The Big 12 has been clamoring for attention in women's basketball ever since it was formed in 1996. Now, the league has its best chance yet to get noticed and to put a team in the Final Four for the first time.
Four Big 12 teams are still playing in the NCAA Tournament, one in each regional. No other league, not even the mighty SEC, will have more than two teams in today's regional semifinals.
Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Iowa State all advanced as No. 2 seeds, OU in the West, Tech in the Mideast and Iowa State in the Midwest. Nothing surprising there.
But to have the fourth Big 12 team be Missouri, now that's something no one expected. The 10th-seeded Tigers are in the East Regional semifinals after upending second-seeded SEC power Georgia.
"I've told people in the last couple of weeks, I think we knew it was a really tough conference when we were playing in February," Texas Tech coach Marsha Sharp said. "We played about six ranked teams in a row in our conference. We knew we were in for a battle every night.
"You've heard Big 12 coaches say throughout the NCAA Tournament that our conference really got you ready to play, and we have a lot of pride in that."
The SEC, generally considered the top conference in women's basketball, has just two teams left top-seeded Tennessee in the Mideast and third-seeded Vanderbilt in the Midwest.
Duke and North Carolina State are still playing from the ACC. The Big East has Connecticut and Notre Dame, both No. 1 seeds.
"The SEC is still a tough conference also," Tech's Amber Tarr said. "But I think it's great that we have gotten some teams here in the Sweet 16. It just lets people know that when we're playing our conference games, they are tough games."
In Sharp's view, though, there's still something that has to done. The Big 12 has yet to send a team to the Final Four. Texas Tech and Texas both have won national championships, but they were in the Southwest Conference at the time.
In the Big 12, the closest anyone has come is Tech, which lost to Tennessee in the Mideast Regional final last year.
"I hope that somebody can get to the Final Four," Sharp said. "Until you get that done as a conference, you're not looked at on the national level the way you want to be looked at."
All four Big 12 teams face stiff challenges to get out of their regional, starting with Tech. The Raiders play third-seeded Purdue, which still has two starters from its 1999 national championship team, in Birmingham, Ala. Tennessee, a six-time national champ, faces fourth-seeded Xavier in the other game at Birmingham.
Oklahoma, the regular-season Big 12 champ, has to get past sixth-seeded Washington in Spokane, Wash. If the Sooners do that, they might have to play top-seeded Duke, which plays fifth-seeded Southwest Missouri State on today.
Iowa State, which won the conference tournament, will try to advance in Denver against third-seeded Vanderbilt. Missouri, the fifth-place finisher in the Big 12, plays third-seeded Louisiana Tech in Pittsburgh.
In the other games today, Connecticut continues its quest for a second straight national title against North Carolina State in the East and Notre Dame plays fifth-seeded Utah in the West.
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