With a spot in the national title game up for grabs, Iowa will play UConn, while undefeated South Carolina will take on NC State in the Women’s Final Four, which takes place in Cleveland on Friday night.
With two of the biggest names in sports facing off, the Hawkeyes vs. Huskies matchup is sure to attract a lot of attention. This year, Caitlin Clark of Iowa has been the talk of college basketball, both men’s and women’s. She had a major role in drawing the largest television audience for a women’s college game in history during the Iowa-LSU rematch in the Elite 8. Conversely, Paige Bueckers of UConn has returned to full health and appears to be the player that many had anticipated her to be when she entered the collegiate ranks. She dominates the closing minutes against USC to help the Huskies advance to the closing Four.
While Bueckers will return to Storrs for another season in the fall and is expected to get a lot of attention, Clark is leaving for the WNBA in two weeks. But as she clarified when questioned about taking center stage in Clark’s absence the following season, Bueckers doesn’t want women’s college basketball to have a single superstar. She said the league would benefit greatly if the media gave equal attention to all the amazing players and teams around the nation.
Bueckers has always had a remarkable degree of perspective on these kinds of subjects for someone her age; following her freshman year, she used her ESPY speech to draw attention to the fact that Black women’s basketball players aren’t given the same attention or recognition. In this instance, she wants to spread the love and make the most of the fact that she will definitely receive a lot of attention by pushing that to others and making sure the game as a whole, not just her, receives the attention it deserves. Many players wouldn’t be prepared to do that, but perhaps the media can take her advise and cover the women’s game more widely than just a few names.
