FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Olivia Miles and No. 10 TCU opened March with another win at home, the 42nd in a row for the Horned Frogs, to repeat as outright Big 12 regular-season champions.
After a trip to Kansas City this week for the Big 12 Tournament, TCU could potentially spend the rest of March playing in Fort Worth.
“For the stars to align in that way is incredible,” said Miles, the dynamic guard who chose TCU for her final college season after five years at Notre Dame.
The Frogs (27-4) are in line to host first- and second-round women’s NCAA Tournament games on campus as they did for the first time last season. If they advance to the Sweet 16 again, they could then play in one of the two regionals at Dickies Arena near downtown, about 3 miles from their home arena.
“Obviously, we want to do as much as we can to guarantee the committee gives us that,” Miles said after a 65-53 win over Baylor on Sunday. “But what a special opportunity, the ability to potentially be at home for almost a month while teams are traveling all over the country. It’s very special, and we’re taking it very serious.”
Their 42-game home winning streak since February 2024, including NCAA wins over Fairleigh Dickinson and Louisville last March, matches No. 4 Texas for the nation’s longest active streak.
Reveal shows Fort Worth possibility
TCU’s regular-season finale came only a few hours after the NCAA basketball selection committee had its second reveal of likely top 16 seeds — and hosts for the first two rounds. The Frogs were 11th overall, and slotted as a No. 3 seed in one of the Fort Worth brackets. In the initial reveal two weeks before that, they were 12th and a No. 3 seed in one of the Sacramento regionals — about 1,700 miles away.
Third-year TCU coach Mark Campbell admits he’s lost sleep thinking about that “golden opportunity” for his team, similar to seven years ago when he was an Oregon assistant. The second-seeded Ducks won their first two NCAA tourney games at home and advanced to Portland — in their home state, but still more than 100 miles away — where they knocked off top-seeded Mississippi State in the regional final to make their only Final Four.
“I don’t know how many years it’s been since (TCU) bid for it, but how cool that our university and community put our program in position to host, and then how far we’ve come,” Campbell said. “There’s no way they thought when they put that bid in that we’d be the one that’d have a chance to play there. So it’s pretty cool and special.”
Host sites set long before
Sites for this year’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games were announced by the NCAA in October 2020, when Dickies Arena had been open for only about a year and just before TCU began the first of three consecutive losing seasons, ending with a 1-17 record in Big 12 play in 2022-23. Campbell then became coach and has brought in standout transfers each season, the latest group including Miles and Marta Suarez, a 6-foot-3 forward with elite guard skills who previously played for Tennessee and California.
TCU is also the defending Big 12 Tournament champion, and with a double-bye doesn’t play in Kansas City until the quarterfinal round Friday.
The Frogs had never won any Big 12 title or gone to a Sweet 16 before last season. Their last NCAA Tournament appearance had been 2010, though they could have made it in 2020 when they were 22-7 before postseason tournaments were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s been a blur, to be honest,” said Campbell, hired three years ago this month. “It’s incredible what this group’s accomplished so far, and they’re not done yet.”
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