Unscripted NCAA Women’s Basketball, Wow, What a Season!

Unscripted
(Commentary) By Keith Edmonds Ink Spot Contributing Writer

Does the picture of LSU’s Angel Reese taunting Iowa star Caitlin Clark in the closing moments of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game last month bother you? Then you’d better get used to it because women’s basketball has reached heights that dare, we say are RIVALING the men’s game in popularity! Wait… what did I just say? Women’s basketball, that for years has struggled to gain acceptance as an entertaining commodity in collegiate sports as well as professionally with the WNBA, is now being viewed by fans globally! In today’s UNSCRIPTED I will look at the rise of women’s basketball and how this past season set unprecedented attendance records and may have pushed them into the long-awaited spotlight that they have been looking for.

If you watched (even casually) women’s college basketball this past season, you saw the blue-blood programs UCONN, Stanford, South Carolina and Tennessee being joined by upstarts in Iowa, Indiana, LSU, Maryland, and others. What you also viewed was the emergence of schools (and players) that had been in the background of the powerhouse teams suddenly finding that they could not only compete with the nations’ best but could beat them especially in the single elimination NCAA tournament. I, for one, found this to be fun to watch as I began to follow the tournament and saw players like Angel Reese (LSU), Caitlin Clark (Iowa) and Grace Berger (Indiana) spring into the national spotlight along with stars like Aliyah Boston (South Carolina) Haley Jones (Stanford) and Fort Wayne’s own Leigha Brown (Michigan). Sure, the programs that traditionally do well performed at their usual standards, but as we watched from week-to week, the national interest grew and grew and GREW! For too long, women’s basketball – (all of women’s sports, really) – has struggled for acceptance in the national conversation and it was long overdue that they receive their “bouquets” of viewer acceptance as they have toiled for years in the shadows of the men’s game.

So why has this happened, and more importantly, how did THIS become the year for the women’s game to explode? It’s because we saw things in women’s basketball that we had become accustomed to seeing in the men’s game. Trash talking, amazing shooting, and athletic skills that left us astonished at times! Now about that trash talking… I am sure as you watched the University of Iowa vs. South Carolina’s women and of course LSU, we saw young ladies not only performing on the court but being willing to let their opponents (and anyone else) know that they were good and not afraid to shout it out…Literally! “I think the biggest change in our game is there’s social media. The internet, Twitter and Instagram, has placed everything at the forefront,” Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. “Before [social media], these things would happen, but it would not be visible to the public. Now, it is everywhere, and everybody sees it so there is nothing to hide.”

Coach, I agree with you! This new age of college women hoopers are not afraid to share their talent (or thoughts) with the viewing public and have made their games very intriguing to watch as they have emerged out of the traditional thought of “women don’t act like that!” Now please be reminded that I feel that young people who are in the public eye, are still ROLE MODELS and they have the same responsibilities as men in that regard, but I also feel that they should be able to express their competitive side just like the men. It is all a part of “selling their product” and marketing themselves, their team, and having the ability to capture lucrative NIL (Name Image and Likeness) monies.

So, whether you like it or not, judging by the amount of people that watched the championship game between the LSU Tigers and the Iowa Hawkeyes (that drew a record 9.9 MILLION viewers) tells me that we like what we’re seeing in more exciting teams, colorful players, flashy coaches (did you see what LSU coach Kim Mulkey wore during the tournament games?) and skill levels that leave us gasping for more of this wave!

LSU star Angel Reese was not pleased that First Lady Jill Biden wanted to invite both the Tigers and Hawkeyes to the White House after their championship game and let her know it! This was the ultimate form of unapologetic trash talk and catapulted her into the national spotlight along with Clark who trailed the players from national power South Carolina with not only forty-one points, but gestures that made folks straddle the fence on whether they were upset or applauded her! Folks like I said previously, we might as well get used to it, because these young women feel empowered and will not only let their game speak for them but their mouths as well. It will still take me some getting used to, but hey, I’m open to change!