Great Midwest Women's Basketball Championship Bracket (PDF)
Official Great Midwest Women's Basketball Championship Page
INDIANAPOLIS – With a three-way tie for second and a variety of hosting scenarios entering the final week of the regular season, the bracket for Great Midwest Athletic Conference Women’s Basketball Championship is finally settled.
Eight teams from the Great Midwest will compete Thursday, March 1, through Saturday, March 3, for the conference tournament trophy. This will be the sixth year of the conference championship tournament since the inaugural event in 2013.
The championship bracket follows the regional format with times in the quarterfinal round set for noon, 2:30 p.m., 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET. Semifinal contests will tip at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. while the championship game will start at 2 p.m.
All postseason contests will be streamed through the Great Midwest Digital Network on Stretch Internet with live stats also available from the cozy confines of Cedarville’s Callan Athletic Center.
The all-conference team will consist of 20 student-athletes, including five on the first team, five on the second team and 10 additional honorable mention selections. The league’s coaches are also voting on individual awards, all of which will be unveiled Wednesday evening at the championship banquet.
The eight-team women’s bracket includes the Great Midwest regular-season champion Yellow Jackets (23-5, 18-4 G-MAC) as the No. 1 seed. CU head coach Kari Hoffman’s program has overcome adversity – multiple programs around the league have been ravaged by injuries – to enter this year’s conference tourney as the favorite.
Star Cedarville players Regina Hochstetler and Breanne Watterworth both joined the career 1,000-point club in 2017-18, but Hochstetler went down with a season-ending injury in early February. Led by long-range sniper Baylee Bennett, the Yellow Jackets can simply shoot the lights out, capitalizing on open looks from crisp ball movement.
But the consensus around the league is that this year’s conference tournament may be as wide open of a race as ever. The top seed, hosting rights and regular-season title was all up for grabs going into the final game of the regular season.
Multiple teams have held first place in the Great Midwest standings and three teams are regionally ranked going into March Madness, Cedarville, Ursuline and Findlay. All five of the new first-year institutions qualified for the playoffs in their first attempt.
Cedarville drew No. 8 Lake Erie in its opening-round matchup in the quarterfinals on Thursday at 6 p.m. The Storm (13-15, 9-13 G-MAC) willed their way into the postseason by winning the regular-season finale against defending conference tourney champ Malone. CU has had the upper hand in both previous meetings, but LEC gave the Yellow Jackets all they could handle in a five-point final back on Feb. 17.
LEC’s Kayla Gabor is in the conversation among the league’s best – her single-game conference record 16 assists supports her status as the league’s second-leading scorer (19.3 ppg) in the regular season.
No. 7 seed Kentucky Wesleyan is a perfect 5-for-5 making the playoffs and the Panthers (15-11, 11-11 G-MAC) are slotted for the early game against No. 2 seed Walsh. The Cavaliers (20-8, 17-5 G-MAC) completed the regular-season sweep and each program has two players averaging double figures on the season.
As the No. 4 seed, Ursuline finds itself in a different position after hosting the conference tournament the previous two seasons. The Arrows (19-9, 16-6 G-MAC) drew No. 5 Hillsdale in the quarterfinals, an intriguing matchup of chess pieces to be deployed by head coaches Shannon Sword and Matt Fristche.
Ursuline and Hillsdale split in the regular season but star senior Laney Lewis, who NCAA.com compared to Russell Westbrook in a recent feature story, is a matchup nightmare. The Chargers (16-10, 14-8 G-MAC) are one of the few teams that have the personnel to counter, led by post players Allie Dittmer and Brittany Gray, both Great Midwest athletes of the week.
At 2:30 p.m., league newcomers No. 3 Findlay and No. 6 Ohio Dominican battle it out for the right to advance into the semifinals. The Oilers (20-6, 17-5 G-MAC) have that perfect inside-outside balance and veteran presence between the trio of Anna Hintz, Lynsey Englebrecht and Haley Horstman. ODU’s Sarah Futscher, a two-time conference athlete of the week, went down at Cedarville with an devastating knee injury. She was one of the Panthers’ leading scorers and the league leader in field goal percentage.
The Panthers (18-10, 14-8 G-MAC) have had some some players step up in her absence between the combination of Alexa Fisher, Darian Rose and Brittleigh Macaulay, to help close out the regular season with a pair of victories.