Notre Dame Lady's Pull 1st Road Upset

 With the history of upsets by Notre Dame in multiple sports, perhaps the fact that their ladies pulled the first road upset of our all-time great Women's Tournament.

This Value Add Basketball Game was won 76-69 behind a dominant double double by Arike Ogunbowale (20 points, 10 rebounds), despite being fouled twice in the opening possessions on calls missed due to Texas A&M 2011 team being at home.

The 2018 Notre Dame team overcame those and another missed call and there would have been additional calls on Ogunbowale and Jackie Young except both players avoid all fouls on their card so even changing a 66 to 36 roll twice did not become a foul.

The lead was only 71-66 with 2:07 (4 possessions) to play. Ogunbowale then hit a 3-pointer to make it 74-66. Texas A&M scored to make it 74-68 and then put on a press, which entails not rolling the 20-sided die to men any result other than a steal or turnover becomes a foul and two free throws but creates and extra possession by stopping the clock.

Texas A&M got what they wanted, a 42 in the turnover range with a "5" on the 8-sided die to give the ball to Young (15 points, 9 rebounds, 4 blocked shots) who moved from power forward to center after a 5th foul on Jessica Shepard (11 points, 9 rebounds, 3 blocked shots). Note another rebound for each and the Irish would have had three players with double doubles.

However, because Young's turnover range is a great 41-41 the 42 was not a turnover but a foul. Young hit both free throws to make it 76-68, then at the other end of the court she rejected a 3-point shot by Danielle Adams that would have gone in (the 20-sided shot die was a 3 so in her 1-3 range for a made 3-pointer, but you always check defense as well and it was a 22, which any player in the court with a 21-26 can block). Young even grabbed the rebound and Notre Dame advanced 76-69.

The first 10 games of this tournament features the better seed as the home team, but then the rest of the games will be in a neutral court. The only remaining home game is South Carolina 2017 hosting Ohio State 2016.

Baylor Replaces Illinois in All-Time Great Tournament

Our first 2021 Value Add Basketball Game player cards will be used in a game. We have substituted the 2021 National Champions from Baylor into our current tournament as the No. 7 seed in place of Nick Anderson's 1989 Illinois team. 

In recent blogs we announced we added four teams from 2021 as well as Obi Toppin's 2000 Dayton squad to bring our total to 134 Great All-Time teams. It turned out Baylor and the 1989 Illinois squad were tied for 34th in our simulated KenPom Ratings, and since Illinois had yet to play their opener against Orlando Woolridge's 1981 Notre Dame team, we discovered that the Challong.com site I use to set up my brackets does allow you to edit teams in a bracket that have yet to play we subbed them in as an equal level replacement.

Below is the new bracket. As the 7-seed, a Baylor win would mean the top seven seeds will all play in Round 2. However, because of many upsets in other games, a Notre Dame win would mean the worse seeds would be 6-5 in the tournament to date. In our original tournament of 96 teams the favorites 63-32.