There is a lot going on in women’s basketball these days. To be fair, there’s always a lot going on in women’s basketball, it’s just this year a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum Carver-Hawkeye Arena: Some dudes noticed. And not just any dudes, media dudes. Famous dudes. Yakkity dudes. And they are all in on the yakkity yack.
The media excitement starts and ends with Caitlin Clark, and if you’ve ever watched her rip the cord out with a long-bomb buzzer beater, you know why. It’s impossible for even casual fans of basketball to watch with only half an eye when Clark is on the court. From her blocks to her behind-the-back assists to her three-quarter court passing, there is no moment it’s safe to look away. “She’s almost fictional,” said the announcer at last year’s national championship game, having run out of words to describe her.
And in the year since, she’s done everything a human could do to prove him right, including dropping 49 points and 13 assists in the same game to take the NCAA women’s career scoring record away from Kelsey Plum. Now, you can’t assist yourself, so every one takes away an opportunity to score points, and every basket takes away an assist. With the 3-point line, her assists accounted for over 30 points and she still found enough possessions to drop 49 on Michigan. That’s over 80 points combined off just her own shots and passes, 20 more than an entire average women’s NCAA team. And Friday night against Penn State, Clark set a new NCAA record for the most three-point shots in a single season, with 163. That’s more than any other man or woman in Division 1.
This kind of combined offensive play is so rare there is no player in the top 10 in career scoring who’s also in the top 50 in career assists, and no player in the top 10 in assists also in the top 50 in scoring. The closest is Sabrina Ionescu, the recent Oregon star, at #4 on the assist list and #65 on the scoring list.
Oh, except for Clark, the #1 all time scorer who has climbed to #6 in assists and has a chance to take Ionescu’s spot if Iowa can go deep enough in the tournament this year.
Phenomenal. Generational. Insane. Everyone has been running out of words to describe her, not just the announcers who have to come up with something new night after night. “The Steph Curry of the women’s game” is perhaps the most popular right now.
And yet, if you only pay attention to her court play, you’re missing more than half the story. “It’s less about her game and more about her status,” Harry Lyles said this weekend on ESPN’s Countdown to Gameday. When Clark shows up at an opponent’s arena, they break attendance records. When she plays at home the average ticket price skyrockets. Spectators in the stands paid $534 for a single seat — average, mind you, despite deep discounts on student seats — to watch her last regular season game at Iowa this past weekend. (Another 3.39 million watched the game live and more streamed it later.)
The explosion of coverage as Clark approaches then eclipses record after record has transformed the national experience of college basketball. Sports commentator Shannon Sharpe admitted that this year if you asked him to name college players, he would name five women before a single man, because everyone who cares about the game is watching the women.
Attendance is up everywhere, TV viewership is up everywhere, and Name-Image-Likeness deals for endorsements are up in value for many women basketball players. When the camera is on the court to catch Clark, it catches the great play of all the athletes. Her record breaking even shines a spotlight on the greats of the past, who played with no cameras pointed their way. Clark’s greatness is finally enabling greater appreciation of spectacular players like Lynette Woodard.
Cameras are also catching the inevitable post-game crowd lining up for her autograph. And while that includes many boys and men, there’s a huge story in the multitude of girls who see Clark as a personal inspiration. Girls bounce when their parents take them to see games. There’s literally more love and excitement in basketball families because of Caitlin Clark.
The news from the basketball world isn’t all good, though. We covered the story out of Utah earlier this year where a state school board member trashed a cis girl for committing the crime of playing basketball while looking tall and strong. And that’s not a one-off. Girls everywhere face barriers to participation, and ironically they face even more barriers when they excel.
The most recent example comes from the Ohio/Kentucky border where an elite girls’ team looked to level up the competition by playing in a boys’ league. As 6th graders, these teams are too young for puberty to make much of a difference in average strength or height. Instead it’s a combination of physical talent, practice, determination, and strategy that wins games, and that’s just what the girls of Next Level did. They won so many that they qualified for the league championship game. But Southwestern Ohio Basketball stopped them there.
In their statement denying the girls this opportunity, SWOB said:
“Doing this for 28 years, what we have worried about is a boys team losing to a girls team (especially in the year end tourney), they may get frustrated and retaliate against a girl. Then we have liability issues.”
It’s hard to describe how positively Iranian Guidance Patrol this statement is. Much like the sexism of calling out women and girls for trash talk mild among men, SWOB’s ruling punishing excellence to protect boys’ sense of superiority is part of a long tradition that discourages exactly the kind of greatness that Clark can’t help but display.
There’s a saying about trouble: Don’t start none, won’t be none. They used it against both Angel Reese and Clark last year, condemning them for their trash talk. SWOB seems to be using it against Next Level’s girls. But it also applies to the careers of women athletes. From Utah to Kentucky, girls are held back or harassed or even terrorized for displaying greatness. The same states would like you to believe that trans girls will steal opportunities and scholarships. But there’s a place in 6th grade basketball for everyone who wants to play, and even if you’re opposed to lowering tuition for all, more Caitlin Clarks mean more TV revenue and more ticket sales and thus more scholarships. All we need to do is to believe, to show up, to witness and maybe, if we’re inspired enough, drop a thousand bucks to take a daughter to a game.
We don’t need to attack trans players; we need to support all girls. The threat to women athletes isn’t that trans kids might be allowed to be great. It’s that girl athletes won’t be.
PREVIOUSLY:
