Brawls, rivalries and superstars: how women’s college basketball became the main event

WWhen South Carolina led LSU late in the fourth quarter of this month’s Southeastern Conference Tournament championship game, they appeared poised to wash the game away. Then a fight broke out between the two teams who cleared the benches and sucked a player’s brother out of the crowd. The match was delayed for twenty minutes while the referees administered the penalty (the family member was arrested.) In the end, South Carolina was able to win the tournament, remaining undefeated for the season and claiming the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament, where this year the women’s main event is the women’s.

After decades of dribbling in the shadows of men’s basketball, the women’s game has grabbed the spotlight. It’s where the stars are, where the rivalries are, where the fights are, where the eyeballs are. The South Carolina-LSU game drew nearly two million viewers, making it ESPN’s most-watched women’s basketball game outside the NCAA Tournament in a decade. When the two teams played in January, more people watched than an NBA game between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat that was playing at the same time. The numbers for last weekend’s Big Ten championship game between Iowa and Nebraska were even bigger: The game drew more than three million viewers and was on track to become CBS’s most-watched women’s college basketball game in 25 years.

No doubt most fans tuned in to see Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, easily the biggest star in college basketball. People are so eager to see the sharpshooter win a title before moving on to the pros that tickets for Iowa’s NCAA first-round game sold out in 30 minutes. As of Monday morning, resale ticket prices for Saturday’s two-match session were $524, according to the Athletic. Last weekend, sports media sniffer Richard Deitsch announced the news ESPN assigns Clark a dedicated reporter for the early rounds of the NCAA. Which means the network is giving Clark the Taylor Swift treatment.

And yet, despite all the attention Clark has rightly earned this year, no one can accuse the women’s game of being reduced to just one star. Angel Reese, who took on Clark last year, remains a formidable finisher for LSU. Flau’jae Johnson, Reese’s teammate, is AS known for spitting rhymes as she is before her big play. USC freshman JuJu Watkins has stepped up to challenge Clark’s all-time NCAA leading scorer. Notre Dame freshman Hannah Hidalgo is a smart and fearless playmaker. UConn’s Paige Bueckers, unanimously recognized as the nation’s best player three years ago, is finally back in form after two injury-plagued seasons. With so many box office draws, it’s no wonder the Power Five women’s basketball conferences are also posting new highs in ticket sales. This is what ticket bidding site TickPick reports it sold six times as many seats for the women’s Final Four this year as it did for the men’s version.

It doesn’t take a Mensa member to see what’s going on. The quality of women’s college basketball has improved as the men’s talent pool dries up; Top prospects spend at least a year in college before heading to the NBA, or skip it altogether for paid playing opportunities in the NBA’s G League Ignite or overseas with teams as far away as Australia. While the men’s game wonders how to compete in an age when athletes have control over their name, image and likeness, the women’s game has used NIL deals as a way to further entice their athletes to stay in school – with Clark , Reese and Johnson topping the income list, earning him the highest WNBA salary many times over. This allowed women’s teams to keep their best players and build dynasties: South Carolina have lost just three games in the past three seasons – and create rivalries that attract more fans.

The net effect is a man’s game that plays mainly for dedicated alumni, nostalgia fans and gamblers. It doesn’t help that the men have seen Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and other coaching titans retire. Ask the average fan which men’s team cut down the nets in 2023, and they might not remember that it was the UConn Huskies who swept the field en route to claiming the fifth title in school history. Now that I think about it, that’s probably because there was so much buzz surrounding LSU’s showdown with Iowa in last year’s women’s championship.

In the women’s game, South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, LSU’s Kim Mulkey and other coaches have emerged as bona fide characters leaning into their roles. On Tuesday night, Mulkey, whose personality can be as harsh as her fashion sense, was thrown out of a minor league baseball game for breaking away from the crowd. argue with the referee – a joke at your own expense. When LSU and South Carolina played in January and a reporter commented on the hostility the Gamecocks faced from the Tigers’ home crowd, Staley — a world-class trash talker — quickly issued a correction. “They called me ‘boo,’” she joked, suggesting the LSU crowd was actually affectionate. Ahead of the upcoming tournament, she prepared sick notes for fans who tried to miss work to support the Gamecocks.

The LSU-South Carolina rivalry, perhaps the most compelling in basketball right now, harkens back to the days when the only matchup in women’s hoops was Tennessee versus UConn. And Clark has proven to be an attraction unlike anything the game has ever seen. Still, as someone who has followed women’s basketball for more than two decades, it’s hard not to feel like the indie music fan whose pet peeve is hitting the big time in this era of girl-powered hoops. Seriously, where have you been?

On the one hand, it’s nice not to hear male fans in particular talking about lowering the edges or making other unwanted suggestions to make the game more enjoyable to their taste. On the other hand, I have seen many great players come and go without much fanfare. Cheryl Miller is still the most important player in a family that includes her brother Reggie, who is inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside her. Maya Moore may be the most dynamic talent I’ve ever covered. (Man, her UConn teams, featuring Atlanta Dream co-owner Renee Montgomery, were so much fun to watch.) Last month, Hall of Famer Sheryl Swoopes stirred controversy for questioning whether Clark was indeed the all-time scorer of the NCAA could break. marking. Iowa fans quickly called her a racist and showed up to games wearing shirts that read “Don’t Be a Sheryl.” It hardly mattered that the critic who had her foot in her mouth was a former Naismith Player of the Year and former NCAA champion who became the first women’s basketball player ever to land a Nike shoe deal.

Women’s basketball wouldn’t be where it is today without Swoopes and her ilk taking the game into this golden era. And if the current crop of stars is any indication, the women’s game won’t be giving up the spotlight without a fight.