Women's basketball's season set to tip with return of JuJu Watkins, South Carolina, UConn top teams

JuJu Watkins is back as women's college basketball has one of its brightest stars returning from an ACL injury that sidelined the USC guard all of last season.

Watkins headlines a talented group of stars , including AP Player of the Year Sarah Strong of UConn, Hannah Hidalgo of Notre Dame and South Carolina's Joyce Edwards.

Dawn Staley's top-ranked Gamecocks are looking to rebound from last season's national championship game loss to UCLA. The Bruins took a huge hit with their top six players all getting drafted by WNBA teams. Still, coach Cori Close used the transfer portal well to bring in a new group to try and defend the Bruins first NCAA title.

The season begins overseas once again with Hidalgo's 13th-ranked Irish team facing Villanova in the Eternal City Tip-Off in Rome on Nov. 1. A day later, the Gamecocks will face No. 20 Maryland and No. 12 North Carolina plays No. 21 Oklahoma in Paris.

The national championship game will take place on April 4 in Columbus, Ohio. The champion will come from an expanded NCAA Tournament field that will have 76 teams for the first time.

As has been the case over the past few years, some of the top players changed schools this past offseason. There was a mass exodus from Iowa State including star center Audi Crooks going to Oklahoma State and Addy Brown heading to UCLA. Talaysia Cooper left Tennessee as part of another mass leaving to head to Ole Miss. Other key moves in the offseason included Jordan Lee going from Texas to South Carolina, Nunu Agara heading from Stanford to Maryland, Liv McGill leaving Florida for Oklahoma State and Aaliyah Crump going to Duke from Texas.

Even with the NCAA allowing players to stay five years now, there's a huge crop of promising freshmen who can make an impact immediately for their college teams. North Carolina's Kate Harpring, USC's Saniyah Hall and Iowa's McKenna Woliczko all could produce quickly.

Northwestern brought in Princeton coach Carla Berube to take over for Joe McKeown , who retired at the end of last season. Berube has gone 531-125 in stops at Division III Tufts and then Princeton. She led the Tigers five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and won 84% of her games at the school.

Other major coaching changes included Tanisha Wright taking over at her alma mater Penn State; Ayla Guzzardo becoming the head of Georgia and Aaron Roussell leading Virginia after leaving Bucknell.

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