{"id":70668,"date":"2026-04-02T06:31:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T11:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/this-year-one-word-is-echoing-through-womens-march-madness-joy\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T06:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T11:31:36","slug":"this-year-one-word-is-echoing-through-womens-march-madness-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/this-year-one-word-is-echoing-through-womens-march-madness-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"This year, one word is echoing through women\u2019s March Madness: joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whether in the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, coaches and players at this NCAA tournament have found the fun in basketball again<\/p>\n<p>Kara Lawson\u2019s Duke team saw their Final Four dreams dashed with a 70-58 loss to UCLA on Sunday. The Blue Devils had pulled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/mar\/27\/hannah-hidalgo-notre-dame-vanderbilt-sweet-16-elite-eight\">an impressive, buzzer-beating upset<\/a> of No 2 seed LSU in the Sweet 16 days before, but against the No 1 Bruins in the Elite Eight, they didn\u2019t give a repeat performance. They missed a few key moments in transition that could have changed the game and helped them to their first Final Four in 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, though, it was OK.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/apr\/02\/march-madness-ncaa-womens-tournament-joy\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whether in the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, coaches and players at this NCAA tournament have found the fun in basketball again Kara Lawson\u2019s Duke team saw their Final Four dreams dashed with a 70-58 loss to UCLA on Sunday. The Blue Devils had pulled an impressive, buzzer-beating upset of No 2 &#8230; <a title=\"This year, one word is echoing through women\u2019s March Madness: joy\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/02\/this-year-one-word-is-echoing-through-womens-march-madness-joy\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about This year, one word is echoing through women\u2019s March Madness: joy\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}