Yet, anyone closely following women’s college basketball over the last two seasons would be foolish to think a team featuring Caitlin Clark, the presumptive No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft and all-time leading scorer in college basketball history, would go down lightly. They didn’t.  

RELATED: Ice Cube Stirs the Pot With $5M Offer to Caitlin Clark

In the end, The Gamecocks and their legendary coach, Dawn Staley, were too well-coached, athletic, big, talented, smart, and deep for the Hawkeyes overall. They completed an undefeated season and gave Staley her third championship in seven years. 

 

If we are honest with our American selves, this game was a dream matchup for Women’s college basketball, the television networks, and this country, inarguably the one most pulverized by race on the globe.

 

We had the Iowa Hawkeyes, a mostly White 3-point shooting basketball team led by one of the best coaches in women’s basketball, Lisa Bluder, a White woman, vs. the South Carolina Gamecocks, a mostly Black team featuring athletic, fast guards and a 6’ 7” Brazilian center coached by Dawn Staley, a Black woman. Staley’s arguably the best coach in women’s college basketball. You can’t make this stuff up.   

For the most part, basketball on the men’s and women’s sides has been dominated by African American athletes in this country. Caitlin Clark is the sport’s most dominant White American player, arguably since Larry Bird — and she hails from middle America, the heartland of the country. To say that some in America aren’t desperate to have a White American-born superstar would be insincere. There are great White players currently in the NBA, but let’s be honest: most of them hail from Europe. 

We can ignore the Black vs. White narrative if we’d like, but let’s not act like the tension this narrative creates isn’t why we were drawn to the Lakers vs. Celtics rivalry in the 80s.

Yeah, they were the two best teams in the league, with arguably the two best players in Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, but many of us tuned in for that “other thing.” Yeah, the movie “Rocky” was a great picture and movie series back in the day, but wasn’t there something a little more compelling about the first three Rocky movies, when Rocky fought Apollo Creed and Clubber Lang? Is there a reason why I always hated the movie “Hoosiers”? 

With their victory, though, South Carolina made it clear they are, as Barack Obama put it, “disciplined and talented.” 

RELATED: Men’s College Hoops Is Broken, But the Women Keep Shining

Although Clark finished with 30 points, she was draped, hounded, harassed, and forced into a 10-for-28 shooting night by South Carolina’s Raven Johnson. It was a masterful game plan on the defensive end designed by Staley and the South Carolina staff. 

Staley now enters the conversation of being on the Mount Rushmore of women’s basketball coaches. This was a team that lost all five of its starters from last year’s Final Four team, comprising almost 70% of its offense. They have become only the 10th major college basketball team, men’s or women’s, to complete a perfect season. She built the program from scratch.  

It’s clear that Staley sees and respects Caitlin Clark’s game — and not just because of her gracious post-victory words about Clark. Clark won The Dawn Staley Award in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The award honors the NCAA’s top guard, who reflects Staley’s skills during her time playing for Virginia, in the WNBA, and internationally. (Clark lost out this year to Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo.)

Like Staley, Black folks respect Clark as an athlete.  No matter what the narrative is, or what scars remain from America’s obsession with race, Clark is there to play ball. And she’s done that arguably better than anybody in the history of the game.  

Moving forward,  I don’t see the Gamecocks going away anytime soon. According to ESPN BET, they are +250 odds to win it all again in 2025 as they return impact freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley and Tessa Johnson, while also adding Joyce Edwards, the number two overall recruit per ESPN’s HoopGurlz rankings.

So get used to seeing the Gamecocks and Coach Staley over the next few years. They may not want to put away the ladder just yet. Staley may be climbing it again to cut down the nets very soon.   

Maybe we can call it “The Dawn of a New Era.”