Basketball needs players like Angel Reese

By Conor Blount Assistant Sports Editor

The final stage for the women’s NCAA tournament was set and ready to tip off at 2:30 p.m. CDT on April 2. Despite the horrendously chosen time for a championship round, the game between the No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes and No. 3 LSU Tigers managed to garner an average viewer count of nearly 9.9 million. To put it into perspective, this number completely shattered the already record-breaking 5.5 and 3.4 million average viewers from Iowa and LSU’s respective Final Four games.

As the most watched women’s basketball game ever, the lights were at their brightest and the two squads delivered. Iowa’s star guard Caitlyn Clark, who had already accumulated quite the media storm after posting back-to-back 40-point performances in the Elite Eight and Final Four, got off to a hot start. Scoring 14 of Iowa’s first 20 points, it looked like Clark was en route to yet another dominant performance while the Tigers held a much more team-orchestrated 20 points of their own.

But a third party quickly began to take over what was shaping up to be a classic performance. At the very least impartial with their dreadful judgment behind the whistle, the referees issued both Clark and LSU’s star forward Angel Reese several fouls that caused the two to take early trips to the bench.

For most, Reese was not a household name at this point, as her Tigers had been given significantly less media attention than Clark and the Hawkeyes until this point. Reese’s game may not have the awe of the three-point shotmaking that Clark has, but her results could not be argued with as the Tigers had upset both No. 1 Virginia Tech and No. 2 Utah on their way to the finals.

Reese was called for two fouls in the final minute of the first quarter and did not return until the start of the second half. Meanwhile, Clark had been assessed three fouls by the three-minute mark of the second quarter.

By the time Clark had to sit with her third, LSU had jumped out to an 11-point lead and just three minutes later when the teams retreated to their locker rooms for halftime, the lead was 17. As pointed out on the broadcast, no team had ever managed to come back from such a deficit in the women’s NCAA championship.

Despite this, Iowa came out firing and for a brief moment, looked like there was a chance at pulling off the impossible. Incredible shot-making from the Hawkeyes produced a couple of runs that cut the lead as low as seven, all while both squads were being peppered by horrific officiating.

The Tiger lead eventually burgeoned to a final score of 102-85 that hardly does any justice to the drama, skill and excitement of the actual game. When the final whistle blew and the Tigers were ultimately crowned champions, it would have been hard to predict what was about to unfold.

It must be mentioned that a key factor in Clark’s dramatic spike in popularity is that not only was she performing at a spectacular level, but that she let her opponents know too, doing wrestler John Cena’s “You Can’t See Me” celebration after recording 41/10/12 (P/R/A) in the Elite Eight against No. 5 Louisville. For Clark, these actions were viewed as endearing and part of her competitive nature.

Turning back to the championship game where in the spirit of competition, Reese had flipped the trash talk back on Clark a couple of times towards the end of the game. In Reese’s case, the most notable and, surprisingly, controversial actions were pointing at her ring finger and mimicking the same “You Can’t See Me” motion at Clark.

The negative reactions and vitriol towards Reese began almost immediately, with my least favorite of the buzzwords aimed at her being “classless.” Despite being a fabulous player all season long, averaging 23 points and 15.4 rebounds per game, good for fifth and second-best in the country, it was a pair of celebrations that had thrust Reese into the national spotlight.

This was not just unfair to Reese, who should have received even an ounce of coverage for being an elite player and now an NCAA champion, but for the entirety of women’s basketball. The most viewed, most electric women’s college basketball game of all time had just taken place, but instead of celebrating the champions and acknowledging the success of the runners-up, the ethics of trash-talking was all anyone could talk about.

Whether it was the media getting everyone so attached to Clark that they could not handle it the other way, or the result of internal biases toward Reese and LSU, the fact remains that the two stars’ treatment was inconsistent. Either it’s wholly acceptable or wholly unacceptable, and if you truly believe that both Clark and Reese are classless I am inclined to believe you flat-out do not like sports.

In terms of a brand, personalities like Reese and Clark are what make viewers tune in, especially in a sport as interpersonal as basketball. At such a critical time in the popularity of women’s basketball, the stars who make the game interesting should be embraced, not shunned.