Here are 25 things to know ahead of Thursday’s first-round tip of the NCAA women’s tournament

Whether it’s the player at Iowa who honored Caitlin Clark in the best way possible or the freshman at Fairleigh Dickinson who hit the ground running and hasn’t stopped, there’s local flavor in the women’s NCAA Tournament beyond Philly legend Dawn Staley at South Carolina.

Here are 25 things to know about the field starting with the star at Notre Dame, by way of South Jersey, who has been omnipresent on ESPN’s commercials and is part of the college game’s future.

1. The accolades keep rolling in for Notre Dame star Hannah Hidalgo. On Monday, it was announced that Hidalgo, a sophomore who played at Paul VI, will be included in the second edition of the documentary series Full Court Press. (Peyton Manning is one of the producers. It’s kind of like HBO’s Hard Knocks series, but for players.) Hidalgo, named the Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the Atlantic Coast Conference, also is a finalist for the Wooden Award, given to the National Player of the Year.

2. Notre Dame teammate Olivia Miles also is a Wooden Award finalist. The No. 3-seeded Irish have reached the Sweet 16 in each of the last three years. They play Stephen F. Austin on Friday (2 p.m., ESPN).

3. William & Mary (15-18) won four games in four days to secure the school’s first NCAA Tournament bid — men or women. Sophomore Monet Dance, who has the best name in the field, had a career-high 27 points in the Colonial quarterfinals upset of top-seeded North Carolina A&T.

4. Anahi-Lee Cauley, a transfer from Villanova who appeared in two NCAA Tournament games for the Wildcats in 2022, plays 23.2 minutes off the bench for William & Mary, which faces High Point in a play-in game on Thursday (9 p.m., ESPN2).

5. It’s taken five years, but Bella Smuda will finally play in the NCAA Tournament. “It’s cool that people can fill out a bracket and put ‘Liberty’ on there,” she said after finding out the 13th-seeded Flames will visit No. 4 Kentucky on Friday (noon, ESPN).

» READ MORE: Think the Big 5 going 0-for-6 on NCAA Tournament bids is bad? This year marks the first 0-for-12.

6. Smuda, who played at Downingtown East, averages 11.8 points. She was first-team All-Conference USA and a member of the league’s all-defensive team. Liberty hasn’t been to the NCAAs since 2018 and has gotten past the first round only once in 17 previous trips.

7. Kentucky is a 17.5-point favorite over Liberty.

8. While Liberty brought back four starters from a year ago, Kentucky (22-7) has meshed a roster full of transfers in coach Kenny Brooks’ first season. One of those newcomers is not Jordan Obi, a grad student who played the last four years at Penn. Obi suffered an undisclosed leg injury before the season and has not played this year.

9. Stephanie Gaitley, a 1983 Villanova graduate, has coached Fairleigh Dickinson to its first NCAA Tournament bid. It’s her second season at FDU, which is the fourth school she’s gotten to the Dance. (Richmond, St. Joseph’s, and Fordham are the others.) The Knights, a No. 15 seed, play TCU on Friday (3:30 p.m., ESPN2).

10. FDU freshman Ava Renninger’s first career points in November came on a four-point play following a steal. That’s cool. Renninger (Archbishop Wood) had 19 points in a November loss at Connecticut and was first-team all-conference and the league’s rookie of the year.

11. Abby Babore, a grad student from Paul VI, is third on the team in scoring at 10.7 points per game. (Her last name is pronounced buh-BORE-ay.) She was named to the Northeast Conference’s all-defensive team for FDU. Bella Toomey, a sophomore from Penn Charter, gives Gaitley 11 minutes off the bench.

12. TCU was a 30.5-point favorite over FDU as of Monday afternoon at FanDuel. This, however, was not the largest spread on the board. Connecticut is laying 44.5 to Arkansas State, and South Carolina is favored by 42.5 over Tennessee Tech.

13. Lucy Olsen, who played at Spring-Ford, is winding down a wonderful college career. After three seasons at Villanova, Olsen leads Iowa in scoring (18.0) this year and was first-team All-Big Ten. Last season, she was first-team All-Big East, the Big 5 Player of the Year, and finished ninth in Villanova history in scoring with 1,504 points.

14. “I don’t have many games left,” Olsen told the Cedar Rapids Gazette last month, “so I’ve got to give it all I have.” Coming off consecutive runs to the Final Four fueled by former star Caitlin Clark, the No. 6 seeded Hawkeyes play Murray State on Saturday (noon, ESPN).

15. On Feb. 3, the day the Hawkeyes retired Clark’s No. 22 jersey, Olsen scored 28 points in an upset of then fourth-ranked USC, led by JuJu Watkins.

» READ MORE: How former Spring-Ford and Villanova star Lucy Olsen built a family joke into a brand at Iowa

16. West Catholic grad Destiney McPhaul plays about 22 minutes off the bench for Mississippi State, a No. 9 seed that opens Saturday against California (5:30 p.m., ESPN2). Winner likely gets USC.

17. UCLA, which beat South Carolina in November, is the No. 1 overall seed. USC is the one-seed in the other region that will be decided in Spokane, Wash. On the other side of the bracket, South Carolina and Texas are the No. 1 seeds. Their regionals are being held in Birmingham, Ala. The Final Four is in Tampa, Fla.

17a. UCLA and USC already have played three times, as have South Carolina and Texas. UCLA has a 2-1 edge, as does South Carolina.

17b. Top odds to win the national title: South Carolina +230, Connecticut +240, UCLA +650, Texas +700, USC +850, Notre Dame +1,000. Everybody else is +4,000 or higher.

18. Maggie Doogan (Cardinal O’Hara) became Richmond’s first conference MVP in 35 years when she was named Atlantic 10 Player of the Year. The junior forward also made the league’s All-Academic team, which is just as laudable.

19. Doogan’s scoring average has increased in each of her first three years, from 11.5 to 15.4 to 16.3 this season. “When I was in high school,” she shared with the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier this season, “me and my dad would play one-on-one a lot, especially during COVID when we couldn’t really go anywhere. We had a hoop in the driveway, so I’d be playing one-on-one with him a lot just to try and work on my footwork and get quicker on defense.”

20. Philly legend Dawn Staley and South Carolina are trying to become the first team to repeat since UConn won the last of its four in a row in 2016. A title would be Staley’s fourth and tie her with current LSU coach (and conference rival) Kim Mulkey for third all-time. Geno Auriemma (11) and Pat Summitt (eight) are the top two.

21. Grad forward Anna Camden, who is from Downingtown, transferred to Richmond before last season but missed the year with a lower leg injury. Before that, she played four seasons at Penn State. She has appeared in 144 career games, including about 13 minutes per game in 33 this season. When the eighth-seeded Spiders play Georgia Tech on Friday (7:30 p.m., ESPNews), it will be her first NCAA Tournament game.

22. Sydni Scott, who played at O’Hara with Doogan, shot Fairfield back into the NCAAs by going 6-for-6 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship game on Saturday. Scott had scored in double figures just once during the season. The Stags, a No. 12 seed, play Kansas State on Friday (2:30 p.m., ESPNews).

23. Former Neumann Goretti star Diamond Johnson has led Norfolk State to the best season in school history. Johnson, the MEAC Player of the Year, led the conference in scoring at 19.2 points per game and is fifth in the nation with 3.6 steals per game. The Spartans (30-4) set a school record for wins and their No. 13 seed is the highest by a MEAC school since 2014 when Hampton was a No. 12. Norfolk State plays No. 4 seed Maryland on Saturday (4 p.m., ESPN).

24. Johnson has appeared in the NCAA Tournament with three schools. She was with Rutgers in 2021 and played all 40 minutes in a first-round loss to BYU. The following year, she was part of the North Carolina State squad that came within a double-overtime loss to UConn of going to the Final Four. And last year for Norfolk State, she had 19 points in a first-round loss to Stanford.

25. Johnson is one of only two active players with 2,000 career points, 600 rebounds, 400 assists, and 300 steals. Georgetown’s Kelsey Ransom is the other. According to Sports-Reference.com, only 24 women’s players have accumulated such numbers, a list that includes Maya Moore, Cheryl Miller, and (drum roll, please) Staley. Whoa.