Bloglander

Stanford Athletics

Stanford celebrates after beating Michigan in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Tuesday.

Both the men’s and women’s Gonzaga teams may be out of the tournament this year, but the madness marches on here in Spokane with the women’s third round and quarterfinals. The bracket is closing in — 32 teams get whittled down to the Sweet Sixteen on Saturday, and by next Monday night only one team playing in Spokane will move on to the Final Four in New Orleans.

We wrote about this in our event picks for this week’s issue, but we couldn’t include any specifics about the teams since our deadline came along before all the second-round games got started.

But now we know exactly which teams are still vying for that spot in the Final Four: Stanford, California, Georgia and LSU.

No. 6 seed LSU knocked out No. 3 seed Penn State to reach the Sweet Sixteen, but otherwise there haven’t been many upsets in the Spokane Regional. If that continues Saturday, Monday will bring an intense Pac-12 rematch between Stanford and Cal. Stanford is aiming for a sixth consecutive Final Four appearance and finished conference play with a 17-1 record this year, but that single loss was a Jan. 13 game against — you guessed it — Cal.

Tickets for the whole event — two games Saturday and one on Monday — are $45, and earn the ticket-purchaser first dibs on tickets for next year’s men’s games. As of today, single-game tickets are also available for $25.