighting Irish in the standings to claim a share of the regular-season crown. The Irish lost two of their last three, including a double-overtime classic to the Wolfpack.

The tournament begins Wednesday in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s a 15-team bracket for the expanded 18-team league in a departure from the days of full-participation formats. It includes No. 11 Duke, No. 14 North Carolina and No. 22 Florida State, while Miami, SMU and Wake Forest didn’t qualify as bottom-three teams.

Notre Dame (25-4) beat N.C. State (24-5) in last year’s final for Niele Ivey’s first title as head coach. But the Wolfpack reached the program’s first Final Four since 1998 and returned a star backcourt with Aziaha James and Saniya Rivers.

“I was worried they might start thinking, ‘Ah let’s just get this over with and move on to the postseason’ and you can’t do that,” said N.C. State coach Wes Moore, the ACC coach of the year.

N.C. State started 4-3 but lost twice after November, finding a boost with stepped-up play from 6-foot-6 freshman Tilda Trygger inside.

“Kind of like last year, I think we’re enjoying ourselves,” Moore said. “When you’re playing well you enjoy it more. I think we’re going through that a little bit, like we did a year ago, and have some momentum.”

Notre Dame won its first 15 ACC games behind previous Associated Press All-Americans Hannah Hidalgo — the league player of the year — and Olivia Miles before falling at N.C. State. Then the preseason favorite Irish lost at home to FSU to open the door for N.C. State to win out and take the top seed by virtue of that head-to-head tiebreaker.

They closed by beating Louisville at home and have been a 1-seed in each of the NCAA selection committee’s preliminary rankings.

“I don’t talk about the seeding,” Ivey said. “Obviously the further you go in the conference tournaments dictates a lot. A lot can happen in the next week and a half, so my focus and goal and messaging for the team is to take care of business on Friday.”

Devils’ push

The Blue Devils (23-7) closed by beating rival UNC and winning at FSU to clinch the No. 3 seed. Freshman forward Toby Fournier, the league rookie of the year, thrived with 19 points and 10 rebounds against the Tar Heels, followed by 28 points and six rebounds against the Seminoles.

“The cool thing about (the two games) and the ACC Tournament is you can kind of control your own fate,” coach Kara Lawson said. “You can kind of win your way to where you want to go. You control that.”

Star watch

The tournament features two of the nation’s top three scorers in FSU’s Ta’Niya Latson and Hidalgo, who is also the ACC defensive player of the year.

Latson, a 5-foot-8 junior, leads the country by averaging 25.4 points for the fourth-seeded Seminoles. Hidalgo, a 5-6 sophomore, is third at 24.2 points.

Health watch

UNC (25-6) stumbled into Greensboro after losing at Duke and then blowing a huge lead in a home loss to Virginia. The Tar Heels have been playing without fifth-year forward Alyssa Ustby since she exited early in the Feb. 16 win against N.C. State with a lower-body injury.

UNC has also played the last two games without improved guard Reniya Kelly, who was averaging 15.5 points in her last eight games.

“ Holding them (out) to put them in the best position for the postseason was important,” coach Courtney Banghart said. “And I know they’re not going to let me hold them much longer, I’ll tell you that much.”

Postseason prospects

The league has eight teams in Tuesday’s ESPN Bracketology projected NCAA field, headlined by Notre Dame and N.C. State as regional 2-seeds. Duke and UNC are also top-16 seeds in that projection and could join the Wolfpack in helping the neighboring schools from the “Triangle” region all host opening-weekend games together for the first time since 1998.

Virginia Tech stood as the first team out and could play its way into the field in Greensboro.

The schedule

Wednesday’s first round begins with 12th-seeded Boston College meets 13th-seeded Syracuse as the first of three games. Thursday’s second round is headlined by the Tar Heels as the 5-seed, followed by Louisville, California, Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech.

The top four seeds play in Friday’s quarterfinals, with the semifinals Saturday and the title game Sunday.

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Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball

Aaron Beard, The Associated Press

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