CLEVELAND — The first time Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers met on a game floor at the collegiate level, the two were freshmen playing in the Sweet 16. It was Bueckers that season who was having the banner year. She became the first freshman to be named the Naismith and AP national player of the year, but even then, anyone watching the game knew that this group of freshmen, led by Bueckers and Clark, was something special.
Four days before that Iowa–UConn matchup, then-Connecticut Sun coach (and current Sparks coach) Curt Miller posed a question:
Does this freshman class re-open discussions on should early entries into the WNBA mirror the NBA requirements? Not a quick fix but interesting discussions.
— Curt Miller (@CurtMillerWBB) March 23, 2021
Interesting discussions, indeed.
The rule hasn’t changed in the last three years, but the game has. The freshmen this season are maybe even more impressive than back in 2021, and now, Clark is the headliner and the soon-to-be No. 1 WNBA Draft pick while Bueckers will return to UConn for a fifth season. The other top players from that class Miller referenced? Cameron Brink, Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese? All near-locks as first-round draft picks, and one will likely end up with Miller as her head coach (the Sparks have the second and fourth picks).
They were a crop of players who had the strangest freshman season in the history of the game — empty arenas, cardboard fans, masked practices, spaced-out benches, constant COVID-19 testing. What a “Welcome To College Basketball” moment it was. Their 2021 NCAA Tournament — their first postseason experience — was dominated by headlines of what was happening around the game. As it became clear how inequitable the tournament sites and experiences were for the women and the men, who were in Indianapolis, players spoke out.
Te-Hina Paopao — now a guard at South Carolina, but then a freshman at Oregon — had a front-row seat to the catalyst of change when her teammate Sedona Prince posted the now-famous TikTok that exposed the differences in weight rooms and facilities.
“That one Tik Tok changed all of March Madness and brought so much attention to it,” Paopao said. “It’s amazing how one thing can change a whole bunch of things.”
The most amazing thing of it all is that when Paopao was a freshman, the women’s tournament didn’t even have the rights to use “March Madness” branding. Only the men did. That bubble season — and specifically, the inequities that were exposed — sparked so much outrage and conversation that the NCAA was forced to hire an outside firm to do a gender equity assessment of the NCAA’s championships. The findings in the Kaplan Report, published a year later, were damning, highlighting that the NCAA had prioritized the men’s tournament “over everything else,” the report read.
Just imagine if the NCAA had always invested…
March 2021 > April 2024 pic.twitter.com/u0d356YN9J
— Chantel Jennings (@ChantelJennings) April 3, 2024
For so long the men were seen as the cash cows, the only ones whose tournament and play were going to draw eyes (and money).
“We’ve been held back, quite frankly,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “We’ve been held back a very, very long time.”
But a lot can change in three years. Since that bubble season, the NCAA was forced to reckon with its treatment of women’s basketball. In the wake of the Kaplan Report, the women’s tournament didn’t just get “March Madness” branding, they got play-in games and more attention from the national office.
At the same time, the NIL floodgates opened and women’s college basketball players cashed in. Clark, Bueckers, Brink, Reese, Azzi Fudd and others signed deals with major agencies and brands. Their faces were on billboards for Nike, Reebok and Under Armour.
Suddenly, that 2021 tournament, when the women and the men received such different treatment, felt like such a different reality. “I don’t know why I say ‘back in the day,’” Paopao said of the 2020-21 season. “It was like three years ago.”
But you can’t blame her for feeling like it’s a distant memory.
This postseason, there haven’t been TikToks about how much better the men have it (though the NCAA has had its fair share of issues with 3-point lines and officiating), but instead, the talk is about the increased attention on women’s tournament because of star power and dominant teams.
Look around at the Final Four and there is the obvious headliner: Clark. She has been all season. From her scoring-record chase to the logo 3s, she has drawn eyes to the game like no one else. She knows that, but she also knows that no one else has been highlighted on national television quite the way she has. That feels particularly obvious to her when she thinks about her favorite players and favorite tournament moments. She remembers UConn’s Maya Moore and her two NCAA titles in 2009 and 2010 (2.7 million and 3.5 million watched those games, respectively). The March magic moment that most stands out to her from her childhood was Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale hitting back-to-back buzzer beaters in 2018 (2 million tuned in for that title game).
Those players and moments were deserving of this attention too, Clark knows, but they just happened to play a few years too early. She quickly speaks about her frustration with the way those games weren’t televised in a way for casual fans to fall in love.
“This is exactly what we wanted for women’s basketball, but also, I feel like it could have been a thing a long time ago. There’s been so many amazing stars in our game,” Clark said. “There’s been so many amazing people to support our game. It’s not surprising that everybody’s wanting to talk about it right now.”
And though Clark takes up a lot of the oxygen, there’s no shortage of compelling stars in this Final Four.
Bueckers’ comeback from an ACL injury in 2022 and how she has led a team that has had five season-ending injuries this season might just be the most impressive accomplishment of her career so far. While many freshmen dazzled this season, it was South Carolina’s MiLaysia Fulwiley who had a season-opening highlight that had Shaquille O’Neal in awe. She’s coached by Staley, who might be the biggest star of all on a Gamecocks team that has taken a committee approach in its quest to earn the 10th undefeated season in women’s basketball history. NC State’s Aziaha James, the country’s most improved player, has taken her game to another level in the postseason, and she and her Wolfpack teammates are happy to lurk in the shadows as so many consider South Carolina’s appearance in the title game a given.
Those are just players in the Final Four. This season saw stars rise across the sport from USC’s JuJu Watkins to Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo to LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson. Come next season, all of those players will still be leading their teams on the floor and continuing to draw eyes with their NIL deals off it.
The game has never been in a more visible space, and this senior class has had a front-row seat to the 180-degree shift in the sport.
It’s not that women’s basketball didn’t have these stars before. It’s that the game didn’t have the attention. But Clark and the rest of her class not only provoked questions in the minds of WNBA coaches (Should we change the eligibility rule?) but to sports fans across the country (What am I missing with women’s hoops?).
“It needs people that have the right personality, the right game. And we have that now. It’s not that we didn’t have it before. All those great — just using an example — all those great Tennessee-Connecticut games, they were all Hall of Famers playing against each other on a national stage. But it was then. And now those same types of players are really benefiting from all of this,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “We’ve been there before, but it just feels different now.”
This postseason has shattered previous television records. Because of the stars. Because of the platform. It’s all overdue.
Friday, the women’s tournament may overshadow the men’s. Undefeated South Carolina goes up against the underdog Wolfpack, followed by Clark and Bueckers facing off for the second time in their careers.
The first time they did, in the bubble, the official attendance for the event was zero. Plenty tuned in, but almost no one was able to see it in person. It’s fair to say that this time around, there’s not a hotter ticket in town, and WNBA coaches and casual fans alike will be on the edge of their seats.
(Photo of Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers from March 2021: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images
