Brawls, rivalries and superstars: how women’s college basketball became the main event

When South Carolina led LSU late in the fourth quarter of this month’s Southeastern Conference Tournament championship game, they looked poised to salt the game away. Then a fight broke out between the two teams that cleared the benches and sucked in a player’s brother from the crowd. The game was delayed for 20 minutes while officials sorted out the punishment (the family member was arrested.) Ultimately, South Carolina held on to win the tournament, remain undefeated for the season and claim the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament, where this year the women are the main event.

After decades of dribbling in the shadow of men’s college basketball, the women’s game has seized the spotlight. It’s where the stars are, where the rivalries are, where the fights are, where the eyeballs are. The South Carolina-LSU game drew almost two million viewers, making it ESPN’s most-watched women’s basketball game outside the NCAA tournament in 10 years. When the two teams played in January, more people watched them than an NBA matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat playing at the same time. The numbers for last weekend’s Big Ten championship game between Iowa and Nebraska were even larger: the contest drew more than three million viewers on the way to becoming CBS’s most watched women’s college basketball game in 25 years.

Related: ‘She’s must-see TV’: NBA and WNBA on Caitlin Clark’s blistering talent

Undoubtedly, most of those fans tuned in to see Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, far and away the biggest star in college basketball full stop. People are so eager to see the sharpshooter make a title run before moving on to the pros that the tickets for Iowa’s first-round NCAA game sold out in 30 minutes. As of Monday morning, resale ticket prices for Saturday’s two-game session were going for $524, according to the Athletic. Last weekend, sports media scoop hound Richard Deitsch broke the news that ESPN is assigning Clark a dedicated reporter for the NCAA’s early rounds. That is to say the network is giving Clark the Taylor Swift treatment.

And yet for all the attention that Clark has rightly earned this year, no one could accuse the women’s game of being reduced to just one star. Angel Reese, who went toe-to-toe with Clark last year, remains a formidable final boss for LSU. Flau’jae Johnson, Reese’s teammate, is as known for spitting rhymes as she is for her big time play. USC freshman JuJu Watkins has set herself up to challenge Clark’s NCAA all-time scoring crown. Notre Dame freshman Hannah Hidalgo is a smart and fearless playmaker. UConn’s Paige Bueckers, unanimously recognized as the country’s best player three years ago, is finally back on form after suffering through two injury-marred seasons. With so many box office draws, it’s no wonder that women’s college basketball Power Five conferences are also seeing new highs in ticket sales. Ticket bidding site TickPick says it has sold six times as many seats for this year’s women’s Final Four as it has for the men’s version.

It doesn’t take a Mensa member to see what’s going on. The quality of women’s college basketball has improved as the men’s talent pool has run dry; top men’s prospects either stay in college for the one-year minimum before heading to the NBA or skip it altogether for paid playing opportunities on the NBA’s G League Ignite or abroad on teams as far away as Australia. While the men’s game has puzzled over how to compete at a time when athletes have control over their name, imagine and likeness, the women’s game has used NIL deals as a way of further enticing their athletes to stay in school – with Clark, Reese and Johnson topping the earnings list, earning many times the top WNBA salary. This has allowed women’s teams to keep their best players and build dynasties – South Carolina have lost just three games in the last three seasons – and create rivalries that draw in more fans.

The net effect is a men’s game that plays mostly to dedicated alums, fan nostalgia and bettors. It doesn’t help that the men’s game has seen Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and other coaching titans retire. Ask the average fan which men’s team cut down the nets in 2023, and they may struggle to remember that it was the UConn Huskies who wore down the field on the way to claiming the fifth title in school history. Come to think of it, that’s probably because there was so much buzz around LSU’s showdown with Iowa in last year’s women’s championship.

In the women’s game, South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, LSU’s Kim Mulkey and other coaches have emerged as bona fide characters who lean into their parts. On Tuesday night Mulkey, whose personality can be as harsh as her fashion sense, got herself tossed from a minor league baseball game for breaking away from the crowd to argue with the umpire – a gag at her own expense. When LSU and South Carolina played in January, and a reporter commented on the hostility the Gamecocks faced from the Tigers’ home crowd, Staley – a world-class trash talker – was quick to offer a correction. “They were calling me ‘boo’,” she joked, suggesting the LSU crowd was actually being affectionate. Ahead of this coming tournament, she drew up sicknotes for fans trying to skip work to support the Gamecocks.

The LSU-South Carolina rivalry, maybe the most compelling in all of basketball at the moment, harks to the days when the only game in women’s hoops was Tennessee v UConn. And Clark has proven to be an attraction unlike any the game has ever seen. Still, as someone who has followed women’s basketball for more than two decades, it’s hard not to feel like the indie music fan whose hobby horse hits it big in this époque of girl-powered hoops. Like, seriously, where y’all been?

On the one hand, it’s nice to not hear male fans in particular talk about lowering the rims or volunteer other unwanted suggestions to make the game more palatable to their tastes. On the other hand, I’ve watched a lot of great players come and go without nearly as much fanfare. Cheryl Miller is still the premier player in a family that includes her brother, Reggie, who is enshrined in the hall of fame alongside her. Maya Moore may well be the most dynamic talent I’ve ever covered. (Man, her UConn teams, with Atlanta Dream co-owner Renee Montgomery running point, were so much fun to watch.)

Last month, the hall of famer Sheryl Swoopes courted controversy for questioning whether Clark could indeed break the NCAA’s all-time scoring mark. Iowa fans were quick to brand her a racist and turn up at games wearing shirts that read “Don’t Be a Sheryl.” It hardly mattered that the critic who had stuck her foot in her mouth was a former Naismith Player of the Year and former NCAA champion who became the first women’s basketball player ever to land a Nike shoe deal.

Women’s basketball wouldn’t be in the place where it is today without Swoopes and her ilk lifting the game into this golden era. And if the current crop of stars are any indication, the women’s game won’t be giving up the spotlight without a fight.