Last spring, as two stars went supernova, it wasn’t just women’s basketball fans paying attention to the women’s NCAA Tournament; it was the entire sports universe.
This March Madness, the world learned the names of first Caitlin Clark and then Angel Reese through a string of record-breaking individual performances and competitive matchups.
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The amped-up, unapologetic Clark, a junior guard returning to the University of Iowa this season, led the Hawkeyes to the championship game with her signature deep threes and fierce spirit. She loves a little trash talk – watch her fling her arms, flash finger-3s to a roaring crowd, charge the stands – and her game backs it up.
Case in point: in Iowa’s Elite Eight win against Louisville, Clark became the first athlete of any gender to put up a triple-double* while scoring 40 or more points in NCAA tournament history. Mid-game, Clark was ablaze. She sank six consecutive threes in front of an exploding crowd, then waved her hand in front of her face like WWE wrestler John Cena, as if to say to her opponents: sit down. I’m unstoppable. Cena himself weighed in. “Even if they could see you … they couldn’t guard you!” he tweeted. Hoops royalty like LeBron James and Magic Johnson marveled via social media, too, apparently among the record 2.5 million who watched the game.
*A triple-double is when a player reaches 10 or higher in any of three different statistical categories; in Clark’s case, points (41), rebounds (10) and assists (12).
LSU’s Angel Reese set records right and left on her Tigers’ NCAA run, too. The sophom*ore forward finished the season with single-season SEC* records for points and rebounds, notching double-doubles in 34 of the Tigers’ 36 games. Reese makes laser-like lane penetration and clean finishes at the basket look easy and wields a competitive fire of her own on the court.
*The Southeastern Conference also featured South Carolina, which held the No. 1 ranking the entire season before losing to Iowa in the national semifinal.
The LSU-Iowa championship game lacked the fourth-quarter adrenaline of the Final Four and Elite Eight rounds, with physical play by both teams and early foul trouble for the stars. As the clock ticked down, and LSU widened its double-digit-point lead, Reese entered Clark’s periphery, imitated the Cena-inspired “now you see me” wave, and tapped her ring finger. The message was clear: the championship ring will fit nicely. LSU won, 102-85.
Even without a nail-biting finish, the matchup was a blockbuster. It attracted 9.9 million average viewers* – the most in NCAA women’s final history and more than double the 4.5 million from 2022. It was still less than the men’s final, which drew a record-low 14.6 million viewers, down 6% from a year earlier.
*The previous viewership record was set during the 2002 championship game, which featured UConn’s famed trio of Sue Bird, Swin Cash and Diana Taurasi defeating Oklahoma. That talent storm caught 5.2 million viewers and inspired an entire generation of future players.
But the trends were unmistakable; the women’s tournament had joined the national conversation, and it seems, perhaps, folks were flipping the channel.
Underlying the tournament’s screaming success are a growing talent pool and an expanded appetite for the women’s game, and that’s reflected here in the Midwest. Those trends – exciting and long overdue, Wisconsin coaches say – have been taking shape for years. “it’s been decades of us trying to get more people to watch college and WNBA basketball,” says Megan Duffy, women’s head coach at Marquette University. “What Caitlin Clark is doing to help build the momentum has been incredible. And then what Angel Reese did with her profile and platform was awesome, too – it got people talking for many different reasons, whether the entertainment side, the game, or the NIL* and branding part. There were so many different facets that hadn’t been discussed in the past.”
*Name, image and likeness deals burst onto the college sports scene after a June 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the NCAA couldn’t restrict players from education-related compensation. Since then, players have been able to market themselves in many of the same ways pro athletes do, with endorsem*nt deals and the like.
This spring’s tournament felt different to University of Wisconsin head coach Marisa Moseley, too. It “captured the hearts and minds of so many,” she says. “It was one of the many peaks that our game is seeing. We’ll continue to see this with the level of growth in the game.”
In previous years, “the buzz around women’s basketball wasn’t there,” says UW-Milwaukee coach Kyle Rechlicz, “so to see it coming alive, to see young girls growing up not wanting to be like Steph Curry, but like Sabrina Ionescu*, is a huge thing.”
*Ionescu, the 2020 Naismith award winner as the best player in the women’s game, is the only NCAA player with 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds as a collegian. She’s also been a two-time WNBA all-star with the New York Liberty.
Now, a new season is officially underway, and coaches and players at all levels across the Badger State are revved up with momentum from the spring’s historic tournament.
ON APRIL 2, Rechlicz and her Panthers gathered at their freshly opened practice facility* on the UWM campus, humming with anticipation to watch the championship game together.
*UW-Milwaukee expanded the Klotsche Center & Pavilion athletic complex with the 16,000-square-foot Orthopaedic Hospital of Wisconsin Center. Most of the project’s $8 million cost came from student fees.
“It’s incredible,” recalls Kendall Nead, a senior guard and the Panthers’ top returning scorer. “We were sitting together in the player lounge; it was our first opportunity to be in the facility. Then we got to watch an incredible game.”
With the TV on and ready, players buzzed about and championed their split allegiances. “It’s inspiring, honestly,” says Nead, a native of Johnston, Iowa. “Some of these girls that are on this Iowa team, I grew up playing with or against. Seeing them succeed and get that far makes me feel like it’s not too far out for me.”
Nead is inspired by the players’ confident energy on the court, too. It was meaningful, she says, to see women be so secure in themselves, to see them fired up, talking smack – using their voice. “You don’t often get to see female athletes speaking their minds. And I think it’s new for the world; that’s why there is so much drama,” Nead says. “Seeing, on a huge stage, in front of the biggest crowd we’ve ever seen for women’s basketball – they just did it. And they did it the way people think women shouldn’t do it.”
Sophom*ore guard Kamy Peppler expects the buzz in the days following the tournament to continue into this new season. “Many of the same big athletes are returning, which will only bring more viewers,” she says. “It creates bigger and better opportunities for the women’s side.”
Watching the tournament lit a fire for Peppler. “It made me think, I want to play in that tournament someday,” she says. “It did give me a jolt. Like – we’re coming into this next season ready to go, ready to work.”
For Duffy and her team of Golden Eagles, that someday was March 12, 2023. On NCAA Selection Sunday, the group gathered alongside loved ones and staff, hoping to hear their name announced live on ESPN as the bracket was unveiled.
“For us, that night, we wanted it to be a close group. Just the most important people that had helped us get to that point,” senior guard Rose Nkumu recalls. “We felt we would get called, but you never know. It was a surreal feeling to see our name pop up on the TV.”
On hearing “the Marquette Golden Eagles,” the group erupted – players clapping, screaming, leaping out of their seats. They would be heading to Columbia, South Carolina, to face South Florida. “To be picked as early as we were in that first bracket, being a 9 seed*, was awesome for us,” Nkumu says. Duffy calls it “just an incredible moment,” one they relished as a group, before getting down to business and preparing for the game five days later.
*The NCAA slots teams into the tournament bracket with seeds from 1-16 according to their perceived strength. The 8-9 matchup in the first round is typically very closely matched.
The team battled the Bulls to overtime before losing a nail-biter, 67-65.
“I’m proud of our team, that they got to experience it,” Duffy says of their showing* last spring. “In our little world, it’s such a special moment – and then to see [the tournament] get national attention – that’s great, too.”
*Marquette has been invited to the Big Dance twice since Duffy took over as coach in 2019. The Golden Eagles are 6-14 in the NCAA Tournament all-time and have not advanced past the second round.
They plan to go deeper this year. A handful of experienced Golden Eagles are returning, including a four-year letter-winner and two-time captain, guard Jordan King. There’s also a “blend of new faces,” Duffy says, in incoming freshmen and transfers* like Frannie Hottinger, a fifth-year guard/forward who arrives from Lehigh University.
*The NCAA adopted the “Transfer Portal” in 2018 to organize and streamline the process for student-athletes who wish to transfer to a new school.
“Getting into the tourney is the first step,” Nkumu says. “We wanted to win that first game and move on to the second round, but we fell short in overtime.”
This autumn, there’s an infectious energy to get the team back to that spot, Nkumu says, “to put ourselves in the position so we can make it to the second round and continue winning games.”
Highlights of the Wisconsin women’s and girls basketball slate this fall
NCAA Division I
NOV. 7
UW-Milwaukee at Wisconsin
NOV. 30
UW-Green Bay at UW-Milwaukee
DEC. 10
Iowa at Wisconsin
DEC. 31
UConn at Marquette
High School
Twenty-six girls teams from around the state, including coach Sean Garczynski and the DSHA Holy Angels, will compete in the Kettle Moraine Thanksgiving Classic, Nov. 24-25.
THE SMALLEST BUILDING BLOCKS of a sport’s success are the youth camps, often put on by collegiate and high school programs, that propel the sport forward, develop fundamentals and connect players with the broader community. This summer, Wisconsin’s youngest players were abuzz with post-tournament energy.
Wisconsin’s Badger Day Camp in July hosts girls in grades one to four for practices and games in the university’s 17,000-plus-seat Kohl Center and other on-campus facilities. Camp turnout more than doubled this year. “We had 80 attendees last year, and this year we had 180,” Moseley says.
For the collegiate players and staff, it’s hugely rewarding – a way to encourage Wisconsin’s future female athletes. “Our players are their camp counselors,” she says, “So when you come, that’s a bonus for the kids; they can potentially work with their favorite player.”’
Here in Milwaukee, the Golden Eagles felt a jolt among young athletes, too, Duffy says. And while summer camps are always lively, “I could feel a different energy in our camp this summer – for sure,” she says.
Players coach Marquette’s camps, too, and with great excitement. The girls, grades three to eight, often “treat our players like celebrities,” Duffy says. “They want to play for Marquette someday; they can buy their jerseys now and get their autographs.”
High school players were inspired by this spring’s boost, too. Sean Garczynski, head coach for Divine Savior Holy Angels in Milwaukee*, says his girls benefited from much more frequent coverage of women’s games, sparking more discussion among the players. The final games of the NCAA Tournament featured “players that everyone already knew,” he says, thanks to social media and NIL, which made the tournament more exciting for them to watch. “There was just more knowledge,” he says. “In the early 2000s, was there ever a women’s game on?” he asks. “Very rarely.”
*The all-girls DSHA won the WIAA Division 1 state tournament in 2015 – a team starring Arike Ogunbowale, a future NCAA champion and all-WNBA first-teamer. During Notre Dame’s 2018 run, she made not one but two buzzer-beaters to secure the Fighting Irish’s national championship win that year: one in the semifinals against UConn and another to win the national championship vs. Mississippi State.
Zoom out, and it’s clear: the women’s game is amidst a transformational moment. The talent level has soared. Games are reaching more viewers. It all feeds into a feedback loop, with more female role models and opportunities for girls to see their heroes play on TV, to follow their careers closely. And, hopefully, to dream more bravely for their future.
Garczynski, who has coached girls and boys at the high school level, feels that growing awareness of the women’s game really matters for female players. “For boys, there are men’s games on every day. Men’s teams have had that exposure for so long,” he says. “But watching female players compete more prominently has spurred important conversations.”
Combine it all together, he says, and it’s a literal game changer.
The Money Follows
The women’s game is amid a tide-turning moment, an exciting new frontier of ticket sales and coach compensation. Since LSU won its national championship in April, coach Kim Mulkey – you may remember her flashy sideline outfits – signed a 10-year, $36 million contract extension that made her the highest-paid women’s basketball coach in history. In Iowa, anticipation for the team’s new season is at an all-time high. The program sold out of its season tickets for the first time ever this fall.
THE BEST WAYS for fans to support the sport? “It’s just to show up for a game,” Duffy says. “People have to ignore the stereotypes of the past. The brand of women’s basketball now is at an all-time high. We have our Bucks, our Marquette men’s program, the UW-Milwaukee men’s program, but to have women’s basketball as a piece of this city – it would be pretty cool to build some more momentum.”
Adds Rechlicz: “The bigger the crowds are, the more energetic the game atmospheres are, the more fun it is for the players to compete.”
Opportunities abound to catch a piece of the action. The state’s four Division I teams – Marquette, Wisconsin, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay – are no strangers to the NCAA Tournament. All the teams’ coaches expect a little extra juice in their respective conferences and when they face each other in their equally important in-state rivalry games in the autumn. “We want to ‘win the state’ as a broad goal every year,” says Nead, the Panthers guard. “We think the same thing when we play Green Bay as when we play Marquette and Wisconsin. Our goal is to win as many games in Wisconsin as possible.”
UWM and UWGB – led by “phenomenal,” as Rechlicz says, head coach Kevin Borseth – meet twice as part of their Horizon League slate. Marquette plays a star-studded Big East schedule at the Al McGuire Center. And Moseley aims to sell out the lower bowl at the Kohl Center this season, with one game not to miss when the Badgers host Clark and Iowa on Dec. 10.
The Badgers and Golden Eagles don’t have a game scheduled in state but are both competing in the Fort Myers tip-off in Florida over Thanksgiving weekend. “We could potentially play each other down there,” Moseley says, “which would be a great game.”
“We’re definitely competitive,” Rechlicz says, “but as much as we love competing against one another, there is this overall respect. We want those teams to be successful. I want Marquette to do well in the Big East and Wisconsin to do well in the Big Ten,” Rechlicz says. “And I want Green Bay to do well, too – just not when they’re playing us.”
All of the state’s coaches talk about how a rising tide of success and competition at the state, regional and national levels can lift the entire sport’s boat. “We’re all trying to grow this game and put our student-athletes at the forefront of everything we do,” Duffy says. “We’re starting to get that across the country as a group and organization, specifically in the Midwest.”
Milwaukee native Elizabeth Sweet is a freelance writer based in Chicago.
