DALLAS — The 2023 women’s NCAA basketball tournament has been full of upsets since the second round, and Sunday’s national championship matchup (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC) reflects it: It’s the third NCAA title game (and first since 2011) played without a No. 1 seed, as the 2-seed Iowa Hawkeyes will take on the No. 3 seed LSU Tigers for the ultimate crown. To get to this point, the Hawkeyes upset the defending national champion and then-undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks in the national semifinal, while the Tigers knocked off the Virginia Tech Hokies, the other remaining 1-seed in the women’s Final Four.
Iowa and LSU have plenty of star power: the Hawkeyes with guard Caitlin Clark and the Tigers with forward Angel Reese. But both teams are new to this stage. Iowa is playing in its first Final Four since 1993, while LSU is in its first since 2008. And both are in the title game for the first time — LSU went 0-5 in the Final Four from 2004 to 2008. It’s just the third time this century that the national championship game participants are making their debut appearances in the final.
Following three national championships at Baylor, LSU coach Kim Mulkey is just the fourth head coach to take a team to the national title game within their first two seasons of taking…
