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1) I never thought I'd start a single installment of this column with women's basketball, but here we are. That's the Caitlin Clark effect. It's not meant to denigrate anyone else that plays or coaches the sport. South Carolina is a machine and there are other great players and teams. But Clark took women's basketball to a level it's never seen before. Even the coach that beat her on Sunday knew that.
She was a player we've maybe never seen before. I'm not going to argue if she's the best women's college player ever. I don't have nearly enough knowledge for that (though my knowledge does go all the way back to watching Iowa play LSU in the national championship game last year; it then went on an 11-month hiatus, but I've watched the last three Iowa games so four full games is a lot more than many people watch before spouting off opinions). She shot like Steph Curry. She passed like Magic Johnson (I honestly think Clark and Magic are the two best passers I've ever seen on a basketball court regardless of gender).
And yes--brace yourselves here--the fact that she is white was a part of it.
I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers when I say that. I really don't mean to. I'm not trying to have a hot take here. I don't mean that in a controversial way or even in a way that insinuates racism. It's just that it's an exception to the general rule. Most players that are that good, most players that play the way Clark played, well, they don't look like Clark.
I don't mean to derail the whole thing. Personally, I don't care what color she is. I enjoyed the hell out of watching her play basketball. She did things on a court I've not seen very many people at all do. In the end, it wasn't enough. But I thought the best thing I heard about her over this last year was relayed by Ryan Ruocco (FWIW, Ruocco and Rebecca Lobo are a fantastic announcing team IMO, I thought they added to the experience of watching the women's tournament) during the game yesterday. He said Clark had been asked what the national championship game would mean to her legacy. She said she didn't want her legacy to be how many games she won or how many points she scored. She wanted to be remembered as someone who made the game of women's basketball better and gave it a stage it hadn't had before. And I think that's exactly what she did. If you want to get caught up in the fact that she couldn't drag a team that might have had one other player who would even see minutes for South Carolina to within five minutes of a national title, that's your prerogative. But the fact that Iowa lost yesterday doesn't change what Clark did for women's basketball. Literally millions of people watched that weren't watching before. I was one of them. That's her legacy.
2) Never one to cede the spotlight, John Calipari will dominate the headlines today. According to multiple reports, he'll be the Arkansas head coach no later than Tuesday.
I got a text from a friend that covers the SEC on Saturday night saying he was starting to hear rumors of Cal moving from Kentucky to Arkansas. My response: "Oh my god that would be incredible."
I just couldn't fathom it would happen. Nobody leaves Kentucky voluntarily for another college job. It's why Cal's contract has no buyout if he leaves on his own. It's the best job in the country and the only people who wouldn't immediately agree with that are probably lifelong fans of Duke, North Carolina or Kansas. It's the only place in the country where you could win 77% of your games, six conference titles and a national championship in addition to three more Final Fours, three Elite Eights and a Sweet 16 and be viewed by most fans as a guy who needed to go.
Cal to Arkansas is probably a win for both sides. Arkansas gets to say after being publicly turned down by coaches from Ole Miss and Kansas State that it went out and upgraded by hiring one of the top coaches in the country. Kentucky gets to move on from a coach whose best days are probably behind him without paying a dime. Arkansas gets the coach probably best equipped to immediately flip the roster (he does it every year) and put the Razorbacks back in the national conversation in year one. Kentucky gets to go shopping with a sales pitch of the best job in college basketball. Every school starts a coaching search with a ridiculous list of pie in the sky candidates. At Kentucky, that list is realistic.
My guess: Cal gets Arkansas back to the tournament next year. But he never makes a Final Four there and retires by 2029.
3) So we've got the end of two incredible eras in college basketball coming within eight hours of each other and we're going to have to listen to a whole bunch of takes this week about whether more people are into men's or women's college basketball.
What a stupid argument to have.
The women's game has been shot out of a cannon in the last 12 months in terms of national interest. It's a great story. But too many proponents of it are trying to make it a men's vs women's argument and shame anyone that dares to say they won't be lifelong fans of women's hoops now. The ratings were fantastic. I was as interested in the women's tournament as the men's this year. The major part of that is the team I cover wasn't anywhere near either one of them and the women's tournament had this generational star with quite a few other compelling storylines. But we don't have to make it a competition. If you're still not into women's college hoops it doesn't make you sexist or unenlightened. It's fine. We don't all like the same things. There are proponents of women's sports who I think are doing a disservice to the game by turning the conversation into what it's become. It's probably never going to be as popular for as wide an audience as the men's game. But that's okay. Why can't it just have a huge bump in popularity and that's great? Why do we have to pit the two against each other? Nobody benefits from it. But, again, I guess everybody's gotta have a take and get that social media engagement these days.
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