COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Talaysia Cooper had 20 points, six rebounds and four assists, Samara Spencer scored 15 points and fifth-seeded Tennessee routed 12th-seeded South Florida 101-66 on Friday night in a women’s NCAA Tournament first-round game.
Zee Spearman added 13 points and Jewel Spear had 11 for Tennessee (23-9), which advanced to play No. 4 seed Ohio State (26-6) on Sunday. The winner will move on to the Birmingham 3 Regional.
“Our team is at our best when we are playing as a team,” Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell said. “We were able to get something from everyone. I think we had fun. It was a really good stepping stone for us. We had been a little bit off track, and so we needed to kind of get our juice back.”
The Volunteers held a 26-25 lead after the first quarter, which included four ties and six lead changes. But Tennessee outscored South Florida 29-9 in the second quarter to grab control of the game. Spearman and Cooper each had 11 points, with Spearman going 3 for 3 on 3-pointers during the period.
“We just turned our pressure up,” Spencer said of the Vols’ second quarter success. “We knew coming into the game that they really only had one solid ballhandler who was comfortable handling the ball. So we made her turn the ball over some, and then we just made other people have to dribble the ball up the court. That was to our advantage.”
The Vols eventually built their lead as high as 35 points in the fourth quarter. They shot 50% from the floor and 43% on 3s (16 of 37). Eight Tennessee players made at least one 3.
“We’ve had to guard people who have multiple people who can shoot, and sometimes we have a hard time doing that,” Spencer said. “So I know for other people who have to play us, it’s really hard. And especially, we have a lot of people who shoot very high percentages.”
Sammie Puisis had 28 points and seven rebounds for South Florida (23-11). L’or Mputu scored 12 points.
“The first quarter was probably really fun to watch on TV, and then you’ve got to hand it to Tennessee,” South Florida coach Jose Fernandez said. “They shot the ball really well. We’re down one point after a quarter and we had 10 turnovers. When we go into halftime, it’s 16. That’s really tough. You’re giving a very good offensive team extra possessions.”
This was Tennessee’s 164th all-time NCAA Tournament game. The Vols set new school records for made 3s (16) and attempted 3s (37) in an NCAA Tournament game.
Tennessee’s season total of 328 made 3s is also a new Southeastern Conference single-season record.
South Florida: This was USF’s 10th NCAA berth and the program’s fourth in the last five years. The Bulls dropped to 5-10 all-time in NCAA action. They got into the field by winning the American Athletic Conference tournament championship. They had won 12 of their last 14 games.
Tennessee: The Vols, ranked 20th in the final AP poll, had lost three of their last four games coming into the NCAA Tournament. But their size, depth, athleticism and shot making were all too much for the Bulls.
Tennessee forced 24 turnovers, while the Lady Vols committed just six turnovers themselves. Tennessee held a 36-10 edge in points off turnovers.
First-year Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell won the 2022 Division II national championship at West Virginia’s Glenville State. Caldwell spent last season as the head coach at Marshall, going 0-1 in the NCAA Tournament with a loss at Virginia Tech. This is her first NCAA win at the Division I level.
“I think it definitely means a lot for our players,” Caldwell said. “It means a lot for our program. I think the way we did it probably means more than anything. We hadn’t been playing very well and we hadn’t really been having fun. To do it kind of as a polar opposite of how we’ve been playing the last two weeks of the regular season was important.”
Tennessee, which has appeared in all 43 NCAA tournaments since the event’s inception in 1982, will be going for its 37th Sweet 16 berth and first since 2023 on Sunday.
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Tennessee guard Samara Spencer (7) passes the ball as South Florida guard Mama Dembele, right, defends during the first quarter of the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joe Maiorana)
WASHINGTON (AP) — With massive job cuts, the National Weather Service is eliminating or reducing vital weather balloon launches in eight northern locations, which meteorologists and former agency leaders said will degrade the accuracy of forecasts just as severe weather season kicks in.
The normally twice-daily launches of weather balloons in about 100 locations provide information that forecasters and computer models use to figure out what the weather will be and how dangerous it can get, so cutting back is a mistake, said eight different scientists, meteorologists and former top officials at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the weather service's parent agency.
The balloons soar 100,000 feet in the air with sensors called radiosondes hanging about 20 feet below them that measure temperature, dew point, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction.
“The thing about weather balloons is that they give you information you can't get any other way,” said D. James Baker, a former NOAA chief during the Clinton administration. He had to cut spending in the agency during his tenure but he said he refused to cut observations such as weather balloons. “It's an absolutely essential piece of the forecasting system.”
University of Oklahoma environment professor Renee McPherson said, “This frankly is just dangerous.”
“Bad,” Ryan Maue, who was NOAA's chief scientist at the end of President Donald Trump's first term, wrote in an email. “We should not degrade our weather system by skipping balloon launches. Not only is this embarrassing for NOAA, the cessation of weather balloon launches will worsen America's weather forecasts.”
Launches will be eliminated in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, “due to a lack of Weather Forecast Office (WFO) staffing,” the weather service said in a notice issued late Thursday. It also is cutting from twice daily to once daily launches i n Aberdeen, South Dakota; Grand Junction, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Gaylord, Michigan; North Platte, Nebraska and Riverton, Wyoming.
The Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency fired hundreds, likely more than 1,000, NOAA workers earlier this year. The government then sent out letters telling probationary employees let go that they will get paid, but should not report to work.
Earlier this month, the agency had announced weather balloon cuts in Albany, New York and Gray, Maine, and in late February, it ended launches in Kotzebue, Alaska. That makes 11 announced sites with reduced or eliminated balloon observations, or about one out of nine launch locations which include part of the Pacific and Caribbean.
Among regularly reporting weather stations, NOAA had averaged about only one outage of balloon launches a day from 2021 to 2024, according to an Associated Press analysis of launch data.
Meteorologists Jeff Masters and Tomer Burg calculate that 14 of 83 U.S. balloon sites, or 17%, are doing partial or no launches. That includes two stations that aren't launching because of a helium shortage and a third that is hindered because of coastal erosion.
“The more data we can feed into our weather models, the more accurate our forecasts, but I can’t speculate on the extent of future impacts,” weather service spokesperson Susan Buchanan said in an email.
University at Albany meteorology professor Kristen Corbosiero looked at the map of launches Friday and said “wow, that is an empty area ... That's not great.”
Corbosiero works in the building where the Albany weather service used to go to the roof to launch twice-daily weather balloons. It's now down to one at night, which she said it is worrisome heading into severe weather season.
“For those of us east of the Rocky Mountains, this is probably the worst time of year,” said Oklahoma's McPherson. “It's the time of year that we have some of our largest tornado outbreaks, especially as we move into April and May.”
Former National Weather Service Director Elbert “Joe” Friday said the weather balloons get “the detailed lower atmospheric level of temperature and humidity that can determine whether the atmosphere is going to be hot enough to set off severe storms and how intense they might be.”
Satellites do a good job getting a big picture and ground measurements and radar show what's happening on the ground, but the weather balloons provide the key middle part of the forecasting puzzle — the atmosphere — where so much weather brews, several meteorologists said.
All of the 10 announced reductions are in the northern part of the United States. That's about where the jet stream — which is a river of air that moves weather systems across the globe — is this time of year, so not having as many observations is especially problematic, McPherson and Corbosiero said.
Weather balloons are also vital for helping forecast when and where it will rain, said Baker and another former NOAA chief, Rick Spinrad.
The weather agency has been launching balloons regularly since the 1930s. During World War II, weather balloon launches in the Arctic helped America win the air battle over Europe with better forecasts for planes, former weather chief Friday said.
It takes 90 minutes to an hour to fill a weather balloon with helium or hydrogen, get it fitted with a sensor, then ready it for launch making sure the radiosonde doesn't drag on the ground, said Friday, who recalled launching a balloon in Nome, Alaska with 30 mph winds and windchill of about 30 degrees below zero.
Meteorologists then track the data for a couple hours before the balloon falls back to the ground for a total of about four of five hours work for one person, Friday said.
“It's kind of fun to do,” Friday said on Friday.
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Data journalist Mary Katherine Wildeman contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.
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FILE - A National Weather Service weather balloon sits ready for launch in the Upper Air Inflation Building at the National Weather Service, April 27, 2006, in Sterling, Va. (AP Photo/Chris Greenberg, File)
