The 2019 Women’s Final Four is set with No. 1 seeds Baylor and Notre Dame and No. 2 seeds Connecticut and Oregon headed to Tampa to vie for the national championship.

Before the action tips off on Friday with Baylor taking on Oregon at 7:00 ET, followed by Notre Dame facing UConn at 9:00 ET, lets take a look back at the second weekend of the tournament and highlight some of the top senior performances.

1 Baylor Bears

Road to the Final Four: We begin the Greensboro region, where the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament advanced to their first Final Four since 2012 and did so in dominant fashion. While lopsided opening round games are to be expected from the top seeds, things are supposed to get more competitive in the second weekend. Baylor has kept rolling. After picking up wins by 57 and 39 in the first two rounds, they knocked off South Carolina in the Sweet 16 by 25 points and punched their ticket to the Final Four with a 32-point win over Iowa.

Senior Prospects: The Bears continue to get strong performances from seniors Kalani Brown and Chloe Jackson as both players continue to show why they will be able to play at the next level.

In the win over South Carolina, Brown posted a double-double with 18 points and 10 boards, while Jackson added 12 points, six boards, three assists and two steals as she contributes in all facets of the game.

In the win over Iowa to advance to the Final Four, Brown finished with 14 points and seven rebounds and teamed with Lauren Cox to control the paint and contain Megan Gustafson (the nation’s leading scorer). Gustafson finished with 23 points (five shy of her season average) and Baylor held Iowa to a season-low 32 percent shooting from the field. Jackson had another do-a-bit-of-everything game as she finished with 14 points, five boards, three assists and two steals.

1 Notre Dame

Road to the Final Four: The defending champions are back in the Final Four for the second straight year and the ninth time in the program’s history. The road back was far from a cakewalk as the Irish got a strong challenge from Texas A&M in the Sweet 16 – a game that featured a classic scoring duel between Arike Ogwunbowale and Chennedy Carter. That was followed by a come-from-behind win over Stanford in the Elite Eight as the Irish had to overcome a frigid start that saw them miss 20 of their first 24 shots.

Senior Prospects: We have to start to Ogunbowale, who has a penchant for delivering in the NCAA tournament. Against Texas A&M, she scored 24 of her career-high 34 points (14-26 FG) in the second half to lead the Irish to an 87-80 win over Carter (35 points on 13-34 FG) and the Aggies. In the win over Stanford, she finished with 21 points, five rebounds and three steals; it was her 25^th game with at least 20 points this season, matching the school record she set last season.

Jessica Shepard posted double-doubles in both games with 24 and 14 against Texas A&M, followed by 11 and 14 against Stanford. She has 17 double-doubles on the season, and five in her last six games; the only exception came in the second round win over Michigan State when she finished with nine boards.

After missing Notre Dame’s run to the national championship a year ago due to injury, Brianna Turner has made her presence known on the road to the Final Four, particularly on the defensive end. The 6-3 forward won her third ACC Defensive Player of the Year award this season and is averaging four blocks per game in the NCAA tournament.

While Marina Mabrey’s scoring is down – she has 12 total points in four NCAA tournament games compared to a 12.5 points per game season average – she is contributing in other ways as she leads the team with 5.8 assists per game, while adding 3.3 rebounds and 1.3 steals as well. But for Notre Dame to successfully defend their title, they will need Mabrey to improve on her 5-of-25 shooting from the field and 2-of-15 from beyond the arc through the first four games.

2 Connecticut

Road to the Final Four: Connecticut is back in the Final Four for the 12^th consecutive year – extending their already ridiculous NCAA record.  While the words UConn and Final Four may be as complementary as peanut butter and jelly, the path to this year’s Final Four was a bit different for the Huskies. For the first time since 2006 they did not enter the NCAA tournament as a No. 1 seed and they have looked vulnerable at times when in past years they have rolled through the first four rounds as if it was a preseason invitational.  After a 49-point blowout win over Towson in the opening round, UConn’s last three games have been decided by a total of 27 points. They knocked off UCLA by eight in the Sweet 16 and outlasted top-seeded Louisville (including WNBA Draft prospect Asia Durr) by seven points to win the Albany region.

Senior Prospects: Naphessa Collier was the leading vote-getter for the AP All-America team and her play in the NCAA tournament has exemplified why she earned all of those votes and ranks as one of the top prospects in this year’s WNBA Draft. She has posted seven straight double-doubles, and was dominant against UCLA in the Sweet 16 as she finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks and shot 11-of-15 from the field. It was her 20^th 20-point game of the season. In the Elite Eight against Louisville, her scoring was down (12 points on 4-13 FG), but she did everything else to help UConn prevail as she added game-highs of 13 rebounds and six assists.

A key reason UConn was able to defeat Louisville with only 12 points from Collier was the breakout game from fellow senior Katie Lou Samuelson, who dropped 29 points and hit seven 3-pointers to send the Huskies to the Final Four. Samuelson missed the American Athletic Conference tournament with back spasms and it took until her fourth game back in the NCAA tournament for her to show she could carry the Huskies if needed. Consider this, in the first three games of the NCAA tournament, Samuelson scored a total of 34 points on 9-of-25 (36%) shooting from the field and 4-of-14 (28.6%) from beyond the arc. Against Louisville, she had 29 points on 7-of-13 (53.8%) shooting from the field and 7-12 (58.3%) from three.

2 Oregon

Road to the Final Four: Oregon is set to make its first appearance in the Final Four after knocking off top-seeded Mississippi State (featuring WNBA prospects Teaira McCowan and Anriel Howard) in the Portland regional final. The Ducks had been knocking on the Final Four door for the past two years, but were ousted in the Elite Eight in 2017 (by Connecticut) and 2018 (by Notre Dame). After finally breaking that door down, the Ducks have a tall task ahead of them with top seed Baylor as their opponent on Friday.

Senior Prospects: Throughout the season and NCAA tournament, the Ducks have been led by All-American Sabrina Ionescu, the NCAA’s all-time leader in triple-doubles (18) for either men and women. Ionescu – who had 31 points, eight assists and seven rebounds in Oregon’s 88-84 over Mississippi State. Ionescu is a junior guard that has the option to declare herself eligible for the 2019 WNBA Draft following this Final Four run and her decision will have a major impact on the top of this year’s draft board. Another Duck that could hear her name called on draft day is senior Maite Cazorla, who had 11 points and six assists against Mississippi State, including a dagger 3-pointer with 35 seconds left that put Oregon up by seven and put the game out of reach.