Women's Final Four brings powerhouses UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina to Tampa

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Women's Final Four brings powerhouses UConn, UCLA, Texas and South Carolina to Tampa

2025-04-04 18:00 Last Updated At：18:10

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Three of four teams in the women's Final Four are No. 1 seeds. None of the four have lost more than three games this season. All but one have been the top-ranked team in the country at some point.

That’s how strong the national semifinals are this year, with powerhouses UCLA, Texas, South Carolina and UConn competing in Tampa, Florida, for a national championship.

“Whoever gets through this semifinal and final will have done it against the best of the best,” said Texas coach Vic Schaefer, who has led his second school to the Final Four after getting Mississippi State there in 2017 and 2018. “So I think for all of us, we all understand it. It’s hard to do.”

UCLA, South Carolina and Texas are No. 1 seeds. UConn is a No. 2 seed but has certainly looked the part of a top-seeded team behind Paige Bueckers — perhaps the biggest star in the tournament who’s the primary reason the Huskies are the betting favorite to win it all.

Texas (35-3) and South Carolina (34-3) are scheduled to face each other for the fourth time this season in the first of two semifinals on Friday. UConn (35-3) will play UCLA (34-2) in the other.

The championship game is on Sunday.

Here are a few things to know as the Final Four begins.

Bueckers is widely expected to be the No. 1 overall pick in next month's WNBA draft. First, she gets one more shot at the national championship that has eluded her during her career.

Bueckers earned AP All-America honors this season and was the Big East player of the year for the third time. She has UConn back in the Final Four for the second straight year after the Huskies were beaten by Caitlin Clark and Iowa in the semis last year.

She has averaged 35 points in her last three March Madness games, including career highs of 40 points and six 3-pointers in the Huskies’ 82-59 rout of Oklahoma in the Sweet 16.

“I think last year I got so caught up in the pressures and the stakes of it all,” Bueckers said, “and trying to be perfect and worrying about the wrong things ... It’s the last year regardless of what happens. So I’m just enjoying this last weekend.”

Dawn Staley has her team in its fifth straight Final Four, and defending champion South Carolina is trying to become the first repeat national champion since the Huskies won four straight from 2013 to 2016. That Huskies four-peat was coach Geno Auriemma's last title, though he has the Huskies in the Final Four for a record 24th time.

The Gamecocks, who went undefeated last season en route to the program's third title, beat Texas twice this season but have been on the ropes a bit during the tournament.

The Gamecocks went back and forth with Maryland in the Sweet 16 before finally doing enough in the final few minutes to put it away. They beat Duke by four points in the Elite Eight despite their offense being mostly stymied.

“I think we experienced a lot of things we didn’t experience last year,” said senior guard Te-Hina Paopao. “Every time we lost or did something, we learned from that opportunity and have grown from that opportunity.”

UCLA won a national title in 1978 in the pre-NCAA era of women’s basketball but made its first Final Four in three tries.

Lauren Betts has been one of the most impactful players of the tournament, leading the Bruins to the semis with 21.2 points and 8.7 rebounds per game while shooting 75% from the field.

The 6-foot- 7 center had 17 points, seven rebounds and six blocks against LSU in the Elite Eight despite sitting the entire second quarter in foul trouble.

The junior's teammates have praised her growth this season.

“I think it’s just me finally realizing the player I am," Betts said. “I think a lot of it has to do with not just the basketball side but the mental work that I’ve done this past season. ... Also I have to give a lot of credit to this program and the amount of confidence that they’ve given me.”

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.

Ecuador's incumbent president and a leftist lawyer again vie for the top job in election runoff

2025-04-13 23:35 Last Updated At：23:42

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuadorians are voting Sunday in the country’s presidential election runoff, facing the choice between incumbent President Daniel Noboa and leftist lawyer Luisa González.

Noboa, a conservative young millionaire, and González have both promised voters solutions to the extortions, killings, kidnappings and other crimes that became part of everyday life as the country emerged from the pandemic. Analysts expect the result in Sunday’s vote to have a very tight margin.

It’s the second presidential runoff election in less than two years in the South American country, where voting is mandatory.

Voters chose Noboa over González in the runoff of a snap election in October 2023. The candidates advanced to Sunday’s contest after polling most votes in February’s first-round election. Noboa won 44.17% of the votes while González garnered 44%.

Voters are primarily worried about the violence that transformed the country, starting in 2021 — a spike in crime tied to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Both candidates have promised tough-on-crime policies, better equipment for law enforcement and international help to fight drug cartels and local criminal groups.

“My vote is clear,” said Irene Valdez, a retiree who voted for Noboa. “I want to continue living in freedom.”

Martín Constante, a 19-year-old university student, had a different view. “I think Luisa is going to change things, because Noboa has been very authoritarian,” he said. “Our country needs a lot of changes.”

More than 13 million people are eligible to vote, which is mandatory for adults up to the age of 65. It is optional for people aged 16 and 17 and over 65. Failure to vote results in a $46 fine.

In 2023, Noboa and González were largely unknown to most voters as they sought the presidency for the first time. They were first-term lawmakers in May 2023, when then-President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly, shortening his own mandate as a result and triggering that year’s snap election.

Noboa’s first foray into politics was his stint as lawmaker. An heir to a fortune built on the banana trade, Noboa opened an event-organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father’s Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas.

González, 47, held various government jobs during the presidency of Rafael Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 through 2017 with free-spending socially conservative policies and grew increasingly authoritarian in his last years as president.

Noboa, 37, declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” in January 2024, allowing him to deploy thousands of soldiers to the streets to combat gangs and to charge people with terrorism counts for alleged ties to organized crime groups.

Under his watch, the homicide rate dropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023, to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024. But despite the decrease, the rate remained far higher than the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people seen in 2019.

Some of Noboa’s heavy-handed crime-fighting tactics have come under scrutiny for testing the limits of laws and norms of governing. He has also been criticized for allegations of electoral anomalies he made after February’s vote.

Following the first-round election, Noboa said there had been “many irregularities” and that in certain provinces “there were things that didn’t add up.” He provided no further details or evidence. Electoral observers from the Organization of American States and the European Union ruled out fraud.

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.