PHILADELPHIA — Dawn Staley was talking about the balance of management and expectations when Nick Sirianni joined his team’s most high-profile players in the room. The decorated coach of the South Carolina women’s basketball team, who’d begun her Hall of Fame playing career at Dobbins Tech High in North Philadelphia, had spoken with Sirianni while attending a 76ers-Knicks playoff game and agreed to visit the NovaCare Complex in June.

Staley met with players who belonged to the Philadelphia Eagles’ leadership council. Among them: Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Saquon Barkley. They talked about the team’s desire to win. They talked about motivating teammates, how praising others aloud in the locker room can inspire others to also step up. They talked about how it’s really the little things that produce winning in a high-stakes environment.

It was “a very engaging session” that lasted about two hours, Staley told The Athletic. She left encouraged — both by the discussion and that one had happened at all. Others might have considered it “ludicrous” to speak with a woman in relation to “such a rough and tough sport,” Staley said. But they’d understood “success is relatable.”

Sirianni, too. He’d equated their teams. Their athletes. Their…

Joyce Edwards sat nervously on the bleachers in the gym in Colorado Springs, Colo., flanked by the best under-17 girls basketball players in the country. A year earlier, she had been in this same position, waiting to hear whether she had made Team USA’s under-16 squad, but she didn’t make it past the first cut. A year later, a year older, a year stronger, certainly things would be different, she reassured herself as she listened to the team director rattle off other names. Certainly, she could get through the first cut and be considered one of Team USA’s 18 best prospects. Certainly, it would be different this time.

But she waited. And waited. Her name didn’t come.

With about a dozen other players, she got up, left the gym, returned to her dorm, packed her bag and headed to the airport to catch a flight back home.

Now, it’s hard to imagine that Edwards — the No. 2 player in the 2024 class, the Gatorade national player of the year and the gem of South Carolina’s 2024 signing class — ever went to a tryout in which she didn’t make the team (let alone not be the star).

In most achievement-based settings all of her life, she has thrived. Academically, she’ll enter South Carolina’s honors college this fall to study environmental sciences after graduating high…

DESTIN, Fla. — There are two Greg Sankeys. The first one sometimes will say something that reminds you he was one of the people supporting the old ways and makes you wonder if someone who supported the old system can be trusted to build the new one.

The other Sankey, however, leaves hints that he does get it.

In his first public appearance since the historic NCAA vs. House settlement, on the eve of the SEC’s spring meetings, both sides of the SEC commissioner were on display. Which side wins out, and how quickly, will mean a lot.

The necessary background for those who need it: The NCAA has agreed to revenue sharing, directly paying its athletes, as part of last week’s settlement agreement. But it was merely one part of the larger whack-a-mole approach in dealing with college sports issues. The chaos of the transfer portal and NIL is left unresolved. And some stakeholders — media members, lawyers, advocates, coaches and administrators speaking privately — believe having a collective bargaining agreement with the athletes is the only way to do that.

But the first side of Sankey still sounded skeptical on Monday.

“To be in collective…

DESTIN, Fla. — The SEC convenes Tuesday for its annual spring meetings, and the good news for those involved is the future football schedule is not the main topic.

The bad news is the future football schedule is not the main topic.

Whether to go to nine conference games or stay at eight seems quaint now compared with the heavy reality that SEC presidents, athletic directors, coaches and commissioner Greg Sankey must confront this week: revenue sharing, roster limits and other results of the settlement in the House v. NCAA case.

SEC presidents voted unanimously — at least in the final vote it was unanimous — to approve the settlement terms, which if approved will result in around 22 percent of annual revenue being paid to athletes, starting next year. It’s a landmark agreement, and the timing is good for SEC administrators, who can start to hash out what comes next in Destin.

There are, of course, other things going in the conference: A quarterback at Georgia is suing Florida. Oklahoma and Texas officially join the league in July, and their coaches will be present in Destin for the first time. Nick Saban is no longer coaching football….

Now that Caitlin Clark is a member of the Indiana Fever, it’s time to turn the page on the 2024 WNBA Draft and look ahead to what could be an even more talented class in 2025. This is the last group of players to be eligible for a pandemic bonus year, so the WNBA will have a true double draft of fourth- and fifth-year seniors, which will simplify the process for general managers who no longer have to wonder who will declare.

The relevant exception to that is the medical redshirt. Players still have an additional year of eligibility if they sit out for a season due to injury, as is the case with the top prospect on the board. However, the number of players who fall into that category is relatively small.

Given that the draft order isn’t set until after the 2024 WNBA season, which has yet to commence, this isn’t a mock draft. Instead, it’s a list of the top players without regard to team fit. This exercise also only considers domestic prospects, though we should expect internationals to factor heavily on draft day in 2025. After all, three non-NCAA players were taken in the first round of Monday’s draft.

GO DEEPER

WNBA Draft grades: Fever earn A for picking Clark, Sky receive C+ even with Angel Reese

Much is expected to change between now and then, but probably not the…

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Fever GM Lin Dunn knows the Caitlin Clark effect is coming. In fact, it’s already started. More than 6,000 fans turned out for the Fever’s WNBA Draft party at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Monday, more fans than 17 of the team’s 20 home games last season, mainly due to the anticipation of the Iowa star being selected first by the Fever.

This wasn’t a normal turnout, especially for someone who was hundreds of miles away in New York, but Clark isn’t a normal player. She became a rock star at Iowa, and that show will soon continue alongside 2023 No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston on an even bigger stage. A stage that now includes championship expectations, according to Dunn.

Dunn, in her third season as the Indiana Fever GM, was the Seattle Storm coach and GM when it drafted Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird with back-to-back No. 1 picks in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Although Dunn resigned from the Storm after the 2002 season, Jackson and Bird eventually led the franchise to two championships in 2004 and 2010. Dunn believes Boston and Clark could have similar title potential as a duo.

“It doesn’t happen very often, and so when it does happen and you can look back historically, it usually means that it leads to championships,” Dunn said. “I think this is the…

So what now?

That’s the big, media-centric question for women’s college basketball. Where does the sport go after the head-spinning viewership figures for the national championship game? South Carolina’s 87-75 win over Iowa on April 7 averaged 18.9 million viewers, the most-viewed women’s college basketball game ever and the most-viewed college basketball game (men’s or women’s) on record for an ESPN platform. The audience was up 90 percent over the 2023 national championship (9.9 million for LSU’s win over Iowa) and 289 percent from 2022 (4.9 million viewers for South Carolina’s win over UConn). The game peaked at 24 million viewers on ABC and ESPN during the final 15 minutes.

The 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four was the most-viewed on record, averaging 13.8 million viewers. Those numbers included 14.4 million viewers for Iowa-UConn (the second-most-watched women’s college game on record) and 7.2 million viewers for N.C. State and South Carolina. The tournament overall (57 games) across ESPN platforms averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 121 percent from 2023. It’s the most-watched women’s NCAA Tournament since ESPN acquired exclusive rights in 1996.

To put the South Carolina-Iowa viewership in perspective, the game topped:

• Every World Series game since Game…

How does women’s college basketball capitalize on this moment?

It was the question most frequently asked and answered at the Final Four last weekend in Cleveland, as the sport continued to break both attendance and viewership records. The growth in women’s basketball has been dramatic and quick; the 18.9 million people who tuned in for the South Carolina-Iowa national championship game was an 89 percent increase from the 2023 title game and an astounding 285 percent increase from 2022.

The women’s tournament was, by all measures, a triumph. But the teams whose success drove it did not receive money for their part of it. And so, as the sport turns its page to next season, focus has centered on the simplest and most straightforward piece of progress: units.

Each men’s team that participates in March Madness earns a sliver of NCAA Tournament revenue called a “unit” for making the field and then one unit for each subsequent win. First Four victories count, too. Each NCAA Tournament unit is worth just over $2 million and is paid out over the course of six years.

Women’s teams receive nothing for making or advancing in their NCAA Tournament. The disparity is tied to the men’s nearly billion-dollar media rights deal with CBS/Turner, as well as the history of the…

The 2023-24 college season featured more star power than any in recent memory, and the good news for WNBA fans is that many of those players will be back on the court quickly. The 2024 WNBA Draft is on Monday, and several stars who dominated the national conversation during the college season will be taking their talents to the professional stage.

Every year, it boggles the mind how quick this transition is for collegians. Caitlin Clark will go from game-planning for South Carolina to being on the same roster as former Gamecocks great Aliyah Boston within nine days. There isn’t even enough time for a WNBA Draft Combine, so some team executives are working with incomplete information about height and wingspan.

As a result, the WNBA Draft, compared to its NBA counterpart, has always favored players who were able to produce in college rather than those who have the theoretical tools to succeed at the next level. We can project how a different team context will affect a player’s impact, but at a certain point, if they don’t have a high-level resume after four years, it’s hard to take a risk on them.

WHO WILL BE NEXT?

Draft Day. April 15th 2024. pic.twitter.com/D9vHv0TwdD

— WNBA (@WNBA) April 9, 2024

That’s why the draft is a great entry point to the WNBA for…

With Iowa’s loss to South Carolina in the national title game, Caitlin Clark has officially played her last college basketball game. Lucky for all of us, there’s no shortage of star talent around the country. With the game’s parity, conference realignment and more games on national television, several players appear poised to burst either onto the national scene or even further into the national zeitgeist of American sports.

Here’s a look at the 10 biggest stars who could take over (or re-take) women’s college basketball next season.

(Editor’s note: Players’ class listed for 2024-25 season)

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1. JuJu Watkins, USC

Sophomore guard

This dominant freshman class is led by Watkins, who managed to capture the nation’s attention while being mostly tucked away on the Pac-12 Network for most of the season. She’s tasked with leading the USC resurrection as the Trojans move to the Big Ten. Conference realignment only helps Watkins’ star power and name recognition as she’ll now (finally) have games that are accessible to the whole country thanks to the Big Ten Network being partly owned by FOX. The fact that she’ll be playing in and around the three largest media markets in the U.S. and that the Big Ten, sans Caitlin Clark, will be looking for a new conference star to…