Women's college basketball primed for March Madness bonanza

Sunday delivered just a taste of what is to come this March in women’s basketball.

For much of this season, Iowa guard Caitlin Clark has been the sport’s leading story. After being a leading reason why the Big Ten tournament sold out for the first time in the event’s history, she scored 30 second-half points to lead the Hawkeyes past Nebraska in overtime for the program’s third-consecutive tourney title.

The event that surely drew the most attention played out in the SEC. South Carolina ultimately won its eighth tournament crown in the past 10 seasons but the afternoon was defined by a fight that broke out late in the fourth quarter. Benches cleared as South Carolina star Kamilla Cardoso pushed LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson. Cardoso was ejected and will miss the first round of the NCAA tournament. Both benches cleared. Johnson’s brother, Trayron Milton, 24, jumped over the scorer’s table and onto the court. He was charged with assault and battery and disorderly conduct.

“I just don’t want the people who are tuning in to women’s basketball to see that and think that is our game, because it isn’t,” South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley said Sunday. “Our game is a really beautiful thing. To be quite honest, this is a part of it now. So we have to fix it, and we have to move on.”

But the action and drama did not stop in Greenville, S.C. Notre Dame freshman Hannah Hidalgo earned ACC tournament MVP honors en route to helping the Fighting Irish win their first conference tournament since 2019. Juju Watkins finished with a career-low nine points in the Pac-12 title game, but it was her teammate, McKenzie Forbes, who stepped up and finished with 26 as USC won the conference tournament finals against Stanford.

Women’s college basketball has more stars than ever

Those moments defined Sunday in women’s college basketball. But all of it is just a precursor to the amount of success the sport could be looking at this month. The game has more well-known stars than ever before.

There’s no denying the Clark effect. Fans have packed arenas across the country this year to watch her play. She’s the NCAA’s new all-time leading scorer, recently passing Pete Maravich’s all-time scoring record. This will be her last march through the NCAA tournament, her last shot at delivering the program’s first national championship.

Yet at the same time, plenty of other storylines are in the spotlight. LSU is still the reigning championship entering the tourney with names like Angel Reese, Hailey Van Lith and Johnson. The Gamecocks will are still undefeated after Sunday’s SEC title game. Watkins and Hidalgo each look like the successors to Clark as the face of the sport entering March.

Past that, don’t forget about UConn. The Huskies play for the Big East conference title on Monday night. For all the hype surrounding Clark, Paige Bueckers has done plenty to move the sport forward. The Big 12 has four top 25 teams headlined by 28-4 Texas, but No. 16 Kansas State has a head-to-head win over Iowa in Iowa City on its resume.

And Ohio State lost in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament yet won the conference’s regular season title.

NIL and social media have partially helped fuel the popularity of women’s college basketball. The stars have as much to do with it. Clark has inked deals with Nike, Gatorade and State Farm, while Reese holds partnerships with Reebok, Amazon and PlayStation.

Fans tuning into women’s college basketball

March should be a TV ratings bonanza, too. According to ESPN, last year’s national championship game averaged 9.92 million viewers, peaking at 12.6 million, the most watched women’s college basketball game to date.

The LSU-Iowa title game was also the first championship game televised on a broadcast network since 1995 when it was on CBS. That game served as a launching point for this year’s success. Clark has played in the most-watched game ever for six different TV networks.

In early January, the NCAA signed an eight-year agreement with ESPN worth $115 million annually to televise 40 college sports championships each year, including the Division I women’s basketball tournament. The value of the women’s basketball property only appears to be growing, currently valued at about $65 million per year, per The Athletic.

The deal was an increase of more than 300% per year on what the previous 14-year deal with ESPN was paying the NCAA.

The success of women’s college basketball had plenty to do with the new deal. Interest is just starting to climb, though. This March delivers the platform to help the sport reach new heights. With so many well-known names, the opportunity is there like never before.

The women’s Final Four in early April in Cleveland will certainly have more eyeballs on it than ever before if the stars align.