Every Sport Should Be More Like Women’s College Basketball

If you happen to didn’t like that, you in all probability simply aren’t very enjoyable. 

The ultimate weekend of the ladies’s faculty basketball season gave us a minimum of: the early chief for Sport of the Yr (Iowa vs. South Carolina); two upsets that instantly enter the NCAA canon (Iowa taking down the undefeated South Carolina juggernaut, then LSU knocking Iowa off within the natty); and an ocean of shit discuss, inhabited by a number of vibrant and unforgettable figures. It was, fairly indisputably, probably the most thrilling ladies’s tourney ever, and certainly probably the most talked-about, too. Greater than that, it hit all the notes you need high-level sports activities to hit. 

The numbers bear that out. At its peak, 6.6 million people were tuned into Iowa-South Carolina on Friday evening. Vivid Seats reported that the Closing 4’s common ticket worth was $272, setting a contemporary report. Attendance records fell, too, with upwards of 19,000 folks attending each the nationwide semifinals and the championship sport. It was probably the most considered and most hyped ladies’s Closing 4 in historical past, and for good motive. 

Largely accountable for the thrill? The 2 marquee superstars who stole the present all weekend. LSU’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark gave performances that may encourage a brand new era of ballers to work on each their sport and their pettiness—and managed to kick off a nationwide discourse about whether or not that sort of factor is unbecoming (it’s not), classless (additionally not; that’s sometimes a canine whistle used to assault Black athletes), or dangerous for the sport (it really guidelines). 

The truth that these conversations are taking place in any respect marks a significant step ahead for the ladies’s sport, which has lengthy been unfairly dismissed by misogynistic and merely ignorant followers. The sting lords missed out on some generational hooping this weekend. Clark’s 41 factors and eight assists to clip the Gamecocks will go down as the most effective particular person nights in faculty basketball historical past, full cease. The listing of unfathomable Clark stats is about so long as her pull-up threes, which appeared to discover outer house earlier than splashing by way of the web. 

Clark has now performed 100 video games in an Iowa uniform. She’s been held to single-digit factors in precisely one among them. In 9 postseason video games this yr—Iowa’s three convention match video games plus six extra through the large match—she scored 265 factors. (For context: Iowa’s soccer crew put up 230 throughout their 2022 season.) She had 40 factors in back-to-back NCAA Match video games, turning into the primary girl to ever accomplish that feat. She introduced a numerous variety of eyeballs to the ladies’s sport. And but there was one big she couldn’t slay.

Let’s discuss Angel Reese. The LSU ahead, Most Excellent Participant of the NCAA Match, and newly-crowned champion had a double-double in each one of many Tigers’ tourney video games. A type of included 25 factors and 24 boards as she outrebounded the Michigan Wolverines all by herself within the Tigers’ second-round matchup.