UCLA, UConn, Texas, and South Carolina have touched down in Tampa, each team laser-focused on tonight’s NCAA Final Four with a trip to Sunday’s national championship game on the line.

SEC titans Texas and South Carolina will square off for the fourth time this season, with the Longhorns looking to upset the reigning champs in their first Final Four appearance since 2003.

UCLA and UConn will later link up for the first time since 2023, with the Bruins fighting for a ticket to their first-ever championship game against a tournament-tested — but title-less — Huskies class.

Top-ranked teams square off in tonight's Final Four

Three of tonight’s teams entered the tournament as No. 1 seeds — Texas, South Carolina, and UCLA — while all four ranked among the AP’s Top 10 throughout the regular season.

“Not only is every team different in terms of their talent base and strengths and weaknesses, but their makeup internally is different,” UCLA head coach Cori Close said on Thursday.

“Whoever gets through this semifinal and final will have done it against the best of the best,” said Texas head coach Vic Schaefer. “We all understand it. It’s hard to do.”

"It’s going to come down to heart, effort, and controlling the things that we can control, which is attitude and effort,” echoed South Carolina senior Te-Hina PaoPao.

After a year of unparalleled parity at the top, there can still only be one winner — and whoever cuts the nets down on Sunday will surely be worthy.

How to watch the Women's Final Four and NCAA Championship this weekend

The Final Four tips off tonight at 7 PM ET on ESPN, with Sunday’s NCAA championship game starting at 3 PM ET on ABC.

The 2025 All-Star Game draft pool is complete, as the WNBA dropped the 12-player reserves list on Sunday to round out the group of 22 league standouts who'll battle in Indianapolis later this month.

Washington rookie phenoms Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen received their first career nods, making the Mystics the first WNBA team in 26 years to see two league debutants become All-Stars.

The Washington duo aren't the only first-timers to make Sunday's All-Star cut, with both Seattle's Gabby Williams and Golden State's Kayla Thornton earning spots on the 2025 reserves list.

All-Star captains Napheesa Collier (Minnesota) and Caitlin Clark (Indiana) will also now have access to Skylar Diggins (Seattle), Rhyne Howard (Atlanta), Kelsey Mitchell (Indiana), Kelsey Plum (LA), Angel Reese (Chicago), Alyssa Thomas (Phoenix), Courtney Williams (Minnesota), and Jackie Young (Las Vegas) alongside the previously announced starters to build out their teams.

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Coaches catch heat for All-Star decisions

While a mix of fans, players, and media members vote to determine the All-Star Game starters, WNBA head coaches choose the reserves — and some players weren't exactly happy with this year's outcome.

"Whatever about me…. But taking 2, and NOT including the best player from a below 500 team is crazy," LA forward Dearica Hamby posted on Sunday, blasting the coaches for not including Mystics guard Brittney Sykes.

"I don't know why only [Collier] and [Williams] are All-Stars when you have the best team in the league by a few games," Minnesota head coach Cheryl Reeve, whose Lynx currently lead the WNBA by a large 4.5-game margin, told reporters. "There are teams that are below us in the standings by a lot that have three All-Stars."

Reeve is referencing No. 4 Seattle and No. 7 Indiana, who lead the charge with a trio of All-Stars each.

While six teams, including Minnesota, each boast two players in the pool, four — Chicago, Dallas, Golden State, and LA — will be repped by one player at the 2025 All-Star Game.

With just two wins on the season, the last-place Connecticut Sun is the only WNBA team to not field an All-Star this year.

How to watch the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game draft

Clark and Collier will draft their 2025 WNBA All-Star Game teams during Tuesday's broadcast of WNBA Countdown, airing at 7 PM ET on ESPN.

Another round of upsets tore through the WNBA over the long weekend, with the youth-powered No. 11 Dallas Wings grabbing headlines behind Thursday's 98-89 win over the No. 2 Phoenix Mercury.

With injured Dallas stars DiJonai Carrington and Arike Ogunbowale forced to watch from the sidelines, four Wings rookies started Thursday's matchup — the most first-year starters on any WNBA team since 2000.

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The team's young core stepped up and shined, with Aziaha James, Paige Bueckers, and JJ Quinerly combining for 68 points to outlast Phoenix forward Kahleah Copper's game-leading 33-point performance.

"The rookies were fantastic," Copper said afterwards. "They came out with no fear, as you should. They played free, they played aggressive, and they showed what they could do."

While the Mercury's two-game losing streak has yet to impact their spot in the current WNBA standings, it did widen the gap at the top of the table.

Phoenix's stumble gave No. 1 Minnesota a 4.5-game lead over the field, with the Lynx ending the weekend on a 3-0 run to avenge last Tuesday's WNBA Commissioner's Cup loss.

Also climbing the ranks was the No. 4 Seattle Storm, who downed both No. 5 Atlanta and No. 3 New York to pull within a half-game of the skidding Liberty.

As for the 2025 Commissioner's Cup champs, No. 7 Indiana opened their long weekend slate with a massive 81-54 Thursday win against No. 8 Las Vegas — the Fever's first victory over the Aces since 2019 — before narrowly falling 89-87 to the No. 10 LA Sparks on Saturday.

How to watch the Dallas Wings vs. Phoenix Mercury WNBA game

After falling on the road to Dallas last Thursday, Phoenix will hope Monday's home-court advantage will snap their two-loss streak as they try their luck against Wings again at 10 PM ET.

The rematch will air live on WNBA League Pass.

Basketball's biggest stars aren't holding back on criticizing the league's CBA proposal after the WNBA Player's Association (WNBPA) rejected last week's opening offer.

With the parties set to engage in CBA negotiations during next week's 2025 WNBA All-Star Weekend, Phoenix Mercury forward and WNBPA representative Satou Sabally called the league's initial offer "a slap in the face."

Also weighing in was WNBPA vice president and New York Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, who echoed Sabally's sentiment by confirming her frustration with the league to reporters.

"Anytime you go back-and-forth, you're not expecting to hear that 'yes' on the first [proposal], but you're expecting to have a conversation," she added. "They kind of just ignored everything we said."

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The WNBA's current CBA expires at the end of this season, with players upping their demands in light of the league's recent popularity boom and planned expansion.

"It's been made clear that [there's] this perception that the players don't understand the business," WNBPA president and Seattle forward Nneka Ogwumike told reporters on Saturday. "We want to have a growing portion of the revenue share. We want this league to be exactly what it is today and more. So I'm hoping that something positive [and] progressive yields from this meeting that we'll have in Indy."

The WNBPA will enter face-to-face CBA negotiations with the WNBA in Indianapolis later this month, with the union tapping Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin to assist in what Stewart predicts will be a "spicy" meeting.

The 2025 Prefontaine Classic shattered world records on Saturday, as a pair of long- and middle-distance runners showed their class in a historic track and field meet.

On a day that international governing body World Athletics called the sport's best-ever single-day of competition — with the 2025 Prefontaine Classic seeing more performance points earned than in any other one-day meet in track and field history — two Kenyan stars rose above the rest.

Saturday saw Faith Kipyegon hit a personal best of 3:48.68 in the 1,500-meter race to break through her own world record by a 0.36-second margin.

The 31-year-old, who holds the last three Olympic titles in the event, claimed the new historic time less than two weeks removed from her first attempt to break the four-minute mile mark — a distance just 109 meters farther than the standard 1,500-meter race.

The Prefontaine Classic also saw fellow Kenyan Beatrice Chebet become the first woman to race 5,000 meters in under 14 minutes, with the 25-year-old breaking the barrier by turning in a world record time of 13:58.06 — shaving more than two seconds off Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay's previous world mark of 14:00.21.

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"I'm so happy," Chebet said afterward. "After [the June Diamond League meet in] Rome, I say that I am capable of running a world record so let me go back home and prepare… I told myself, 'if Faith [Kipyegon] is trying for a world record in Eugene, why not me too?'"

Along with the 5,000-meter mark, Chebet also holds the 10,000-meter record — as well as 2024 Olympic gold medals in both events.

Meanwhile, US hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone snagged sprinting headlines with a season-best time of 49.43 seconds to win the 400-meter flat race, continuing her progress as a flat runner after years dominating the 400-meter hurdles.