They’ll have to try to top it on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the St. Joseph Civic Center, when the sixth-seeded Indians (29-5) face second-seeded Minnesota Duluth (30-3).
Not only is this the first Catawba women’s basketball team to reach the national semifinals, but it is also the first South Atlantic Conference women’s basketball team to do so. Minnesota Duluth also represents a conference, the Northern Sun, that is not typically associated with women’s roundball. Minnesota Duluth won the Northern Sun’s first Elite Eight game in a decade on Monday.
How to watch Catawba vs. Minnesota Duluth Semifinal!
Date: March 22, 2023
Venue: St. Joseph Civic Center St. Joseph, Missouri
Start Time: 7:00 PM ET
TV: CBS Sports Network
Stream anywhere: PremiumTV
You can watch the NCAA Division II Final Four: Minnesota Duluth vs Catawba Women’s College Basketball Live on CBS Sports Network, if you don’t have a cable connection please check out PremiumTV for all NCAA Basketball Games.
Catawba (6) vs. Minnesota Duluth (2) Game Preview
Minnesota Duluth is dressed in maroon and gold and appears long and tall, but not particularly quick. First impressions can be deceiving, but the Bulldogs appear to be a team that will rely on size and execution over speed and daring. Minnesota Duluth has a 6-foot-2 certified superstar. Brooke Olson, an All-America graduate student and future teacher who ranks among the top scorers in the country.
On the surface, Olson’s stats from the Assumption game were unremarkable — 15 points on 6-for-15 shooting — but then you consider she did it in only 16 minutes of court time. She was basically scoring a point every minute. Assumption tried to drive and get her in foul trouble and succeeded admirably in doing that. Olson was called for two fouls less than three minutes into the game, but Assumption was unable to score frequently enough to make it matter. Even when Olson was on the bench, her teammates were keeping time against Assumption. Catawba has the potential to get Olson into trouble and cause him pain.
There are approximately 9,000 undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Minnesota Duluth, located on Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake by surface area, brings volumes of history to the St. Joseph Civic Center. The Bulldogs have won national titles in football, men’s and women’s ice hockey.
When the USA won the “Miracle on Ice” hockey game against the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics, two of the American players were from Minnesota Duluth. The winning goal was assisted by a Minnesota Duluth Bulldog. The majority of the nation’s iron ore deposits were mined in northern Minnesota, and that iron was used to make tanks, planes, warships, and machine guns in the 1940s.
