Boston College attack McKenna Davis runs by North Carolina defender Ellie Traggio at the ACC Women’s Lacrosse Championship on Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. | Mitchell Northam / SB Nation North Carolina looks like the favorite in the 29-team field, while Boston College, Northwestern and Florida look like other contenders. The 2025 NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament begins this weekend, with games getting underway on Friday at on-campus sites. The 29-team field features 15 automatic bids and 14 at-large selections. Boston College is the sport’s reigning champs and the Eagles will try to become the first team to repeat as national title holders for the first time in a decade. Standing in their way however is the undefeated North Carolina Tar Heels, who have already bested BC twice this season. The rest of the field includes talented players, interesting storylines and a handful of teams with real chances to contend for a spot in the Final Four. Let’s break down everything there is to know about the tournament this season. How does the NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament format work? Of the 29 teams that make the field, the top three seeds receive first-round byes. This year, those belong to No. 1 overall seed North Carolina, reigning champs Boston College, and third-seeded Northwestern, which won the tournament in 2023. The top eight seeds in the field get hosting privileges during the tournament’s opening weekend. The rest of the top seeds are: No. 4 Florida, No. 5 Virginia, No. 6 Maryland, No. 7 Yale and No. 8 Johns Hopkins. Yes — Johns Hopkins plays much of its other sports in Division III, but competes in Division I in men’s and women’s lacrosse. First round games will take place on Friday, and the winners of those games in the on-campus pods will then face off in the second round on Sunday. Of the eight teams remaining in the quarterfinals, the higher seed in each matchup will host on May 15, with the winners moving onto the Final Four in Foxborough, Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium. The national semifinals will take place on May 23, with the championship game set for May 25. How to watch the NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament Games in the first and second round will be on ESPN+. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be on ESPNU, and the national championship game will air on ESPN at noon ET on May 25. Who is the favorite in the 2025 NCAA women’s lacrosse tournament? It’s the North Carolina Tar Heels, who are a perfect 18-0 and have 11 wins over nationally ranked opponents, including two against Boston College and one against Northwestern. Guided by longtime head coach Jenny Levy, the Tar Heels rank second nationally in scoring with 17.5 goals per game and first in defense, allowing just 6.67 goals per game. Leading the Tar Heels’ offense are sisters and finalists for the Tewaaraton Award, Chloe and Ashley Humphrey. Chloe, a redshirt freshman, was named MVP of the ACC Tournament and is sixth nationally in scoring with 73 goals this season. Ashley, a graduate senior, is 10th nationally in total points with 70 assists and 28 goals. Chloe is the first freshman ever to be a finalist for the Tewaaraton — akin to the Heisman for women’s lacrosse — while Ashley is nine assists away from owning the NCAA’s all-time career record. On the defensive end, UNC’s sophomore goalkeeper Betty Nelson has the nation’s fourth-best save percentage at 50.5. North Carolina will play the winner of Clemson vs. Navy on Sunday. The Tigers — whose program is just three years old — is in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever, while Navy is in the field for the first time since 2019 under Hall of Fame coach Cindy Timchal. What other players are worth watching? Boston College’s Rachel Clark is the nation’s leading goalscorer with 91 this season, while Northwestern’s Madison Taylor is just behind her with 89 goals. Taylor also has 32 free position goals this season, which leads the country. Additionally for Boston College, goalkeeper Shea Dolce is a Tewaaraton finalist. She was voted Goalkeeper of the Year in the ACC and has the nation’s best save percentage at 55.7. Georgia Latch, a senior attack at Loyola Maryland, is an offensive force too as she’s second nationally in total points with 69 assists and 53 goals. The Greyhounds open against Stony Brook on Friday and the winner will face Boston College. Madison Epke of James Madison is the best in the country at draw controls, winning 12.61 per game and a total of 227 on the season. JMU opens the tournament against Duke on Friday. Defensively, Reagan O’Brien of Johns Hopkins is the queen of forcing turnovers, causing 85 this season and 4.72 per game. The Blue Jays open the tournament versus Liberty. For fourth-seeded Florida, midfielder Kaitlyn Davies does a little bit of everything at a high level, ranking in the top three for the Gators in goals, ground balls, caused turnovers and draw controls. The Big 12 Midfielder of the Year will lead the Gators against Mercer.

Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images Jeeno Thitikul has the early lead out at the Mizuho Americas Open. The LPGA is in action this week at Liberty National in New Jersey with the Mizuho Americas Open. Any event at Liberty National is certainly worth watching. Part of what makes this event so unique is its inclusion of amateurs, specifically the 24 top players from the AJGA. It is a fun event where the game of golf is on display and celebrated, but at the end of the day it is still a competition. Through the first round Jeeno Thitikul holds the lead thanks to a bogey-free round in which she finished 8 under par. A clean day is an easy way to put yourself in contention. Scrubadubdub @Jeeno_atthaya with a squeaky clean scorecard that makes her the clubhouse leader pic.twitter.com/EFRxvUgvOD— LPGA (@LPGA) May 8, 2025 There is some stronger weather in the forecast for Friday so that could make matters a bit more tricky. For now though the leaderboard is pretty strong top to bottom with Nelly Korda and one of last season’s top rookies Gabi Ruffels, who also went bogey free, both sitting four under par. Last week’s Black Desert Championship winner Haeran Ryu is also knocking on the door one stroke up at 5-under. As noted the weather could come into play and lead to some different scores as the weekend unfolds. Celine Boutier, who sits tied for second at 6-under, noted that Liberty National is a course that will bite back if you are not careful. Yeah, definitely gives you a little bit of cushion. I feel like especially with the weather coming in tomorrow you just don’t know what you’re going to get, if we’re even going to be able to play. So just to have a good first round in is definitely a little bit of a relief and gives you a little bit of room to see what’s going to happen tomorrow. We will see what this weekend has in store.

Photo by Lance King/Getty Images The ACC is trying an outside the box approach to solve a problem that only has one clear and simple solution. The ACC announced Tuesday that its 18-team men’s basketball conference is going back to playing an 18-game league schedule. The conference had played a 20-game league schedule since the 2019-20 season, a move that seemed destined to stick following last year’s additions of SMU, Stanford and California. And yet, here we are. Where we are is uncharted territory for the ACC. While the SEC and the Big Ten are enjoying record levels of success, the ACC hasn’t placed more than five teams in an NCAA Tournament since 2021. If not for North Carolina’s highly controversial inclusion in the First Four in this past tournament, the ACC would be coming off a year in which it sent just three teams to the Big Dance for the first time since 2000. In a league where basketball has typically been king, lagging behind the other four power conferences for more than a one-off season is cause for sweeping change. And so again, here we are. The most surprising part of Tuesday’s announcement wasn’t the reversion, it was the structure of the reversion. Instead of following the format most believed would be adopted — every team playing 16 opponents once and one opponent twice — the ACC announced that starting in 2025-26, every team will play 14 teams once, two teams twice, and one team not at all. The home-and-home games will be of two different varieties. Each team will play two games against a “primary partner” every season, and two game against a “variable partner” that will change from one season to the next. The “primary partners” list is as follows: Boston College-Notre DameClemson-Georgia TechCalifornia-StanfordDuke-North CarolinaFlorida State-MiamiLouisville-SMUNC State-Wake ForestPitt-SyracuseVirginia Tech-Virginia The rationale here is sound: It gives the league the opportunity to pit its projected strongest teams against one another for one extra quality matchup every season, while also preserving the sanctity of the conference’s strongest rivalries. What the ACC hopes to avoid is a situation like last year where a Duke team that finished 19-1 in the league and a Louisville team that finished 18-2 played their only game on Dec. 8 to little fanfare. Having two teams — Clemson and Louisville — finish 18-2 in league play and earn just a No. 5 and a No. 8 seed, respectively, is another thing Jim Phillips and company would like to avoid moving forward. Overall, the move sort of feels like treating a rapidly spreading virus with ibuprofen. Could there be some positive effects? Sure, but this isn’t a reaction that is addressing the root cause of the issue in any substantive way. Every ACC team getting two additional non-conference games won’t matter much if the league doesn’t stop getting absolutely obliterated by the other power conferences in November and December. The ACC’s 18 teams went a collective 331-270 in non-conference play last season, the seventh-best mark out of the 31 leagues in Division-I. The league also had a sub-.500 record against top 100 opponents for the fourth consecutive season. Perhaps most notably, the conference went just 4-30 in games against SEC opponents, including a humiliating 2-14 performance in the annual ACC-SEC Challenge. The lack of quality wins combined with a multitude of embarrassing losses left Duke with almost no margin for error to be a No. 1 seed, and teams like Clemson and Louisville with almost no margin for error just to get into the NCAA Tournament. A change in scheduling philosophy isn’t going to fix that. In an era where finances matter even more than they ever have before, it should surprise no one that the two leagues with the most money are the two currently experiencing the most on-court success. The SEC in particular is on its best run in history thanks to being able to hire (and keep) some of the best coaches in the sport, and assemble the best rosters in the sport on an annual basis. In an effort to try and make up ground, several ACC programs have brought in younger, more forward thinking head coaches this offseason. Will Wade will look to rejuvenate NC State, Jai Lucas is already bringing high-level talent back to Miami, Ryan Odom takes over at Virginia after years of being discusses as one of the “next big things” in coaching, and Luke Loucks is attempting to bring a fresh approach to roster assembly at Florida State. With all due respect to Phillips and company, this is the only way back to the top of the mountain for the ACC. No scheduling rearrangement is going to hide another sub-par two months of performances before the calendar flips to 2026. While the path to the recipe for conference success has changed significantly in recent years, the recipe itself is static: Great players, great coaches, stacking wins. Different than it’s ever been before. Same as it ever was.

Somehow this is only the second most embarrassing thing to to happen to Pierce that involves the Celtics In only the second most embarrassing thing to happen to Paul Pierce concerning the Boston Celtics, Pierce had to back up his big talk after Boston blew another 20-point lead in their Game 2 loss to the New York Knicks. After the Celtics blew a 20-point lead to lose Game 1 to the New York Knicks, Pierce went on TV and said that he would walk 15 miles to work the next day if the Celtics lost to the Knicks again, to the disbelief of all his cohosts. "If the Celtics lose Game 2 at home"I’m walking here tomorrow."Fifteen miles"In my robe"Barefoot" pic.twitter.com/Ecw9zRZ0uQ— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) May 8, 2025 Well, you know what they say: the more you mess around, the more you find out. The Celtics somehow blew another 20-point second half lead in Game 2 and allowed the Knicks to earn a stunning win. New York is now up 2-0 with the best-of-7 series heading to Madison Square Garden. Yes, Pierce actually backed up what he said. The Hall of Fame scorer filmed himself on his 15 mile walk and provided updates to fans along the way. Paul Pierce yesterday: “If the Celtics lose Game 2 at home, I’m walking [to work] tomorrow, 15 miles! In my robe, no shoes on, barefoot… I guarantee it. Put the house on this game. No way we lose.”Paul Pierce today: (h/t @NBA_NewYork)pic.twitter.com/r1WPonI6F1— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) May 8, 2025 Pierce dropped the route he allegedly took on his walk. It took him more than 20 miles and eight hours to walk into work. pic.twitter.com/OriE5sFujR— Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) May 8, 2025 This is also a reminder to never make outlandish bets on live television for international audiences, because nobody ever forgets the things you say. Pierce has to walk 20 miles from his home to the studio, an outlandish number that is definitely not going to put him in the office on time, but it’s the principle of it that matters the most. I just hope they won’t have to carry him off the sidewalk so he can go poop, because that would be crazy.

Photo by SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images Wednesday was a busy day on the waiver wire as WNBA teams continue to make tough roster decisions. The WNBA season is just over a week away, and the time to cut down rosters is here. Wednesday saw a wave of waivers after Tuesday’s three-game preseason game schedule, as more teams get closer to their goal of 11-12 players for the regular season. One of the biggest cuts of the day was Harmoni Turner from the Las Vegas Aces. Turner led Harvard to an Ivy League Championship this season, winning the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year award before being drafted 35th overall in the 2025 WNBA Draft. An Olympian was also cut from the Indiana Fever — Yvonne Ejim from Canada went to the 2024 Paris Olympics with her national team while still a student a Gonzaga. She won the same Becky Hammon award in 2024, and is a two-time West Coast Conference Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. She was drafted 33rd overall by the Fever in the 2025 Draft. The Minnesota Lynx made a sweep of cuts Wednesday as well, waiving Dalayah Daniels, Diamona Johnson, Camryn Taylor and Ajae Petty from training camp. The Phoenix Mercury waived Australian Shyla Heal as well as Anna Makurat from their roster. Along with Turner, Queen Egbo was also waived by the Las Vegas Aces. Thursday morning, the Connecticut Sun waived Caitlin Bickle and Kamila Borkowska. Here is an updated list of all waived players since the beginning of training camp: Mya Hollingshed (Connecticut Sun) Abbey Hsu (Connecticut Sun) Jordyn Jenkins (Las Vegas Aces) Kaitlyn Davis (New York Liberty) Alyssa Utsby (Los Angeles Sparks) Anneli Maley (Los Angeles Sparks) Shyanne Sellers (Golden State Valkyries) Arella Guirantes (Chicago Sky) Tilly Boler (Chicago Sky) Sammi Puisis (Chicago Sky) McKenzie Forbes (Dallas Wings) Mikiah Herbert Hannigan (Dallas Wings) Morgan Jones (Washington Mystics) Jojo Lacey (Washington Mystics) Bree Hall (Indiana Fever) Jillian Alleyne (Indiana Fever) DeYona Gaston (Atlanta Dream) Christyn Williams (Minnesota Lynx) Kiara Leslie (Minnesota Lynx) Aaronette Vonleh (Dallas Wings) Jordan Hobbs (Seattle Storm) Madison Conner (Seattle Storm) Harmoni Turner (Las Vegas Aces) Queen Egbo (Las Vegas Aces) Yvonne Ejim (Indiana Fever) Dalayah Daniels (Minnesota Lynx) Diamond Johnson (Minnesota Lynx) Camryn Taylor (Minnesota Lynx) Ajae Petty (Minnesota Lynx) Shyla Heal (Phoenix Mercury) Anna Makurat (Phoenix Mercury) Caitlin Bickle (Connecticut Sun) Kamila Borkowska (Connecticut Sun) Despite this long list of cuts, no team is within the 11-12 player range. Some teams are hanging out around 14-15 players, while other teams still have as many as 18 players in camp. That will change as we head into the weekend, so many more cuts are still to come. While adding more WNBA expansion teams will help this, there is also a need for expanded rosters. Many teams will only keep 11 players in the end despite being allowed to have 12, so that they can have more space in their final salary budget. With there not being any sort of injury reserve option on teams, roster spots are also being occupied by people who will not play. Though it’s great that they’re still getting paid on guaranteed contracts, this also takes away spots for healthy players. Why can’t we have both? Pay players injured with the team while also being able to sign some of these camp players. The WNBA season officially starts on Friday, May 16, and teams will likely have their final rosters submitted by Monday or Tuesday of next week.