Women's college basketball will crown a champion on Sunday, capping a captivating tournament that highlights the continued evolution of the game while honoring the sport's leading stars.
It is unfortunate that this tournament was marked by racism and misogyny, and further evidence that the playing field continues to be unequal for the men's game.
As the women's tournament progressed to the second and third rounds, the level of play was excellent. The star power was obvious and the entertainment value was very high. Iowa State's Caitlin Clark played against LSU's Angel Reese in the Elite Eight and then against University Con's Paige Bueckers, a former Hopkins star. Undefeated South Carolina, which features another Minnesotan, St. Michael-Albertville freshman guard Tessa Johnson, is pushing for its second title in three seasons. And her girlfriend JuJu Watkins from USC let it be known that she's the next star of the game.
Friday's semifinal match between Iowa and UW was a tight affair, with Iowa trailing from start to finish with a 71-69 victory. In the loss, Collegiate Con showed its class by not pointing to questionable late calls against them as the reason the Huskies lost.
It's easier to name the top women's college basketball players than the top men's players.
The resale price of tickets for the women's Final Four exceeded $2,000, nearly double the price of tickets for the men's game. Although the women's event will be held in a 19,000-seat area in Cleveland and the men's Final Four will be held in a 64,000-seat stadium in Glendale, Arizona, the price tag still proves the growing interest in the game.
Monday's matchup between defending champion LSU and Iowa drew 12.3 million viewers, more than all but one game in last year's NBA Finals.
A lot of good things are happening in women's basketball. But there are so many horrible things happening to the players.
On March 21, the Utah team was walking to a restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, when a driver yelled racial slurs at the players. After dinner, on the way back to the team's hotel, the driver returned with others and hurled more insults at him. This forced Utah to move to a hotel in Spokane, Washington, where the team was playing. A police investigation confirmed that slurs could be clearly heard on recordings from the area.
There was also an unpleasant scene during a first-round game between the University of Chattanooga and North Carolina State University, when the referee was ejected at halftime after it was revealed that she had a master's degree from Chattanooga. Last weekend, five games were played in Portland, Oregon, where one of the three-point lines was nine inches shorter than legal.
Doesn't the women's game deserve the same attention to detail as the men's game? This brings back memories of the 2021 bubble games, where the women's team did not have the same amenities as the men's team. The sport was not allowed to call its women's tournament “March Madness” until 2022.
Next, there was coverage of the UCLA vs. LSU game on March 30th. The Los Angeles Times ran a column depicting UCLA as America's sweetheart while LSU's players were “basketball villains” and “dirty debutants.” Reese, a star player at LSU, was accused of trash-talking. guess what? In the world of sports, trash talk exists not only among men but also among women. The Times article mentioned how Reese provoked Clark during a tournament game last year. Nothing about Clark's actions.
A few weeks earlier, I had sat in the press box at the Big Ten Tournament championship game at Target Center and watched Clark talk nonsense and then complain about officials. During the first-round game against Holy Cross two weeks ago, Clark's girlfriend's father yelled at her from the stands to stop complaining about her.
Only the actions of the best players on the so-called villain team were featured. Reese is black. Clark is white. Black readers feel prejudiced when they see Reese being singled out. The Times column went down a racist and sexist path that unfortunately continues to exist.
The columnist wrote an apology. The Times redacted the offensive language from the article. Thankfully the match continued.
We should all be excited to win a tournament that has brought us victories time and time again. We should also be embarrassed, ashamed and mortified that while this event brought out the best in sports, it also revealed the lack of equality and the worst in society. we need to be better.