Michigan women's basketball to open March Madness vs. Kansas in 2024 NCAA tournament bracket
Michigan women's basketball is once again headed to the NCAA tournament, with its sixth consecutive March Madness trip.
On the bubble for much of the final month of the year, the Wolverines (20-13, 9-9 Big Ten) were announced Sunday night as the 9-seed in the Portland 3 region, playing the 8-seed Kansas in Los Angeles. The winner will face either No. 1 seed USC or No. 16 seed Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for a trip to Portland, Oregon, at the end of the month.
The Wolverines and Jayhawks will tip off on Saturday at Galen Center in L.A., with the time yet to be announced.
Head coach Kim Barnes Arico's team was one of the final at-large squads, which came as little surprise after it headed into the Big Ten tournament last week in Minneapolis needing at least one victory to feel decent about its NCAA chances, per most prognosticators.
Not only did the Wolverines get that, knocking off hometown Minnesota, 76-57, in a second-round matchup, but the Wolverines left no doubt they'd be back in the NCAA tournament when they knocked off No. 12 Indiana, 69-56.
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Laila Phelia, the team's leading scorer at 16.8 points per game, dropped a season-high 30 points, including 20 points in the second half, to lead a furious comeback from 17 points down after halftime and propel U-M into the Big Ten semifinals for the first time since 2020.
That's where U-M's run was upended, 95-68, by Caitlin Clark and Iowa, the eventual conference champs.
The Wolverines opened this season 11-3, which included a feel-good win over eventual Big Ten regular-season champ Ohio State in December. But Michigan sputtered in January and February, going 6-9 to land on the NCAA bubble.
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Still, U-M ended the regular season with a win over Purdue, then got back-to-back wins in Minneapolis for its first three-game winning streak since beating Eastern Michigan, Southern Illinois and Harvard from Nov. 24-Dec. 2.
Lauren Hansen, a transfer from Missouri, joined Phelia as U-M's only double-figure scorers. Hansen averaged 11.9 points per game, while shooting 37.5% on 3-pointers. Jordan Hobbs, meanwhile, is third among Wolverines in scoring at 9.9 points per game. The multi-talented wing is also third on the team with 4.1 rebounds a game and leads in assists at three per game in her junior season.
Michigan will also need a big effort down low from the team's leading rebounder in Cameron Williams (7.2 points and 4.7 rebounds) and could use long-distance work from Australian guard Elissa Brett, a Bowling Green State transfer who drilled 44 3-pointers in 123 attempts (35.8%) for the Wolverines.
Kansas (19-12) finished seventh in the Big 12 and won nine of their last 10 game before losing to Texas in the conference tournament.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan women's March Madness opponent: Kansas in 2024 NCAA tournament
