With Selection Sunday (yes, Sunday this year) basically a month away, talk is heating up around seeding and who could make a March run. The NCAA Selection Committee recently revealed its top 16 seeds, and ESPN’s Charlie Creme has been updating his bracketology regularly.

But every year, there are at least one or two teams that sneak up to those better seed lines thanks to fortunate resumes that perhaps oversell their true standing in the national landscape. We’ve taken a look at a handful of the teams Creme has had on the No. 2 or No. 3 line to find who those teams might be.

Obviously, everyone in this group is a contender in some way. You don’t get to this point without at least having a shot to make the Final Four. But who are the teams that have a truly realistic chance at knocking off a No. 1 seed and making the Final Four? And who are the teams that could be headed for a first-weekend exit at the hands of a No. 6 or No. 7?

Arizona: Contender

Dawn Staley has to be the frontrunner for Coach of the Year, but it’s hard to ignore the job Adia Barnes has done in keeping this team in the top ten despite losing the face of the rebuild in Aari McDonald. Arizona has ridden the momentum of last year’s enthralling postseason run and is in position to do it again this March.

Under Barnes, the Wildcats have become one of the nation’s premier defensive units by forcing turnovers without getting out of rebounding position. It’s rare for a team to be able to accomplish both. Rare enough, in fact, that Arizona is the only team that has rebounded over 70 percent of opponent misses and turned opponents over on over 22 percent of their possessions in each of the last two seasons.

The scariest part for the rest of the country? The Wildcat defense is doing this despite some bad luck this season. As Ken Pomeroy has pointed out in the past, defenses have minimal control over whether an opponent’s 3-pointers go in. The scouting report on shooters generally isn’t “force them to miss 3s;” it’s “force them to put the ball on the floor instead of taking 3s in the first place.” This is the concept driving Arizona’s defensive misfortune: Their opponent 3-point percentage is in the bottom half of the country even though they have a top-30 2-point defense and rank in the top quarter of teams in opponent 3-point rate.

At some point, Arizona’s opponents are going to start missing 3s. When that happens, watch out.

Michigan: Contender

This answer may have been different a month ago when Michigan was coming off of a 21-point loss to Nebraska. To that point, the Wolverines’ only road tests against tournament-level competition had resulted in blowout defeats, which left them with a lot of questions.

Since then, they’ve rattled off eight straight wins, including drubbings of Maryland and Ohio State on the road. The Wolverines will have to get used to life without Leigha Brown for a while, but that didn’t phase them in their most recent win over Iowa on Sunday. The way freshman Laila Phelia (24 points) and sophomore Cameron Williams (8 points on 4-of-5 shooting) played in that one goes to show that this team may be deeper than they’ve gotten credit for.

Laila Phelia had a career night in @umichwbball's win over Iowa!

The freshman scored 24 points and notched 3 assists, both career-highs! She also secured 4 rebounds.

She is the 𝘽1𝙂 𝘾𝙤-𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙝𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠! pic.twitter.com/3d83rzBn3V

— Michigan On BTN (@MichiganOnBTN) February 7, 2022

A quick look at Michigan’s remaining schedule shows that they’ll be favored in every game until the return trip to Iowa in their regular season finale. Already atop the Big Ten standings, they have to be considered the favorites to win the league, and the No. 3 seed they were given in the first NCAA seeding reveal should turn into a No. 2 the next time around.

If Michigan can finish off the Big Ten regular season championship and win the conference tournament as well, they still may have a path to a No. 1 seed. With all the seniors on this roster starting to play with a sense of urgency, this is a team that could make some serious noise next month.

Tennessee: Pretender

Our first pretender on the board fell to a No. 3 seed in Creme’s most recent bracketology. What Kellie Harper has accomplished in Year 3 in Knoxville has been commendable, especially when you consider that she spent the better part of two months going 11-1 without leading returning scorer Rae Burrell.

But Rocky Top has been living on the edge all season. They are 7-0 in games decided by single digits, and they’ve pulled out both of their overtime games so far. Losses in the last two weeks to Auburn by 10, Florida by 25 and UConn by 19 have given us a pretty good indication that this team has a long way to go if it wants to be worthy of a No. 2 seed.

There are shades of last year’s Texas A&M team all over this profile. You may recall that those Aggies rode their close-game magic into the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, when they narrowly avoided upsets to No. 15 seed Troy and No. 7 seed Iowa State, but they still became the first No. 2 seed to fall after losing to Arizona in the Sweet 16. Don’t be surprised to see a similar fate for the Lady Vols.

Texas: Pretender

Vic Schaefer’s pressure defense has been effective all season: The Longhorns are holding opponents below 60 points per game for the first time in six years. It’s a defense that limited scoring juggernaut Iowa State (albeit without Ashley and Aubrey Joens) and Kansas State to under 50 points, and held Ayoka Lee to a human 45 percent from the field.

So why are they pretenders? Their three-game losing streak and .500 record in conference play raise some small red flags, but ultimately it comes down to how they score the ball. Much of the Longhorns’ offense comes from their ability to generate turnovers and get out and run. In the halfcourt, they rely on getting the ball on the rim and crashing the glass. When Texas goes up against teams who take care of the ball and have enough frontcourt size to keep them off the offensive boards, they run into trouble.

Texas also heavily eschews the 3-point line, ranking 326th in 3-point attempt rate. It’s another reason lengthy teams give them trouble — with so much of their scoring coming in the paint, good rim protectors can have a greater impact. Kansas’ Taiyanna Jackson and Tennessee’s Alexus Dye each had four blocks in wins over Texas, and Dye’s teammate, Tamari Key, racked up an incredible 10 blocks.

To be contenders, you have to be able to compete with South Carolina. With all the length and shot blocking ability the Gamecocks have, it’d be tough to imagine Texas scoring enough to win that matchup. Add in the fact that they rank 299th in free-throw percentage, and the odds of them holding a late-game lead over a pesky lower seed are even lower.

Indiana and UConn: It depends

This may be a bit of a cop-out, but the correct answer for each of these teams hinges on health and player availability.

For Indiana, that comes down to when Mackenzie Holmes can return. The Hoosiers weren’t deep even before she went down with a knee injury, but at full strength their starting five can compete with just about anybody in the country. Sans Holmes, Indiana has looked frighteningly beatable.

They’ve gone 4-1, but that includes three scares against non-tournament teams — an overtime win and a seven-point win over Purdue, and a win over Minnesota in which they trailed at the fourth-quarter media timeout — and a beatdown at the hands of Michigan. The Wolverines exposed the vulnerability of what’s left of Indiana’s frontcourt by out-rebounding the Hoosiers by a whopping 32.

According to CBB Analytics, Indiana has outscored opponents by 27.6 points per 100 possessions with Holmes on the court this year and just 7.9 without her, basically the equivalent of dropping from North Carolina to Fairfield. If Holmes is back, the Hoosiers can build on their Elite Eight run last year and make their first ever Final Four. Without her, don’t count on the Sweet 16.

From UConn’s perspective, Paige Bueckers is the obvious name that comes to mind, but health has been an issue up and down the roster all season. Azzi Fudd, Christyn Williams, Dorka Juhasz and Nika Mühl have all missed time at various points.

Like Indiana, the Huskies have been able to avoid too much damage in the loss column; Geno Auriemma’s squad has just one loss since Christmas. But like Indiana, UConn has looked human in some of its wins — something we aren’t used to seeing from this team in conference play. The Huskies have already won three Big East games by single digits, including an uninspiring eight-point win over sub-.500 Providence. And in that one loss, they had just six rotation players available and had no answer for Oregon.

The good news for UConn is that the last two wins have been dominant ones against quality competition, and Fudd finally looked like the No. 1 recruit in their 19-point win over Tennessee on Sunday. But even when Bueckers comes back, this team will have a lot of gelling to do before it’s at its peak. This is a program that hasn’t missed the Final Four since Android phones came out, but it’s important to remember that South Carolina ran away from them in their November matchup with Bueckers still on the court. The recent returns are promising, but to get back into that No. 1 conversation, they’ll need Bueckers at full strength.

Oregon: Contender

Oregon has dealt with as many personnel issues as UConn has, but the key for the Ducks is timing. Oregon has its rotation back, and, knock on wood, should have its full complement of stars for the final month of the regular season and into the postseason.

Upon getting healthy, Oregon went on an impressive run that included multiple top-ten victories to vault themselves back into the AP Poll top 20. That stretch says a lot about this team’s ceiling. The Ducks didn’t look the part in their Arizona trip this past weekend, but a combined 7-for-33 mark from 3 isn’t the type of performance that we should expect going forward.

Those two games are a good reminder that Oregon is still going to have ups and downs throughout the next month — it’s a group that had to wait until a few weeks ago to all play together, after all. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Kelly Graves going back to his time with Gonzaga, it’s that he knows how to have his teams playing their best basketball at the right time. When the calendar flips to March, look for the version of Oregon that knocked off two top-ten teams in one week.

Iowa State: Contender

In our championship betting preview last month, we wrote that we’d know a lot more about Iowa State after their games against Texas and Baylor. Turns out, all we really know is that the Joens sisters are critical to their team’s success.

Both Ashley and Aubrey missed their game against Texas due to COVID-19 protocols, and the Cyclones managed just 48 points in an 18-point defeat. The sisters returned against Baylor, but their shooting didn’t — they combined to hit just four of their 16 shots. Again, the Cyclones were on the wrong end of a lopsided score.

Iowa State has gotten back on track since, winning all four of their games by at least 15. It’s fair to wonder how they’d fare against the top of the Big 12 with their starters on the court and hitting shots. We’ll have to wait until the rematches later this month for that. For now, the metrics still love this team, as the Her Hoop Stats ratings and the Massey Ratings each have them in the top ten. Given how dangerous they’ve looked in all but one week this season, it’s hard to view the Cyclones as anything but contenders.

Calvin Wetzel is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports, covering basketball and betting. He also contributes to Her Hoop Stats and Bet Her. Follow him on Twitter at @cwetzel31.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony on Friday afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

"I'm surrounded by so many extraordinary people in so many different fields," Ledecky told Just Women's Sports on Friday. "I feel like I've made a lot of friends today among that group, and their families and their friends."

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

Ledecky said she was surprised to learn how recent it has been that athletes in women's sports have been considered for the honor. Billie Jean King was the first to receive the award in 2009. "That kind of blew my mind that it was that recent," she said.

"There are so many great female athletes that I've looked up to for so many years," she continued. "And I know we're just going to keep pushing ahead, and doing our best to continue to get a seat at every table."

Like Biles, Ledecky receives the Medal of Freedom while she's still actively competing in her sport, a fact not lost on the 27-year-old. "My goals in the pool are to continue to push forward and swim good times, hopefully win some more medals. And then secondly to continue to do good things out of the pool, whether that's inspiring young kids to learn how to swim, get into the sport, set big goals in whatever pursuits they're interested in."

"I've recognized I've had a long career now, and it's important to reflect every now and then. But at the same time, I'm still competing and still working hard into the future."

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.