SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Marta Suarez began her collegiate career at Tennessee, spent two seasons at California and chose to take one last shot at a tournament run with TCU this season.<\/p>\n
After a 33-point, 10-rebound effort, she got what she came for \u2014 a trip to the Elite Eight.<\/p>\n
Suarez and Olivia Miles were nearly unstoppable, and TCU overwhelmed 10th-seeded Virginia with a third-quarter burst that turned a nip-and-tuck game into a convincing win, 79-69 over the Cavaliers on Saturday in the Sweet 16 of the women’s NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
TCU (32-5), making its second straight appearance in a regional final, will face No. 1 seed South Carolina on Monday for a trip to the Final Four.<\/p>\n
Suarez\u2019s career-best scoring night \u2014 and her 12th double-double of the season \u2014 was complemented by fellow senior and All-American Miles, who finished with her own gaudy stat line of 28 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.<\/p>\n
A few weeks from now, both will likely be WNBA draft picks, but for now, their decision to come to TCU has paid off.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling very grateful and very blessed,\u201d said Suarez, a stretch forward from Spain who has proven adept at creating mismatches inside and on the perimeter. \u201cBut also, at the same time, it\u2019s like, \u2018Next game.\u2019 It\u2019s a pretty quick turnaround. I\u2019m excited to get the win, but I\u2019m ready to get going on the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
TCU coach Mark Campbell has built his program into a national power through the transfer portal. In the past three seasons, TCU has brought in 18 transfers \u2014 none as impactful as the combination of Suarez and Miles, who scored 61 of the team\u2019s 79 points on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOlivia, there\u2019s maybe five players on the planet that can do what she does, men or women,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAnd then Marta is a unicorn in her own way. She is a stretch-4 that\u2019s powerful and strong and can post and then she has guard skills and can shoot 3s. It\u2019s been really fun to figure out how to create a two-man game with these two players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just thankful I get another 40 minutes to go to battle with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Horned Frogs opened the second half with a 17-4 run to pull ahead for good. The Cavaliers pressed aggressively and cut the lead to six points with 27.1 seconds to go, but TCU closed it out.<\/p>\n
Cumulatively this season, the Horned Frogs have outscored opponents by more than 200 points in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe third quarter has been great to us all year,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cI think we settled into a rhythm. Every third quarter this group comes out and hoops and that was the separator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Virginia’s inspired run ends<\/p>\n
Paris Clark scored 20 points and Kymora Johnson had 18 points, eight assists and six rebounds for Virginia (22-12), the lone double-digit seed to reach the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers\u2019 journey began in the First Four and continued with a road win over No. 2 seed Iowa in the second round. And Virginia looked like it hadn\u2019t run out of magic when it took a 36-35 lead into at halftime behind 10 points each from Clark and Johnson.<\/p>\n
Suarez had 18 points in the first half for the Frogs and Miles had 12, but the rest of the team scored only five.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, TCU\u2019s size \u2014 Virginia was out-rebounded 38-27 \u2014 and the one-two punch of Suarez and Miles were too much to overcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we had some really good moments in that game,\u201d Virginia coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton said. \u201cBut the third quarter got away from us. … We came up short, but that doesn\u2019t take away from our season or the growth we\u2019ve had with our program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
TCU\u2019s matchup against South Carolina will be the second in the past two seasons. South Carolina beat TCU 85-52 in December 2024.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/p>\n
Michelle Smith, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Marta Suarez began her collegiate career at Tennessee, spent two seasons at California and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,154],"class_list":["post-225728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}