By Don Wanlass
Contributing Writer
The NCAA women’s basketball tournament, which begins March 22, is the latest chance for women athletes to chip away at the dominance of men in the sports world. It’s a battle women have been fighting since women first started competing in sports.
When the modern Olympic movement began in 1896 in Athens, Greece, there were no women athletes. Four years later, the first Paris Olympics featured 22 women athletes competing in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf. There were 975 male competitors in Paris that year.
Women have made great strides sports in the last 125 years, mostly in Olympic sports like gymnastics, track and field and figure skating.
The popularity of women’s soccer surged after the 1999 World Cup, which was hosted by the U.S. and featured the U.S. women’s team winning the championship in a thrilling game against China at the Rose Bowl that was decided by penalty kicks. Brandi Chastain will forever be remembered for ripping off her jersey in celebration after her winning penalty kick.
Twenty-five years later, women’s basketball has a chance to make a similar impact.
Both the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments begin this week, but for the first time the women’s tournament is getting almost as much attention as the men’s.
The biggest reason for that is Caitlin Clark. A senior guard at Iowa, Clark this season broke the career scoring record for both women’s and men’s basketball while leading her team to a 29-4 record and a No. 1 seed in the tournament.
Clark has become a media darling. Actually, it started a year ago in the NCAA Tournament, when she scored 41 points as the Lady Hawkeyes upset undefeated South Carolina in the Final Four.
It didn’t matter that LSU defeated Iowa two nights later to win the NCAA title. Clark put her stamp on that game and then had a dominating season this year. She broke Kelsey Plum’s women’s career scoring record by more than 200 points, even though she has played in six fewer games in her career.
Earlier this month she passed Pete Maravich’s men’s career scoring record of 3,667. Many of us old timers who saw Maravich play were quick to point out that when Maravich played, freshmen weren’t eligible to play varsity basketball, so Maravich accomplished his record in three seasons. (He averaged 44.2 points a game in college compared to Clark’s 28.4.)
Maravich also had Steph Curry’s shooting range and so he would have benefited from today’s three-point line, too.
Without a dominant player in the men’s game this season, Clark has become the face of college basketball in a lot of places. If she can keep herself in the public’s eye, she could be the shot in the arm the WNBA has needed for years.
Another reason to keep your eye on the women’s tournament this year is the absence of USC and UCLA from the men’s tournament.
Cal State Long Beach is the only Southern California team in the men’s tournament and Long Beach probably will be eliminated by Arizona by 2 p.m. March 21, the tournament’s opening day.
The women’s tournament has USC, a No. 1 seed; UCLA, a No. 2 seed, UC Irvine and California Baptist, a Riverside school that competes in the Western Athletic Conference.
Unfortunately, Cal Baptist drew UCLA in the first round. It will be a nice bus ride to Westwood, but a long ride home. That game will be played at 6:30 p.m. March 23 at Pauley Pavilion.
USC opens the tournament at 1:30 p.m. March 23 against Texas A&M Corpus Christi. The Women of Troy stunned Stanford to win the last Pac 12 women’s basketball tournament and are a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1986.
It is also the first USC women’s team to make the NCAA tournament in back-to-back years since 2006.
Leading the way is freshman guard JuJu Watkins, who as averaged 27 points a game in leading the Trojans to a 26-5 record. Watkins could be a threat to Clark’s career scoring record if she lasts four years at USC. As a freshman, she scored 810 points. Clark scored 799 as a freshman at Iowa.
While Watkins was the USC leader in scoring all season, she didn’t have a great Pac 12 Tournament. In fact, she scored only 9 points in the championship against Stanford. Graduate transfer McKenzie Forbes led the Women of Troy over Stanford with 26 points and was selected the most outstanding player in the tournament.
Forbes, who graduated from Harvard before transferring to USC for her final year of college eligibility, is one of three players on the team who transferred from an Ivy League school. Forward Kaitlyn Davis is a transfer from Columbia and guard Kayla Padilla is from Penn.
All three figure prominently in the USC game plan. All play more than 25 minutes a game.
While four of the five USC starters are newcomers this year, Rayah Marshall, a junior from Lynwood, is the center, defensive anchor and leading rebounder.
The UCLA women’s team has a more veteran flavor than USC.
Fifth-year guard Charisma Osborne is the steady veteran leader, averaging 14.4 points a game. Sophomore center Lauren Betts is the leading scorer and rebounder and guards Kiki Rice and Londynn Jones both average more than 10 points a game.
Sophomore forward Gabriela Jaquez, whose brother Jaime starred for the Bruins the past three years before taking his game to Miami in the NBA, averages 9.7 points a game.
The Lady Bruins are 25-6 on the season, but face a difficult path in the tournament. They are in the same bracket as third seed and defending NCAA champion LSU and No. 1 seed Iowa.
If you like old-fashioned basketball, where the players know how to make a layup and play within a team concept, check out the women’s tournament this weekend.
You might even like what you see.
OPENING VICTORY: While most of us were sleeping, the Los Angeles Dodgers opened the 2024 season with a 5-2 win over the San Diego Padres in Seoul, Korea, March 20.
Shohei Ohtani had two hits and drove in a run in the eighth inning when the Dodgers rallied for four runs to overcome a 2-1 Padres lead that had lasted since the fourth inning.
Tyler Glasnow started his first game for the Dodgers and gave up 2 runs and 2 hits in five innings while striking out 3 and walking 4. Ryan Brasier, Daniel Hudson, Joe Kelly and Evan Phillips all pitched an inning in relief, with Hudson getting the win and Phillips the save.
Yu Darvish started for the Padres and limited the Dodgers to a run and 2 hits in 3-2/3 innings. But the Dodgers ran his pitch count up to 72 and Darvish was pulled in the fourth inning.
The Dodgers’ eighth inning rally was aided by a ground ball that tore through the webbing of first baseman Jake Cronenworth’s glove. What might have been an inning-ending double play was ruled an error that allowed left fielder Teoscar Hernandez to score the run that made it 3-2.
Mookie Betts and Ohtani both followed with run-scoring singles and Kelly and Phillips got the last six outs for the Dodgers.
After another game against the Padres March 21 in Seoul, the Dodgers return home to face the Angels in the annual spring Freeway Series March 24-26, before resuming regular season play March 28 against the St. Louis Cardinals.
WINDING DOWN: At a time in the season when they should be clicking into high gear for the playoffs, the Clippers are struggling. In the last two weeks, the Clippers have defeated the 34-35 Chicago Bulls twice. They have lost to everybody else.
Three of the four losses came to good teams, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Minnesota Timberwolves and the New Orleans Pelicans. The fourth was to the lowly Atlanta Hawks, who are clinging to the 10th spot in the NBA Eastern Conference, which would leave them in the play-in tournament.
The 112-104 loss to the Pelicans March 15 could be a crucial loss. The Pelicans are only a half game behind the Clippers in the Western Conference standings and the win gave the Pelicans the all-important tiebreaker if the teams tie for the fourth and fifth slots in the conference.
It would mean the Clippers would be on the road for the opening round of the playoffs.
The Clippers miss Russell Westbrook, who is still out with a broken hand, while James Harden, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are nursing nagging injuries.
With 15 games remaining on the schedule, the Clippers need to quit worrying about the teams in front of them — the Oklahoma City Thunder, Denver Nuggets and Timberwolves — and concentrate on finishing ahead of the Pelicans.
Likewise, the Lakers need to accept their fate that they will be in the play-in tournament again and focus on trying to avoid Denver in the first-round of the playoffs.
A night after the Clippers lost to the Hawks by 17 points, the Lakers defeated the Hawks by 31 in a game that was essentially over in the third quarter.
D’Angelo Russell continued his fine play with 27 points and 10 assists. LeBron James added 25 points, 10 assists and 7 rebounds and Anthony Davis scored 22 and grabbed 15 rebounds. Russell will break the team record for most three-point shots made in a season March 22 against the Philadelphia 76ers. He is currently tied with Nick Van Exel with 183 after making six against Atlanta.
The win came two nights after the Lakers lost to the Golden State Warriors 128-121. Steph Curry scored 31 for the Warriors, Klay Thompson came off the bench to score 25 and Jonathan Kuminga scored 23 to lead the Warriors, who trailed early but dominated the second and third quarters.
Davis missed most of the last three quarters after getting hit in the eye. James tried to take up the slack with 40 points, 8 rebounds and 9 assists. Russell scored 23 and had 13 assists but Austin Reaves scored only 11 and the Lakers lost the chance to put more distance between themselves and the Warriors in the race for the ninth and 10th slots in the West.
Either way, it looks like the Lakers and Warriors are headed for a matchup in the play-in tournament.
