Prepare for the statements.
This will be called a watershed moment in women’s basketball, a turning point in the college game. There will be sweeping conclusions: Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, two of college basketball’s biggest stars, changed the game.
Yes, women play a very good game, but they have been doing it for a long time. Welcome to the party.
This is not a moment. That’s momentum.
“We bring the show,” Louisiana State guard Flaujee Johnson said Sunday wearing a national championship hat.
These women, part of an increasingly deep talent pool, are attracting new investment (thanks to bids for names, image and likeness) and large numbers of viewers to the sport.
The American Airlines Center in Dallas hosted a capacity crowd of more than 19,000 fans for the women’s NCAA Tournament final, a game that set a ratings record for the event with an average of 9.9 million viewers on ESPN.
The performances they saw were amazing, but not particularly ground-breaking. Clark, Iowa’s star guard and national player of the year, is being called a generational player, even by Louisiana State coach Kim Mulkey, whose team beat Iowa for the championship on Sunday.
But there were great talents not long before her: Cheryl Shoops, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Candice Parker, Brittney Griner, Brenna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu. Clark points to Maya Moore, who led UConn to a 150-4 record from 2007-2011 and has a collection of Olympic, NCAA and WNBA titles, as her inspiration.
Clark spent her season putting on a shooting clinic and dazzling fans with her long-range accuracy. In Round 8 against Louisville, finished with 41 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists, the first 40-point triple-double in an NCAA Division I tournament game, men’s or women’s. Reese, Louisiana State’s rebounding dynamo, set the Division I record for most double-doubles in a single season when she picked up her 34th Sunday in the title game.
After the game, conversation in the locker room and on social media focused on trash-talk and fouls.
Clarke and Rees, two of the (rightly) most confident players on a field, were expected to exchange barbs. But when Reese waved her hand in front of her face — mimicking what Clark had done in that Game 8 game against Louisville, as if to say, “You can’t see me” — and then pointed her finger , a conversation broke out about sportsmanship.
Would a similar moment have garnered the same level of attention in the men’s race? Earlier in the men’s tournament, Florida Atlantic’s Alijah Martin was called “classless” after he dunked in the dying seconds of his team’s win over No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson. But the moment passed quickly.
Perhaps this controversy will subside quickly as well. The unwritten rules about how female athletes — especially black athletes — are allowed to express themselves on the court are being challenged anew by this generation of players.
“I don’t fit the narrative,” Rees said. “I don’t fit into a box you want me to be in. I’m very hood. I’m very ghetto. But when others do, you say nothing. So this was for girls like me, who will speak up for what they believe in. You are not apologizing. That’s why I did it tonight. He was bigger than me tonight.”
The millions who watched the championship game saw Rees and Clark’s talent on full display. They also saw the breadth and depth of talent at the college level. Neither Iowa nor LSU had won a women’s basketball national title. In years past, only the top schools seemed capable of attracting top basketball talent. This year the dynasties were shaken to their core.
In the second round, Stanford, the No. 1 seed, was knocked off by No. 8 Mississippi. At home for the Hoosiers, Indiana, also No. 1, lost to ninth-ranked Miami. Miami went on to upset No. 4 Villanova, led by star forward Maddy Siegrist, whose early exit from the tournament led her to declare for the WNBA draft. In the round of 16, dynasty UConn’s run came to an unceremonious halt against No. 3 Ohio State.
Even with the sting of the loss, Stanford player Haley Jones seemed to see what was going on around her. “It’s definitely a growth for the women’s game,” she said.
The depth of talent is so great that many of the best players in college basketball won’t have a roster spot waiting for them in the WNBA, which has long been in expansion talks.
After falling to LSU, Monika Czinano, a center who was instrumental in Iowa’s playoff run, discussed playing professionally overseas — not in the United States. He was already planning to set alarms to watch next season’s tournament. There are only 144 spots in the WNBA and only 36 players are drafted each year.
And now that college athletes are allowed to earn money through NIL deals, top colleges stay longer and are more visible. Jones and Clark have contracts with Nike, and Reese is signed by more than a dozen brands, including Coach.
But as the sport grows, the question, or perhaps the responsibility, of this development no longer rests so much on the players. Maybe it’s because this growth is obvious. Maybe it’s because there’s been a shift from treating women’s basketball like it’s a cause instead of a sport.
“It’s almost ridiculous to think back to when I was playing or, you know, even when I started coaching this game, like nobody cared about women’s basketball,” Iowa coach Lisa Blunder said as members of the news media latched onto every her word.
Despite the flood of attention on women’s basketball this weekend, the fight for recognition and equality is far from over.
The spending gap between men’s and women’s tournaments remains, albeit narrowed. Currently, women’s basketball is broadcast as part of a $34 million package that includes other NCAA sports. If the rights to the women’s basketball tournament were sold separately, it would be worth at least $85 million a year, according to a report after an NCAA-commissioned investigation.The league’s new president, Charlie Baker, suggested Sunday that women’s basketball could get own deal when rights are renegotiated; current contract expires in 2024;
Fans are letting their wallets do the talking until the NCAA catches up.
“Taylor Swift is in town and we’re still selling this place out,” Mulkey said. Thirty minutes before the championship game, the The cheapest tickets available were over $500. The 2023 women’s tournament attracted the most fans in its history, with 357,542 fans.
There are no more arguments to be made for women’s basketball. They never existed.
And if you didn’t watch this year’s tournament?
“You lose,” Louisiana State’s Johnson said. “The rest of the country is. What are you doing?”
Remy Tumin contributed to the report.
