Iowa vs. South Carolina: Odds and predictions for the NCAA women's national championship game

Undefeated South Carolina is the only team standing between Caitlin Clark and a national championship.

In hindsight, this is always how the women’s college basketball season was supposed to end.

Sunday’s national championship game will feature the sport’s biggest and brightest star going against its biggest and best team. It’s only surprising we actually arrived here because of the gamut of national championship-like games Caitlin Clark and Iowa had to go through just to get to this stage.

After avenging last year’s title game loss to LSU in the Elite Eight, and surviving UConn in the Final Four, it’s not about to get any easier for the Hawkeyes. South Carolina is now the team in position to avenge a tournament loss, and at 37-0, the Gamecocks have the team to do it.

In fact, South Carolina is favored by 6.5 points, making Iowa an underdog for the first time since beating the Gamecocks as 10-point underdogs in last year’s Final Four.

This is the first game Iowa is a betting underdog since last season's Final Four against South Carolina.

They won that game as a 10-point underdog pic.twitter.com/pi6MCSy5Qk

— ESPN BET (@ESPNBet) April 6, 2024

It will take a complete team effort for Iowa to pull off the upset again. As we’ve seen over the course of South Carolina’s entire tournament run, the Gamecocks can make very good teams look incredibly normal. The team that came closest to beating them, Indiana, got double-digit scoring from each of its starters.

UConn proved for a half Iowa can be similarly vulnerable when Clark is kept in check. Eventually, the Huskies were let down by their own offensive lulls, but even then they had a chance to win in the end. Boasting a better offensive rating than UConn and the country’s best defensive rating, South Carolina is a much better bet to sustain a winning effort over four quarters.

Iowa’s best chance to survive will be to find easy buckets in transition before South Carolina’s defense can get set. Otherwise, the Hawkeyes will be up against one of the country’s best teams defending the three, and Kamilla Cardoso will prove to be especially hard for Hannah Stuelke and others to beat at the rim.

After seeing the way UConn was able to slow Iowa, I think a superior South Carolina team will be able to do the same and finish the job with a win. However, in her final collegiate game, I fully expect Clark to leave it all on the floor and will the Hawkeyes to a cover for my favorite bet.

Prediction: South Carolina 80, Iowa 74