No team is more likely than Virginia to feel pressure at today’s NCAA women’s basketball subregional in Norfolk. The Cavaliers (23-9) have constructed a fine, redemptive season, but their recent history won’t be so easily dismissed. Virginia, which once made 20 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances and 21 in 22 years, is returning to the tournament for the first time since 2005. It is 2-5 in its past seven NCAA games and last advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2000. A startling fact: Senior point guard Sharnee Zoll is the only player on the Virginia roster with previous NCAA experience. The Cavaliers need to win to validate their No. 4 seeding and No. 24 national ranking – and don’t think they don’t know it. U.Va.’s fan base has grown increasingly restless and rebellious over the past five years.  A loss in tonight’s appointment with 13th-seeded Cal-Santa Barbara (approximately 9:50) – or in Tuesday’s second-round game against Old Dominion or Liberty – will almost certainly add volume and shrillness to chatroom demands for an extreme makeover (and we’re not talking drapes and wallpaper here) in the coaching office. Tonight’s keys: Zoll must handle UCSB’s defensive pressure, Virginia as a team must convert its layups and point-blank shots (a problem in more than one game in recent years) and post player Aisha Mohammed must establish herself as a presence in the paint. Don’t discount Cal-Santa Barbara, pedestrian seeding notwithstanding. The Gauchos, the Big West tournament champions, have won five in a row and 19 of their past 20. They lost to Maryland, ranked No. 3 nationally at the time, by four points, 75-71, in late November.

Everyone says maturity and experience are invaluable assets in postseason competition. If so, ninth-seeded Iowa (21-10) might be a worthwhile pick in today’s 2:52 p.m. first-round game against Georgia. The Hawkeyes start three seniors and two juniors and list two seniors and a junior among their top four reserves.

Think North Carolina is confident? The Tar Heels began warmups for today’s 12:22 game against Bucknell wearing shooting shirts that bore this message on the back: “The world is our dance floor.”

ESPN’s coverage of the first-round of the women’s tournament has been strong and comprehensive. But it has underscored women’s basketball’s inherent postseason problem: Where to play? On neutral floors? Or on the home courts of strong teams – thereby making those teams all but immune to upsets? Games played on neutral floors have drawn the sort of crowds one would expect at, oh, a symposium on the migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. Translation: sparse, at best. This morning’s New Orleans Region doubleheader in ODU’s Constant Center offered more of the same. Had North Carolina not traveled well – an estimated 500-600 supporters – the turnout would have been quite small. The fact remains: for all of the sport’s significant growth, for all of its success at transforming the Division I Final Four from a competition into an event with a capital ‘E’, fans remain interested in and devoted to their local teams, not the game as a whole. The typical women’s basketball fan will happily drive from Norfolk to, say, Blacksburg to watch his or her team compete. But that same fan might be reluctant to walk across the street to watch Connecticut and LSU.