Are there more stars in basketball or are people finally paying attention?

Basketball is garnering a lot of attention right now, especially women’s basketball. There are stars on every team. South Carolina is disciplined and no team passes the ball like them, plus they have Paopao and Cardoso. LSU has a Baltimore girl in Angel Reese who is a social media star as well as putting up numbers for the Lady Tigers and they have a coach that makes fashion faux pas a weekly runway event. USC has the freshman phenom Juju Watkins. UConn has Paige Bueckers who is solid in every category basketball keeps stats on – even after multiple knee injuries. Then, Iowa has the record-breaking Caitlin Clark who prefers shooting threes not from the 3pt line but from center court logos.

Are there more stars or is there more coverage which leads to more personalities shining through on the television screen? The 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship Game averaged 9.9 million viewers – that was up 103% from the 2022 game. At its highest, there were 12.6 million viewers watching the LSU-Iowa game. The last ESPN record for this type of game was set in 2002 when the viewership hit 5.68 million, but the second largest was the 1995 game in the Pat Summitt era of Tennessee and their opponent was the UConn Huskies. That game had 7.4 million viewers.

So, there are more opportunities for watching games on TV but social media has allowed us to get to know players as well. We get to see their likes and dislikes, their team meetings, their locker room antics and their everyday life – it all allows us to “get to know” them.

As far as I can tell, Caitlin is breaking the records…yep, Kelsey Plum’s record fell in February and she is chasing the great Pistol Pete Maravich (3,667) and the phenomenal Lynette Woodward (3,649) of Kansas, who is the all-time women’s basketball scorer in the game’s history - just because it was AIAW and not NCAA at that time – IT STILL COUNTS and the NCAA should not disregard it. And for those of you that really know your history, there is one player that surpasses all and that is Pearl Moore who played at a small school in South Carolina, Francis Marion University, in the 1970’s when the AIAW was still in existence and her record stands in a separate category, the “AIAW small school” record book. She was the Queen of all scoring records, male or female, with 4,061.

Caitlin may break all existing records in basketball, any gender. Angel may be the most dynamic in the media. Paige may be the most solid player that people seem to not like as much as all the others and South Carolina’s passing game is just awe-inspiring. But…I think Juju is the most fun to watch and I think Paopao has the best name when the announcers are doing play-by-play and she hits another 3 from the line…Just my take.