DALLAS — In the national championship game between Iowa and LSU, featuring standouts Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, it was a reserve without a single point in the past three games who stole the show.

That’s just the way March Madness, this LSU team and even this entire college basketball season have gone. The commonality tying it all together is that graduate guard Jasmine Carson, who led LSU with a clutch 22 of the team’s championship-game-record 102 points, is a transfer who wasn’t even on the Tigers squad this time last year. Barely any player on this title team was on the roster a year ago.

Nine new pieces came into summer workouts, already a question for success, and LSU played one of the easiest nonconference schedules in the country, perking more questions. The SEC was critiqued in the regular season for having a down year, so the Tigers' undefeated run up until the loss to 2022 champion South Carolina was dismissed as unimpressive. A late-game misstep against Tennessee signaled what many believed: The Tigers weren’t battle-tested.

That single test appeared to be all they needed.

“Take advantage of the opportunity. That’s what we did,” Kateri Poole said on the court after cutting her first national championship nets, a 102-85 win in hand over the nation’s best offense and National Player of the Year. “We didn’t let up.”

They’re undoubtedly unlikely champions. Reese herself said, “We’re not supposed to be here, and I don’t care what anybody says, we’re not,” the morning before the final. LSU coach Kim Mulkey opened the week by wondering if they were “feeding the monster” too early by reaching the Final Four in her second season as head coach.

DALLAS — Iowa’s players are living a dream.

Gabbie Marshall’s Snapchat memories reminded her she was with her AAU team at the 2018 Final Four when Arike Ogunbowale hit those buzzer-beaters for Notre Dame. Monika Czinano remembers idolizing Lindsay Whalen, “a god” in her home state of Minnesota who took the Gophers to their only Final Four appearance. Caitlin Clark dreamed of this when she was a little kid, stayed home to do it and received a text from her mom, Anne, on Wednesday that said she felt like she was “stuck in your dream.”

Five years later, they’re the ones running out to cheers during open practices on Thursday at American Airlines Center. The Hawkeyes faithful who have traveled well from Iowa City to Seattle and down to Dallas roared for each name, but none louder than Clark, their newly named Naismith and Associated Press Player of the Year award winner for whom the spotlight continues to widen.

It’s tough to say Clark’s profile has risen in the past week, given it started the season so high, but it has. The 6-foot junior point guard plays some of her best games against the highest competition. She dropped a record 41-point triple-double in an Elite Eight game. Her logo 3-pointers are shared far beyond the women’s basketball circles. While the men’s tournament heads into its big weekend sans any big names, college basketball fans are turning to the women’s game for their star power.

It can be a lot, particularly as women’s basketball’s profile continues its sharp ascension. When Iowa head coach Lisa Bluder was asked what people could expect from Clark against the best in the nation, No. 1 overall seed South Carolina, she said she really just wanted to “take the pressure off of Caitlin.”

They call themselves the “freshies” even though little is new to the South Carolina seniors anymore. They’ve been ranked No. 1 in the country for two-thirds of their collegiate careers. They’ve been to each Final Four available to them. They won a national championship. They’ve gone undefeated in the regular season.

Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke, Laeticia Amihere, Brea Beal and Olivia Thompson have lost a mere eight games in their four-year Gamecock careers, and they don’t plan to lose another. The quintet came as the first No. 1 recruiting class in program history and will leave as the most decorated. A second trophy would cement their powerhouse status further and put them in the company of Connecticut, Tennessee and USC as the only programs to repeat.

When their defense is the best, it leads to the most success. They rank fourth in scoring defense (51.1 ppg) and second in defensive rating (73.0) for the second consecutive season. That’s already nasty, in the words of head coach Dawn Staley amid their NCAA championship run last March.

What would make South Carolina even nastier? An offense so potent it has never been seen in Columbia during Staley’s tenure. A bench bigger than the starting five at other programs scoring nearly as many points as its starters. A focus to be even better.

“I think South Carolina has a whole other level to us,” Cooke, named an Associated Press All-American on Wednesday, said. “And it’s gonna show.”

Few teams can match up with the Gamecocks in a tournament that’s theirs to lose. As the No. 1 overall seed, they have the easiest bracket in Greenville 1. Yet nothing is guaranteed in March, and there are contenders to end the freshies’ careers early, if they don’t choose to return for a fifth year allowed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Connecticut came into the season poised to contend for another title with what on paper was the most talented roster in the game. It came with a caveat of health after injuries throughout the roster torpedoed their title chances last season.

The caveat is no more.

The Huskies will be without one of their No. 1 recruits for a second consecutive season due to injury. The program announced that Azzi Fudd is out for the year with a torn ACL and medial meniscus tear in her right knee. It’s a jolt to not only the Huskies’ 2024 title chances but also their teetering stance atop women’s college basketball’s current powerhouses.

For years, the 11-time national champions have remained on the doorstep of another title, even as more powers join them there with parity and talent growing. Now, UConn’s dynasty era might have finally closed even if the Huskies can win a 12th title this season.

Fudd, the No. 1 recruit in the 2021 class, and Paige Bueckers, the top recruit in the 2020 class, were the young stars meant to take UConn back to a title. The Huskies haven’t won since 2016, when Breanna Stewart won her fourth in four years. It’s the longest drought of head coach Geno Auriemma’s tenure, a dynasty that won championships in 1995, 2000, 2002-04, 2009-10 and 2013-16.

But as Bueckers said earlier this month, they have yet to be No. 1 in April when it counts as the team lifting the trophy. Fudd and Bueckers have played only 17 games together over three years while both have dealt with injuries.