'Now it's for real': Portland gets firsthand look at explosive growth of women's hoops
Caitlin Clark was the draw Monday night, but the Portland Regional produced a heck of an encore.
PORTLAND — Caitlin Clark was the draw Monday night. She is always the draw, really.
The Iowa Hawkeyes star has earned all those eyeballs and that unyielding following with performances like the 41-point burst she laid on LSU. Toss in the divisive stardom of the Tigers’ Angel Reese and the contentious temper of her coach, Kim Mulkey, and then consider the stakes: An Elite Eight matchup featuring a rematch of last season’s national championship.
That’s primetime television deserving of such a title.
But did you stick around long enough to catch the encore?
On one side, USC, a dormant power, ushered into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 30 years. On the other, UConn, a program that dominated so thoroughly those exact three decades — and particularly the late 2010s — that it simply became the sport’s standard.
There was the Trojans’ guiding light, freshman superstar Juju Watkins, the SoCal sensation who has flipped the program on its head in one season. And Paige Bueckers, the 2021 Player of the Year, whose injuries had prevented her from showcasing her brilliance for much of the last two seasons for UConn.
“One player, one coach can make a difference,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said Sunday of the matchup. “Here they are, and here we are.”
And Portland got a chance to play host. Imagine that? Turns out the Rose City didn’t do so bad for itself after all.
See, the lights had begun dimming on the Portland Regionals dating back to Selection Sunday. Iowa was previously projected to land in the Pacific Northwest. So was LSU. But the committee sent both to Albany, New York, and kicked Oregon State across the country alongside them.
No Hawkeyes. No Tigers. No Beavs. Just compelling, high-quality hoops and yet more proof that this city would welcome a potential WNBA expansion team with open and eager arms. Not even a debacle as comical, yet also dispiriting, as the mismeasured three-point arc could detract from Monday’s show, an eventual 80-73 UConn victory that saw 29 points from Watkins, and 28 more from Bueckers, amid a flurry of shotmaking.
The Moda Center was tuned to a frequency Monday that it hasn't often found this winter. The Huskies faithful showed out. So did a healthy contingent of Trojans supporters. The lack of open seating was striking, as was the sheer number of unaffiliated attendees, many of them families with young children.
They looked on in the second quarter, Watkins sizing up Bueckers, her Trojans reeling after an 18-4 Huskies run, the freshman calmly drilling a pair of pull-up threes.
They gazed down in the third quarter when Bueckers began to sink her teeth into the game on both sides, intercepting a pass intended for Watkins, scurrying down the floor, and finishing an up-and-under layup to help inflate a late UConn edge which became insurmountable in the game’s waning moments.
“These matchups,” said an emotional Watkins postgame, “I think will go down in history, just the tenacity that was out there on the floor tonight in both games. I was trying to catch glimpses of the other game when I'm getting ready. But it was just a great, great time. Great time in women's basketball, very exciting. I'm just glad I'm able to be a part of it.”
It felt like the women’s game arrived this weekend, not for the first time to a broader, appreciative audience, but in a way it had not yet to this point, with this significance and with this gravity. The game is more integrated into the mainstream than ever thanks to moments like the duel that played out on Monday night in Moda Center.
More visible are the stars of the women’s game, reaping the benefits of NIL, among other positives, en route to longer college careers and ESPN First Take segments such as the one we got Monday afternoon: “How important is tonight’s game for Caitlin Clark’s legacy?”
In turn, these stars have given us all a chance to get to know them, their games. It comes together exquisitely during stretches like this, when heavyweights clash two, three, four nights a week.
Asked Sunday of her view regarding the potential optics of the stacked Monday slate, USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said, “I think we would all tell you, it’s USC against UConn, and it’s LSU against Iowa. But star power drives narratives in athletics. It’s why the NBA took off when there were faces to it, going all the way back to Magic and Larry and Michael Jordan.”
To her point, however you followed this week, will you really think back to one of the Moda Center’s three-point lines falling nine inches off the mark? Or conjure up the memories of the Washington Post’s Mulkey referendum?
More likely, you’ll think about the way Clark left no doubt. How Bueckers, not far removed from her own injuries, dragged an ailing UConn team back to the Final Four. Or Watkins, still so young and with so much in front of her, walking off the court in Portland attempting to hide her emotion in the collar of her jersey.
“You don't want to over-dramatize it,” Auriemma said postgame, “but for the longest time it was, if someone had these kinds of moments like these kids are having right now, they were either compared automatically to men's basketball, and always came up wanting, or they were, ‘Wow, look at that, like there's actually a female athlete that can do that.’ It never garnered the respect factor. It was always an incredulous factor. ‘I can't believe she plays like a guy.’
“But now it's for real. Now they're being appreciated for their incredible talents, the show that they put on, the excitement that they create on the court, the excitement that the fans feel. And God bless 'em. They've done it.”
— Shane Hoffmann, for The I-5 Corridor
Not ready to subscribe? We take tips.
Shane & Tyson, speaking of women's basketball, how about an article about the demise of Oregon women's basketball? Kelly Graves is being allowed to escape scrutiny while the game is growing leaps and bounds. It's embarrassing that the team ended the season in last place, lost in the opening round of the Pac 12 tournament by 30, lost three more highly recruited sophomores to the transfer portal and have for the past three years played boring and uninspiring basketball. Why is he being allowed to hide?