Five Out: UConn's Return To The Top, What to Make of this NCAA Season and why South Carolina will be just fine...

It's the last Five Out before we turn the page into the WNBA season...so let's run it back one time for the one time. Thoughts for the week of April 7, 2025.

That’s all, folks. The NCAA women’s basketball season has come to a close with the UConn Huskies winning their 12th national title under Geno Auriemma and reasserting their place at the top of the sports hierarchy. It was a crowning moment for Paige Bueckers, a national statement for Sarah Strong and a reminder that even as Geno gets older, he’s still got it.

We at No Cap Space WBB want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone that has watched, read, listened to and paid for our work since we first introduced the ‘Ball-Knowers’ tier in February. We talk a lot about our relationship with our subscribers being reciprocal and we mean that. It allowed us to send Chauny to Birmingham for the NCAA Regional and then her, Greer and Tyler to Tampa for the Final Four and National Championship. All that content we got on the ground — from Substack to YouTube to social platforms — doesn’t happen without the support you’ve given us.

It’s very much appreciated and we can’t thank you enough. There’s even more on tap ahead of the WNBA season and we have some big plans coming as well. So stay tuned and hang with us! Subscribe to us on YT, or on Substack or follow us on the socials as we continue to grow into our goal of being a central figure in the women’s basketball media landscape.

Now, to the column…

1. Geno, Paige, Sarah and Azzi proved that UConn is still one of the programs of the moment…

I talked about this a bit on our postgame live stream but there are levels to how we talk about dominant programs or teams in sports. If you’re a Blue Blood, we expect to see you in the title conversation every year. If you’re the program of the moment, we probably expect you to win. It’s not the healthiest way to discuss sports but it’s the way we’ve chosen and the way we frame greatness adequately. Part of that comes with the territory. If you want to be the best or seen as such then there is an expectation that will follow you to live up to that standard as often as possible. Geno Auriemma and UConn, after a triple digit win streak and multiple national titles in the early 2010’s set a benchmark to be judged upon. It’s why, after nine years without a championship yet Final Four appearances in almost every season, people were wondering if he’d lost his fastball.

As two of his longtime rivals, Tara Vanderveer and Muffet McGraw, retired he saw two new coaches, Kim Mulkey and Dawn Staley, quickly assert their claim as the stewards of a new era of basketball. It was understandable to feel that way. Since 2019, Mulkey and Staley have combined to win five of the last six national championships. The only outlier was Vanderveer in the COVID bubble tournament of 2021. So it was fair to ask if UConn would get back to that mountaintop, if there was something wrong with how the program was handling injuries or how Geno handled minutes.

Which is why it feels meaningful that his team not only won this title but did so in utterly dominant fashion. It is necessary to point out that this was the first season in quite awhile that the entire core of UConn’s stars were healthy all year. We got plenty of Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong and the results reflected that. The win over South Carolina was so lopsided that it almost reminded everyone that this is what the Huskies used to look like every year and this was the torture chamber they put 111 teams through before the 2016 Final Four. After that loss that season, they took that pain out on 126 teams in a row until they lost to Notre Dame in the 2019 Final Four. That’s a 237-1 record over the course of five years from 2014-2019. That’s the UConn team we’ve been accustomed to.

So in a way, it was almost as if you were watching the return of an old friend on Sunday. Granted, I don’t want life to go back to a world where the Huskies are just pasting everyone all the time. There’s more parity this year even if the Tournament didn’t really show it in full (more on that later…) but one thing is for sure, the idea of UConn abdicating its’ seat as standard bearer is a thing of the past. It’s them and the Gamecocks and it might make for an all-time rivalry in the coming years if Joyce Edwards and Sarah Strong continue to develop.

2. South Carolina is going to be just fine, even if the loss was humiliating…

So let’s get this out of the way now…

If you’re taking broad conclusions away from this game and applying them to South Carolina for anything other than the purpose of hating, you might not know ball. It would be one thing if UConn embarrassed SC like this in the Sweet Sixteen. Maybe then it would be a discussion. But this was the national championship game. Was it a bad loss, one of the worst in Dawn Staley’s career when you factor in the game, the eyeballs and the narrative stakes? Yes. It was also IN THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME. They literally beat everyone else in their path and were one matchup away from Dawn’s third title in four years on the back of five straight Final Fours, a feat not even Pat Summitt has accomplished. The Gamecocks aren’t going anywhere and if you think they are it’s because you want them to off the pedestal. Unfortunately, if you fall into that category, you may be in for some rough years ahead.

With that said, Staley’s situation right now reminds me of another all-time great: Alabama’s Nick Saban.

After the 2013 season, in which the Crimson Tide lost to Auburn in the Iron Bowl on the famous ‘Kick Six’ and then fell to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, the GOAT had a choice to make. He realized that something needed to change with how he approached the game and so he went out and found Lane Kiffin. Before he brought on the mercurial yet brilliant offensive playcaller, Saban allegedly told him that he thought the offense was a Lamborghini in danger of heading off a cliff because they were behind the times. So the Tide reconfigured their offense from a ground and pound attack to a more modern spread concept and the rest was history.

That was Dawn Staley, circa 2023. After falling to Caitlin Clark’s Iowa in the Final Four, the Gamecocks head coach responded to the changing game by bringing in Te-Hina PaoPao, Tessa Johnson and creating one of the most prolific three point shooting attacks women’s college basketball had seen up to that point. Like Saban, South Carolina was right back on top and again, the gold standard of the sport assumed to win the title every year. If we let the analog play out further, this was Dawn Staley’s 44-16 loss to Clemson in the College Football Playoff in 2018. It was after that game where people wondered if Clemson or Georgia were on the way to knock Bama off the perch they’d become so accustomed to being. How did Saban respond? With another title in 2020.

All that to say, you can’t keep GOAT level coaches down. Just look at Geno Auriemma, who won his first championship since 2016 this Sunday. At the end of the day, there are things you can critique Staley for this year. After Ashlyn Watkins went down with an injury, it felt as though other bigs outside of Sania Feagin didn’t step up in ways they needed to. The rotation and minutes around MiLaysia Fulwiley and Joyce Edwards can and will be questioned but will likely be answered when they step into larger roles next year. There are criticisms that Staley isn’t immune to but she still remains one of the top three coaches in the game. She’ll be fine and while I don’t love the idea that media seemingly aren’t allowed to critique her in good-faith on the basketball side of things, I understand the defensiveness. This was a loss in the title game. If they start falling off and not making it to the third weekend of this tournament, maybe we can revisit.

3. On Dawn Staley, media coverage and who the ‘face’ of the Gamecock program is…

In regards to Staley and critique levied her way, I think we — the actual women’s basketball fans and not bad faith culture war fighters — need to have an honest and nuanced discussion about media coverage and how it’s evolved with regard to South Carolina.

If you dial back the clock to around 2019, Staley and her FAMs had a legitimate gripe about how ESPN was handling SC’s rapid ascent. It felt derisive, dismissive and generally the Gamecocks were treated as an annoyance more than a rapidly ascending program. There was a stark difference between them and, say, Clemson football, who disrupted their respective sport in a similar way that SC women’s basketball did. After their national championship loss to Stanford, there was understandable outrage over the repeated use of a heartbroken Aliyah Boston to promote most of women’s March Madness and South Carolina writ large. Even as they continued to dominate their opponents, there was a legitimate issue to take with how ESPN — who I single out as the primary rights holder to SEC broadcasting rights — was telling their story and seemingly trying to find anyone who they could position above the dominant team of the moment.

Over time, however, that has shifted. The storytelling from the network, through reporters like Katie Barnes, M.A. Voepel and others, has increased dramatically in terms of centering South Carolina in a manner befitting the best team in a sport. More outlets have followed suit, the FAMs have become a key audience demographic for anyone covering women’s basketball and deserve a legitimate slice of credit — along with others like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese who brought massive audiences of their own — for helping bring the game to the masses.

But lately, it feels like a lot of the discourse around South Carolina’s place in the media ecosystem hasn’t evolved past those initial critiques. The Gamecocks are now one of the top draws in the sport, regularly and substantially covered by major networks and get some of the most prime pieces of television real estate for their top matchups every year. So where is the lack of coverage? The supposed motion that is being given to others at the expense of their own players?

Tough as it might be to admit, the issue starts at the top.

While Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese have been the faces of their respective programs in recent years, there’s been one face for South Carolina: Dawn Staley.

Now this isn’t a knock on Dawn, by any means. The reality is that she’s actually a prototype of another superstar head coach in college football. Think about it this way. Who else do you know commanded motion as a player, is stamped as a legacy figure in college and professionally, known for their swagger, authentically unapologetic nature with a unique gift to relating to their players? Who has aura? And who else is in Aflac commercials?

Dawn Staley is not Deion Sanders. Deion Sanders is trying to be Dawn Staley.

And this is the rub for why we can’t pinpoint South Carolina’s coverage issue in 2025, which is very different than the coverage issue circa 2021. Don’t believe me? Go back and watch the opener of the national title game yesterday. When both teams came off the bus, ESPN sequenced their shots in the following fashion…

UConn: Paige Bueckers first, Geno Auriemma second.

South Carolina: Dawn Staley first, Te-Hina Paopao second.

Advance the pregame coverage further, to the cinematics of the Husky and Gamecock starting lineups. To open the segment, a clapperboard (the director thing) snaps and we get to hear about the teams.

UConn: Paige opens.

South Carolina: Dawn opens.

So now Staley is left in an unwinnable position. She sees the disparity in coverage when it comes to stars and is left to wonder why a team can’t command the same motion as individual players. On the surface, it doesn’t make a ton of sense and adds plenty of fuel to great white hope narratives and while those have legitimate merit in more ways than one, the reality is that the networks have made a choice as to who the star of South Carolina is. We just don’t see it that way because we’re becoming increasingly removed from a world in which head coaches are the stars of college basketball.

I don’t write all this as a critique of Staley. Far from it, in fact. She 100% deserves to have the unimpeded spotlight in the way Rick Pitino, Roy Williams, Pat Summitt or Geno Auriemma do or did. We have just become such a star player driven media ecosystem that people see it as her stealing the spotlight from others. In short, it isn’t Dawn’s fault she’s got motion. But it does open up a question of how, if at all, she can leverage that fame to help her players get into spaces they should be in. If you’re the motion maker, do you also have the leverage? It’s a question I’m interested in finding out in the future.

4. Regarding media coverage and how we can position next years’ stars (because there are a lot of them)…

Now, the media isn’t entirely off the hook here. When you see how they’ve positioned Staley as a pseudo-Deion (or vice-versa) type figure, you’re making a calculated decision that the landscape can only handle so much South Carolina. That, to me, is the mistake and where the legitimate critiques of race, gender and orientation come into play. The fact of the matter is that women’s basketball has a singular star issue and only just started to get out of that mindset in the past two years.

The issue is that instead of doing one star, Cathy Engelbert decided to fully lean into the budding culture war that helped fuel the Caitlin Clark - Angel Reese rivalry and now any type of star positioning comes with toxic standoms or outright racists. Not a winning formula. It makes me wonder if the network environment is too fractured and broken to adequately handle how to market the sport going forward and if it’s even worth it to critique anymore.

ESPN doesn’t have the rights to the Big Ten and Big East anymore, so you’re naturally getting heavier doses of the SEC. FOX is fully in on the other two conferences but doesn’t command the motion and news cycle like the four letters does. CBS just kind of hangs out in the background like smooth jazz until we get to the NCAA Tournament. We’ve entered an ecosystem where networks aren’t pushing you to other leagues because of their affiliations. It’s an underrated part of Caitlin Clark’s ascendance her junior year as it was the last one where ESPN had a slice of Big Ten games. College Gameday was in Carver-Hawkeye for their game against then No. 2 Indiana.

Is there a way to fix this? I’m not sure if you can at the top levels. At the same time, I don’t think we should really concern ourselves with the likes of Stephen A., Shannon Sharpe or McAfee and who they center in coverage. We know they’re prisoners of their audience and prioritize their own financial wellbeing above all. So asking them to be the arbiters for fair coverage is a fool’s errand. Instead — and I know this is ultimately self-serving in some way — we probably should re-orient what we define as national and major coverage and adjust accordingly.

The fact of the matter is we have Sarah Strong, Joyce Edwards, Lauren Betts, Hannah Hidalgo, Olivia Miles, Sienna Betts, Aaliyah Chavez, Jazzy Davidson, Agot Makeer, Jaloni Cambridge, Syla Swords and so many more in the sport. There are singular rivalries, team rivalries, incredible players and more. Dawn Staley is right when she says there needs to be an equitable distribution of the coverage of these players. We can take about both and the many and as often as possible. We, as fans of the game, just have to maybe start rethinking who we anoint as the coverage queenmakers.

5. The limits of rematches, two region formats and what the NCAA needs to do with the Tournament going forward…

I’ll be honest, outside of a few good individual storylines, it wasn’t the greatest NCAA Tournament this year. Within the realm of good-faith discussion, I think it’s okay to admit that. Bracket formats aren’t going to give you bangers every year. Sometimes you may eat chalk and that’s just the way it is.

But it does open up some interesting questions about the two region formats and the committee’s insistence this year on giving us rematches in a variety of ways. We got UConn - USC (which was a dud because of JuJu’s injury), Texas - South Carolina (which was a dud because Dawn always puts Vic Schaefer in a torture chamber), Notre Dame - TCU (admittedly interesting for other reasons) and UConn - South Carolina (another dud). It made me wonder about a few things. First of all, maybe we overvalued the SEC this season? The super-conference had three Elite Eight participants and six in the Sweet Sixteen. But, for the most part, no one really stood out aside from South Carolina. Texas got a relatively easy bracket draw and saw an SEC opponent in the Sweet Sixteen. The Gamecocks struggled with Maryland and then Duke before beating Texas again to make a national title game where they were throttled by a potentially generational-in-hindsight UConn team.

Arguably the three best teams were on one end of the bracket to seemingly prioritize rematch potential and honestly, the way it played out, I get why Lindsay Gottlieb was so pissed. At the end of the day the left side of the field had arguably three of the four (the fourth being SC) teams in the nation. That isn’t necessarily a recipe to get us a great Final Four after an already chalky lead-up.

My thoughts on home sites are well documented and I believe the same about two regions. The NCAA needs to stop infantilizing the women’s game by living in fear of people not showing up. If you’re going to do a two region format, you’re probably better served being in a top 10 media market with a big airport and two arenas. Otherwise, it’s just messy, logistically a pain and still doesn’t have the feel of being something big. The product is meant to be an entry point for everyone to get into the game. That was the argument when Caitlin was playing, after all. So why shouldn’t women’s basketball get the same chance to market itself towards those who still might be unaware of how great our sport is?

There’s plenty to consider as the game grows in the coming years and I think the coaches have a better handle on this than the NCAA. But the one hill I’ll die on is this: don’t ever put the Final Four or title game in a football stadium. Keep that in a basketball arena forever.