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Women's basketball had transformative weekend in Cleveland | Chris Easterling
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- Women's basketball had transformative weekend in Cleveland | Chris Easterling
CLEVELAND — Caitlin Clark may or may not be the greatest women's college basketball player of all time. Such subjective titles lie in the beholder's eye.
There's little subjectivity necessary to determine that, when they examine the sky-rocketing popularity of women's college basketball in the future, the Iowa star's name will be among the first to come up. It may likely even be the very first.
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Clark played her final game for the Hawkeyes in a 87-75 loss to South Carolina in the national championship game Sunday. What awaits next will be a WNBA career as the No. 1 overall pick of the Indiana Fever , as well as, no doubt, a spot on the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team this year.
What Clark left behind, though, will be a legacy she hopes can be just the start of some big things for the sport.
"People aren't going to remember every single win or every single loss," Clark said after the game. "I think they're just going to remember the moments that they shared at one of our games or watching on TV or how excited their young daughter or son got about watching women's basketball. I think that's pretty cool.
"Those are the things that mean the most to me when people come up to me and — I don't really get offended when people say I never watched women's basketball before. I think, one, you're a little late to the party, yes. But, two, that's cool. We're changing the game. We're attracting more people to it."
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley and Iowa guard Caitlin Clark pose react after being selected as the AP Coach and Player of the Year.
The television numbers have shown that loud and clear. Iowa's semifinal win over Connecticut on Friday night, despite tipping off at 9:30 p.m., registered an average of 14.2 million viewers on ESPN, the most-watched college basketball game — women's or men's — ever on the network.
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The viewership numbers for Sunday's game were not available by late that evening. However, considering it was on an over-the-air network on ABC featuring an undefeated powerhouse in South Carolina as the opposition, pushing 20 million viewers isn't outrageous to ponder.
That's all part of the past, now. What lies ahead is what excites women's basketball fans.
The entire weekend in Cleveland, starting from Thursday's pre-semifinal news conferences through Sunday's title game, was a celebration of the sport. It went beyond just Clark, right up to the two programs that have defined the past and the present.
There was the ascendant dynasty in South Carolina, which won its second title in three years — fourth since 2017 — while making its sixth Final Four since 2015. Its coach, Dawn Staley, through all of her accomplishments dating back to her playing days, has appreciatively taken on the mantle as the sport's greatest ambassador.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley reacts during the trophy presentation after the Gamecocks defeated Iowa in the championship game of the women's 2024 NCAA Tournament in Cleveland.
"I am one that, I'm forever indebted to basketball, so I'm always going to take care of it," Staley said after winning the title. "I'm always going to make sure that our players are respectful. I'm always going to make sure that they know the history of our game. I want to make sure they are always respectful to our opponents. And when you do it that way, in return, you have success. You have success in the wins column and very little disappointment in the loss column.
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"I don't think that's talked about enough, what we've been able to do, and I don't know why. And I really don't care why. We're going to keep doing what we're doing the right way, whether we are the popular or unpopular successful programs in the country. We're going to keep doing it that way."
If there was anyone at the Final Four who could relate, it was the coach of the team who was eliminated by Clark and Iowa in the semifinal. Connecticut once held the mantle as the preeminent program in the sport, although the last addition to its record 11 championships came in 2016.
Still, the Huskies were in their 23rd Final Four, a record that spans from the early 1990s to this weekend. That span goes from the days when the sport was just a program or two — specifically, Connecticut and Tennessee — to now, when the pool legitimate contenders has grown much, much deeper.
After all, the Huskies weren't one of the four No. 1 seeds at the start of the entire tournament. They were, instead, one of two No. 3 seeds, along with North Carolina State, still standing in Cleveland in the Final Four.
UConn coach Geno Auriemma (left) and guard Paige Bueckers during news conference Thursday in Cleveland.
"I remember one time somebody asked one of the coaches before the NCAA tournament — 'Do you have a preference who you want to win the NCAA Tournament?' — and it was a long-time coach, too," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "And they said I don't care, as long as it's not Tennessee or Connecticut. There was this point where people were, you know, dying for some other storyline to appear. And there probably were some storylines but nobody really wanted to pay attention.
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"There weren't enough people that they could look into what all the other storylines were, but now there's way more opportunities for storylines. There's more outlets for storylines."
And, at the end of the day, more outlets for debates like who's the greatest women's college basketball player of all time to appear. Which leads more conversation on the sport, which leads to more interest in the sport.
Which — whether your vote for who the GOAT is goes to Caitlin Clark or Brittany Griner or Cheryl Miller or whomever else — only opens up for opportunities for someone else to enter the conversation in the future.
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ .
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Caitlin Clark's Cleveland weekend just start of women's hoops show
