USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb seen a stranger approaching. She thought possibly she had spilled one thing and he was going to offer her a heads-up. As a substitute, he stopped close to their desk and paused.
“Hey, Coach,” he stated. “I thought it was you. I’ve gotta ask …”
She waited.
“Is JuJu really 6 foot 2?” he requested.
Gottlieb laughed. She answered — sure, JuJu Watkins is listed at 6 toes 2 — then joked that it is determined by how a lot of Watkins’ iconic bun is counted. A giant guard within the even larger Massive Ten was an attractive prospect for this L.A. sports activities fan. Even in the summertime, he was eagerly anticipating the season, which is able to see USC — a crew that appeared on nationwide networks simply 3 times final season earlier than its postseason run to the Elite Eight — on ESPN, FOX, FS1 and NBC 9 occasions earlier than the Massive Ten match.
He thanked Gottlieb, wished her luck and went on his manner.
The change felt oddly acquainted to Gottlieb, simply not as the pinnacle coach of USC, a program she took over in 2021 when it was a basement dweller within the Pac-12. As a substitute, it reminded her of experiences throughout two seasons as a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant, when insatiable NBA followers wished to interrupt down each potential matchup and second.
“For those of us who have really followed this game for a long time, we’ve known there have been great players before, we’ve known the great stories before, but now to see the rest of the world catch on and pay attention is really cool,” Gottlieb stated. “You then add to it this sort of place I’ve been thrust into, the place we’re one of many applications that has one in every of these star gamers who’s getting a ton of this consideration. It’s an ideal accountability. It’s an ideal alternative.
“None of it is lost on me, that we’re sort of in the apex of this moment.”
Greater than 2,500 miles throughout the nation, UConn coach Geno Auriemma can relate. For almost 4 a long time, a few of the biggest stars to play the sport have come via the Huskies’ fitness center. But the fanfare didn’t match what he noticed on the lads’s facet.
Till now.
In early October, UConn introduced it had offered out its season ticket packages for the primary time because the 2004-05 season, after Diana Taurasi gained a nationwide championship as a senior.
That didn’t occur through the Maya Moore or Breanna Stewart years, or after 111 straight wins or 4 straight nationwide titles. Not till now — Paige Bueckers’ last season in Storrs.
“There are people who have never had an opinion that have an opinion now or they want to know things that they never wanted to know, but now they’re familiar with names and events that in the past they wouldn’t think twice of,” Auriemma stated. “The die-hard fans, they can’t wait for the season to start. But the casual fan has tuned in and got a sip of it, and now they’re intrigued.”
That groundswell of consideration for ladies’s basketball is plain. Each quantity backs it up. Final season’s NCAA Event set viewership data, together with a title recreation that drew 18.9 million viewers (besting the lads’s title recreation by almost 4 million, one thing most followers assumed may by no means occur). Iowa star Caitlin Clark’s uncanny knack for the massive second and skill to nail emblem 3s drew in hundreds of thousands, however these followers discovered different gamers, groups and video games to get pleasure from. Even taking Iowa’s NCAA Event video games out of the equation, final 12 months’s ESPN viewership rose 43 p.c throughout March Insanity.
Clark’s draw, in addition to Angel Reese’s at LSU, continued into the WNBA. Indiana Fever attendance and viewership numbers soared; the identical was true for Reese’s Chicago Sky. Once more, these new WNBA followers stayed for the opposite huge abilities.
Paige Bueckers’ Huskies bested JuJu Watkins’ Trojans within the Elite Eight, however each gamers registered 20-point double-doubles. (Steph Chambers / Getty Photographs)
Stars propel sports activities and leagues. They lure informal observers and convert them to die-hards. After Clark and Reese departed for the WNBA, there’s no letdown for faculty basketball stars serving to carry the game’s weight, however consideration shall be centered on two.
Anchoring two coasts, two conferences and two nationwide title contenders are USC’s Watkins and UConn’s Bueckers. They’re enjoying at applications which might be iconic in their very own methods and recognizable worldwide. They’re each elite — doubtlessly generational — and have the ball of their arms greater than virtually anybody else.
Watkins is the reigning Freshman of the Yr making an attempt to resurrect the Trojans, who haven’t been related in her lifetime. She’s the hometown child who turned out stars like Kevin Hart, Saweetie, LeBron James and John Wall ultimately season’s dwelling video games. The smoothness to her recreation and easy high quality make it appear to be she has by no means rushed on the ground, whether or not she’s pulling up from 3 or attacking the basket (or hitting a shot wherever in between).
Kevin Hart was in attendance to see JuJu Watkins and the USC Girls’s Basketball crew ✌️#ncaaw #fighton pic.twitter.com/31PLjQDknN
— WNBA Received Recreation (@wnbagotgame) December 20, 2023
Bueckers, who gained nationwide Participant of the Yr as a freshman 4 years in the past, is in her last season at UConn. Even with its vaunted legacy, few highschool gamers had been extra heralded coming into Storrs than she was. And but, in her fifth 12 months, a nationwide championship — of which UConn has gained 11 — has eluded Bueckers. She’s a rangy guard with sufficient savvy inside that even when she performed the 4 final season, she was nonetheless named an All-American. A participant so assured that she trademarked her nickname, “Paige Buckets,” earlier than her sophomore season.
Watkins’ and Bueckers’ play, storylines and superstar, in addition to USC and UConn’s December assembly (a rematch of final season’s Elite Eight) are causes folks, together with new followers, will tune in for ladies’s hoops this season.
However in contrast to gamers earlier than them with those self same attributes, they’re competing at a time of unprecedented transformation.
Due to an investigation that uncovered grievous disparities in NCAA males’s and girls’s basketball, the NCAA was compelled to take a position extra within the ladies’s NCAA Event. Due to rising consideration, ESPN — the ladies’s NCAA Event media accomplice — anted up final 12 months and paid large cash for the media rights to broadcast the occasion. Due to NIL, gamers resembling Bueckers and Watkins are recognizable exterior of ladies’s basketball circles, partnering with main firms like Nike and Gatorade. Watkins was noticed on the 2024 Cannes Lions Competition, threw out the primary pitch at a June Los Angeles Dodgers recreation and gained the ESPY for Greatest Breakthrough Athlete. Bueckers attended the U.S. Open, the place Frances Tiafoe and Coco Gauff shouted her out, sat entrance row at New York Style Week and was featured on the JumboTron at a Los Angeles Rams recreation.
“There’s no boundaries on us, and because of that, you’re seeing talent, you’re seeing coaching, you’re seeing fan support, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of those things,” South Carolina coach Daybreak Staley stated. “This is probably the biggest movement in our game in its history, and it couldn’t happen at a more perfect time. … There are so many people tuned in; we met the moment.”
To proceed assembly that second, ladies’s basketball wants the subsequent wave of stars. It wants groups with compelling storylines (Staley’s Gamecocks are an ideal instance as reigning champs coming again to repeat after an undefeated season), however it additionally wants people like Watkins and Bueckers, whose tales and journeys this season shall be as compelling as their play on the ground.
“It’s great that we have them because it would be a shame to follow up the star power of last year and then not be able to add to it this season,” Auriemma stated. “We need to showcase these guys and these teams, and we need to play well. We need to give all these new people that are going to be watching something to be excited about so they want to come back.”
If Bueckers and Watkins do what their coaches consider, then new followers will definitely have causes to maintain tuning in and discovering their subsequent favourite gamers as soon as Bueckers and Watkins transfer on to the professionals.
Auriemma and Gottlieb, who’ve been round this recreation for many years, know this second isn’t simply totally different; it’s lengthy overdue. What comes subsequent (or, actually, who comes subsequent) shall be what pushes the game ahead.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Prime images of Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins: G Fiume / Getty Photographs, Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire through Getty Photographs)
