Canes Women’s Basketball Team Upsets #1 Seed Indiana, Marching on to More Madness in the Sweet 16

Coming into the 2023 women’s NCAA basketball tournament, none of the first-seed teams had lost in the early rounds since 2009. Now, it’s happened on back-to-back nights.

The Indiana Hoosiers, the top seed in the Greenville 2 Regional, were upset on Monday night by the ninth-seed Miami Hurricanes, 70-68, at Indiana’s Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in the second round. That would come after the Seattle 4 Regional first-seed Stanford Cardinal’s, 54-49 loss to the eighth-seed Ole Miss Rebels on Sunday at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion.

Like the men’s tournament, which lost first-seed teams in Purdue and Kansas during the first weekend, the women’s early rounds ended with just two first-seed teams moving on. The women’s NCAA tournament, which began in 1982, has had two number-one seeds lose before the Sweet 16 in the same year just one previous time: in 1998, when Stanford lost in the first round and Texas Tech in the second round.

The four top-seed teams to lose across the men’s and women’s tournaments during this years March Madness are the most combined first-seeds to lose in the first two rounds since 1985.

Miami will now play in the women’s Sweet 16 for the first time since 1992 where they will take on fourth-seed Villanova Wildcats, who have advanced this far for the first time since 2003. Indiana, which made the Elite Eight in 2021, won the Big Ten regular-season championship for the first time since 1983.

LifeWallet athlete Haley Cavinder would shush the crowd by converting both of her free throw attempts, Indiana would then tie the game at 68 a piece on Yarden Garzon’s three-pointer with eight seconds left in the contest shortly after. But Miami’s Destiny Harden would make the deciding jump shot with three seconds left for the winner, which would be followed up by a game-winning steal from Jasmyne Roberts.

Miami had won its opening round matchup, 62-61 over Oklahoma State, despite trailing by as much as 17. To go from that to the Sweet 16 is one of this year’s biggest shockers in the women’s tournament.

“I always tell my team, ‘Act like you’ve been there before.’ But we haven’t,” said Miami coach Katie Meier, who has led the program since 2005 and is making her 10th NCAA tournament appearance with the team. “It’s a really big moment for us.”

But the Hurricanes got it done with defense. Their total margin of victory for their two NCAA tournament wins is three points, tied for second lowest in tournament history. Only Boston College, which advanced to the 2003 Sweet 16 with only two one-point wins, has ever come this far with a lower margin of victory.

Indiana is just the ninth first-seed team to lose in the first or second round in women’s NCAA basketball tournament history. This was the first time Indiana ever had a number-one seed in the NCAA tournament and only the second time in tournament history that multiple first-seeds have lost before the round of the Sweet 16 in the same year. The last time a first-seed women’s team lost an early-round game on its home court? It was 1998, over two decades ago.

“It doesn’t feel real, still,” said Lola Pendande, who led Miami with 19 points. “When we were done with the game, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. We’re here. We’re really here.'”