Women's March Madness Final

Sunday, the 7th of April, marked a major historic event with implications on the perception of women’s sports as a whole. Over the course of the NCAA D1 Women’s Basketball season, Caitlin Clark has started a media storm over her supernatural 3-point abilities, drawing millions of viewers to not only the sport of basketball, but raising the conversation of the legitimacy of women’s sports as a whole. 

Caitlin Clark has without a doubt contributed to the boom in support for women’s college basketball, however it was not a solitary effort. Other standout players, including Juju Watkins (USC), Paige Buekers (UConn), Camilla Cardoso (USCarolina), Angel Reese (LSU), Cameron Brink (Stanford), and Hannah Hidalgo (Notre Dame), just to name a few, have done just as much work to get their teams to some of the top spots in the tournament, and have kept viewers coming back for more. 

Leading up to the final, Diana Taurasi, WNBA player for Phoenix Mercury, stirred the pot by claiming that Caitlin Clark was in for a “reality check” once she arrived in the WNBA next season. Many others in the basketball world were claiming that Clark was ineligible to be a GOAT contender without a championship title to support it. These claims and conversations put a lot of pressure on Clark, especially due to the fact that she is 1/1 WNBA prospects on her team going against USC with several. 

With the Iowa vs UConn Final Four game drawing record viewership of 14.2 million people, even more were planning to tune in to see if Clark could live up to the challenge. In only the first quarter, she was able to drop 18 points, compared to the total 20 points earned by USC. However, as the game went on USC’s bench stepped up and took advantage of every error that Iowa made.

While Iowa might not have gotten the results that so many fans wanted, it is clear that Clark will only continue to bring attention to women’s basketball as she enters the next phase of her career in the WNBA.