DALLAS — Get ready for the declarations.
This will be called a moment in women’s basketball, a turning point in the college game. There will be sweeping conclusions: Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, two of college basketball’s biggest stars, have changed the game.
Yes, women play a really good game, but they have for quite some time. Welcome to the party.
This is not a moment. This is momentum.
“We bring the show,” Flau’jae Johnson, a Louisiana State guard, said on Sunday while wearing a national championship hat.
These women, part of an increasingly deep pool of talent, are attracting new investments (thanks to name, image and likeness deals) and large numbers of viewers to the sport.
The American Airlines Center in Dallas hosted a capacity crowd of more than 19,000 fans for the N.C.A.A. tournament women’s final. The performances they witnessed were phenomenal, but they weren’t particularly groundbreaking. Clark, Iowa’s star guard and the national player of the year, has been called a generational player, even by Kim Mulkey, Louisiana State’s coach, whose team beat Iowa for the championship on Sunday.
But there were exceptional talents not so long before her: Sheryl Swoopes, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina…
