March (and April) Madness is done for this year, and we get another example of the old bromide "There's no I in Team".
Caitlin Clark, who had been setting records left and right in women's (and men's) college basketball for the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, ended her collegiate career in losing the NCAA national championship to the University of South Carolina Gamecocks Sunday 87-75 in Cleveland.
The Gamecocks, who had gone undefeated the entire season, won this game with Tessa Johnson's 19 points and Kamilla Cardoso's 15 in keeping the Hawkeyes' chances to a minimum. Clark ended up with 30 points.
The Gamecocks had been pretty much flying under the radar as a Dawn Staley-coached team all season, while all we heard about is the greatest bumper crop women's basketball had ever produced: Clark, Paige Bueckers of Connecticut, Angel Reese of Louisiana State, and JuJu Watkins of Southern California. Together they packed the stadiums, seen their profiles rise in commercials due to NIL money and sent TV ratings to record highs during the tournament. Eighteen million of you watched the championship game on ABC Sunday afternoon. That's second only to the NFL and the Olympics.
Now what? Clark is off to the WNBA, where she might end up being just another player in a league full of one-time college phenoms like herself OR she can become the change agent the league needs. As for women's college basketball itself, they've had a big year. But they still have a long way to go.
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One of the reasons the women's game is not yet on a par with the men's game is this: The women's championship game was played in an NBA arena on a Sunday afternoon on network TV. The men's championship was played in a domed NFL football stadium in Arizona on a Monday night on cable TV.
In that stadium, the University of Connecticut won its second consecutive national title with a 75-60 win over Purdue University, led by efforts from the Huskies' Tristen Newton, Stephon Castle, Cam Spencer and Donovan Clingen. No school since Florida 15 years ago, and Duke before that, had ever won back-to-back titles. So clearly the Huskies' Dan Hurley knows how to coach, right?
Fourteen million saw this game on TBS Monday night despite the fact that (1) there was hardly any buzz outside of the respective campuses, and (2) it had a late tipoff in the East so there could be a long introduction and, once the game ended, "One Shining Moment".
So for this season, anything the boys did, the women did better.
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