Day 2 of the Round of 64 for the women’s NCAA Tournament is nearly underway, and among the games on tap is a battle between No. 2 NC State and No. 15 Vermont.

The NC State Wolfpack finished the regular season with a 26-6 record, ranking seventh in the nation in RPI, and fifth in strength of schedule. The Vermont Catamounts, meanwhile, finished 90th in RPI and were 13-3 in America East play. Vermont won their conference with a 62-55 win over Albany in the America East conference finals.

Here’s how our experts see Saturday’s Round of 64 clash playing out. Be sure to check out USA TODAY’s complete March Madness bracket predictions to see our team’s picks for every game. While you’re at it, don’t forget to read our tournament bold predictions and upset picks.

NC State vs. Vermont picks and predictions

Our experts from across the USA TODAY Network are unanimous (8-0) on who will win this game,  No. 2 seed Wolf Pack or No. 15 seed Catamounts. NC State does have the edge in efficiency statistics. Take a look at their full bracket predictions.

NC State vs. Vermont date, start time, how to watch

• Game Day: Saturday, March 22, 2025
• Game Time: 2 p.m. ET
• Location: Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, North Carolina
• TV Channel: ESPN
• Live Stream: Fubo, Sling TV, YouTube TV

Watch UConn vs. Arkansas State on Fubo

NC State vs. Vermont odds

Odds via BetMGM as of Thursday, March 20.

• Spread: NC State (-20.5)
• Moneyline Favorite: -10000
• Moneyline Underdog: +1900
• Total: 124.5

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At Rutland Regional Medical Center, administrators have long wanted to combine two different parts of the hospital: the birthing center and the Women’s and Children’s Unit. 

The two units are separated by a hallway, meaning that patients are moved to a new unit shortly after giving birth — “a setup for poor patient experience,” Jonathan Reynolds, the hospital’s vice president for clinical operations, told a Vermont House committee last month. 

And, because having two separate units means that the hospital must maintain two different pools of practitioners with overlapping skill sets, combining them would save an estimated $1 million in labor costs annually. 

But consolidating the two units will incur an additional expense: that of obtaining a certificate of need.

Under state statute, Vermont health care institutions are required to get a certificate of need — effectively, a legal permission slip — anytime they want to build, renovate or buy facilities or obtain medical equipment that are more expensive than certain threshold amounts. 

But as prices for construction and medical equipment rise, more and more projects — including the consolidation of Rutland Regional’s two units — require such certificates, tying up health care facilities and state regulators in lengthy and expensive bureaucratic processes. 

“Rutland Regional is handcuffed, and we are unable to take the initiative right now to decrease the cost of health care because of the CON process,” Reynolds told lawmakers.

Now, lawmakers are seeking to relax those requirements. Last week, Vermont’s House passed a bill, H.96, that would increase the monetary thresholds needed for a certificate of need — a move that supporters say will lower health care costs and make care more accessible to state residents. 

“The dollar amounts that trigger the CON process are causing extraordinary burdens to hospitals, independent providers and other essential health care entities,” Rep. Mari Cordes, D-Lincoln, the bill’s lead sponsor, said on the House floor March 11. 

Certificate of need regulations, which exist in most states, are intended to reduce unnecessary health care spending and avoid duplicative medical services. 

The process “is intended to protect the public, and it does so by ensuring that projects that are built have sufficient need and are appropriately priced,” Owen Foster, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said in an interview. 

In Vermont, certificates of need are required when a hospital or health care facility seeks to build a new facility, renovate an existing one, or purchase an expensive piece of equipment. If a project hits a certain dollar threshold, hospitals or other health facilities must apply to the Green Mountain Care Board for permission. 

Currently, for hospital construction or renovation, a certificate of need is required for all projects that cost more than about $3.8 million. Approval is also needed for non-hospital construction or renovation over $1.9 million.  

And certificates are also required for purchases or leases of single pieces of medical equipment that cost more than roughly $1.9 million for hospitals, or $1.3 million for non-hospitals.

Those limits increase annually by an inflationary factor. But the cost of construction and medical equipment has far outpaced those inflationary increases — something that the bill would address.

If passed, the proposed legislation would significantly raise those cost thresholds. Construction and renovation projects, both for hospitals and non-hospitals, would require a certificate of need only if costs run over $10 million. And the acquisition of new medical equipment, both by hospitals and non-hospitals, would only require certificates of need if the cost exceeded $5 million.

With little opposition, the bill has drawn support from health care entities that are often at odds with each other: advocates, regulators, and hospitals. 

The certificate of need process eats up “resources, both in money and time, both for the Green Mountain Care Board and for hospitals,” Devon Green, a lobbyist for the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, said in an interview. 

Reforming the process, as envisioned by H.96, would “reduce cost and burden for the board and for health care providers,” Foster, of the Green Mountain Care Board, said. “And it would increase competition, while still providing oversight” over more complex projects.

Getting a certificate of need can take months, or even, in the case of one recent construction project, over a year. And the process requires applicants to provide reams of documentation about their project’s benefits, costs, projected utilization and more. Other people, organizations or health care entities can weigh in too, and board members can pose multiple rounds of questions and attach conditions to their approval of an applicant’s project.  

“In terms of the current certificate of need process right now, I think there’s a general feeling of, it can be administratively burdensome,” Green said. 

That’s the case at Rutland Regional Medical Center. The consolidation of the birthing unit with the women’s and children’s unit is projected to cost between $5.5 million and $6 million — enough to require a certificate of need under current law, but not under the proposed reforms.  

As it currently exists, “I would wager that the CON process would delay our start of this consolidation of two units by at least a year, if not longer,” Reynolds, the hospital vice president, said last month. 

But if signed into law, he said, H. 96 “gives us the breathing room to perform these types of projects.”

U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., was back in his old digs.

Vermont’s junior senator, who spent more than a dozen years in the state Senate — including stints as president pro tempore — paid a visit to the Statehouse Thursday to give his take to the Senate Appropriations Committee on, well, everything going on down in Washington, D.C.

“It’s so good to see you guys,” Welch said, taking a seat in the committee’s witness chair. He started to tell the senators he had “such fond memories of serving” with them, though quickly cut himself off. “Well, I never made it to this committee. I was across the hall,” Welch corrected, drawing laughs as he pointed toward the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee’s room.

Welch told Senate Approps that, along with many other proposals, he’s deeply worried about the downstream impacts that cuts to Medicaid — which Republican leaders in D.C. have been weighing to fund President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda, including major tax cuts — could have on state budgets in Vermont and elsewhere.  

Recent Trump-led cuts to other federal programs and grant funding could also leave states scrambling to make up the difference, he said, adding that he wished he could give legislators a clearer picture of what to expect. Trump adviser Elon Musk, and Musk’s “government efficiency” department, have seemed to make sweeping cuts almost entirely at random, Welch said. 

“There’s going to be a level of uncertainty that you’re just going to have to deal with,” he said in response to a question from Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille, whom he called “Richie.” “We can give you the information we have as soon as we have it — but it’s not as soon as you need it.”

Vermont’s House and Senate budget writers are in the process of drafting the state’s spending plan for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in July, with the House Appropriations Committee expected to take a preliminary vote on their version on Friday. (Meanwhile, lawmakers are still working out a sharp dispute with Gov. Phil Scott’s administration over how to adjust spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends in June.)

Welch also took a spin around the building Thursday, shaking hands and slapping backs with some of his former colleagues. Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden-Southeast, suggested the cordiality was a far cry from the nation’s capital — though Welch joked about at least one distinction he has noticed.

On the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, which Welch sits on, “the chair is not as tough on me as Ann Cummings was,” he said, referring to the Washington County senator and longtime chair of Vermont’s finance panel.

— Shaun Robinson

In the know

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education. 

What exactly that means for the country — and Vermont — is an open question. 

Through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the state receives more than $68 million annually from the feds, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides another $37.5 million for Vermont’s schools, Anne Bordonaro, who leads the Vermont Agency of Education’s work on federal education programs, told lawmakers last week. Overall, the agency received about $490 million in federal dollars in fiscal year 2024, more than 90% of which it passed on as grants. 

Read more about what we know and don’t know yet here. 

— Ethan Weinstein

On the move

The Senate on Thursday passed S.59, a bill that would make a handful of tweaks to the state’s laws on open meetings. Among other changes, the bill would require officials to include “sufficient details” about matters they discussed during a meeting in their minutes and add a new reason to the list of why officials could enter into an executive session — to discuss “interest rates for publicly financed loans.”

The bill now heads to the House for its consideration.

— Shaun Robinson 

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