TV ratings

[SubbaBub]

Never understood the Caitlyn Clark hype machine. Good for her, I guess, but she's not exactly Lebron James or Michael Jordan. She has had to take her lumps in the WNBA because that league was not built on individual ego and being played on thousands of commercials on repeat. I guess I'm getting older because I don't see what drives her popularity. Probably somewhat related to social media.

Strange that anyone in Husky Nation doesn't get it. What Rebecca Lobo was to a WCBB niche community(mostly east coast) Clark was to the rest of America as developed by the success of UConn and it's primary rivals and ESPN promoting the heck out of it after the lost a huge chunck of their MBB content to Fox, CBS and others.

She was an underdog (white) phenomenon from a nowhere program in the middle of nowhere illegal. Name the last B1G team that had a major WCBB program? None come to mind. It's all UConn, SEC, ND, and B12 with a couple cameos by Stanford.

 

[UConnJim]

"I said that there had been no increase in women's basketball over the past decade? Could you please show me where so that I can see if I need to see a doctor for dementia?"

What we saw last year was a Caitlin Clark phenomenon, not a women’s basketball phenomenon. There is/will be some benefit for women’s basketball as a whole, but most of the “boom” is about this one star.

I would say a 60% bump in average TV ratings excluding the Clark games is a major boost in ratings/popularity. Heck, this year's viewership was 8.5 million which is over 130% increase in the average viewership from 2010 to 2019 which is a huge increase.

 

[HuskyHawk]

It's all Clark. She played rando teams like Nebraska and other Big 10 teams who weren't going anywhere and they got a lot more eyeballs than LSU vs. South Carolina and it's carried over to the WNBA. The 16 highest rated WNBA games last season were Clark/Indiana Fever games. I live in Chicago and they have Angel Reese's face everywhere and the Chicago Sky had great attendance but it was 8,700 fans on average compared to Clark and the Indiana Fever getting 17,000 on average.

I get that it is all Clark. What I don't get is why. She's Pistol Pete in the modern age. A great shooter and scorer.

Looked up the stats last year. Clark was #1 in offensive win share. Paige was #2. Paige however was #3 in defensive win share.

Look up the all time win share leader and it is Maya Moore. Clark is 12th on that list. Box Plus minus? She's not on the leaderboard and Cameron Brink is #2 for her season last year (Sarah Strong is #1 all time). I have absolutely nothing against her. She's great. I just don't understand how she is so much more popular than the other players.

 

[aceboon]

I get that it is all Clark. What I don't get is why. She's Pistol Pete in the modern age. A great shooter and scorer.

Looked up the stats last year. Clark was #1 in offensive win share. Paige was #2. Paige however was #3 in defensive win share.

Look up the all time win share leader and it is Maya Moore. Clark is 12th on that list. Box Plus minus? She's not on the leaderboard and Cameron Brink is #2 for her season last year (Sarah Strong is #1 all time). I have absolutely nothing against her. She's great. I just don't understand how she is so much more popular than the other players.

her style of play, and she's also a great passer in addition to shooting/scoring.

 

[BigTenGuy]

her style of play, and she's also a great passer in addition to shooting/scoring.

Agree. Style of play includes making more long 3s (>25’) than any college player, man or woman, in the 6-year history of CBB Analytics tracking that stat. As frequently noted, she is the Steph Curry of WBB. Fans love the logo 3, as well as the long pin-point get-ahead passes.

Clark’s combo scoring and assisting is also under appreciated for its rarity. In the NCAA era, Clark is # 1 in PPG and # 7 in APG. As of the season-end 2024 record book, no other player in NCAA WBB history is in the top 100 of both of those categories.

 

[7774]

her style of play, and she's also a great passer in addition to shooting/scoring.

Her passing is better than her scoring, and if she was on a team surrounded by real talent instead of Iowa, she would have broken the all time assists record by a mile.

 

[MilliniumPrince]

Dawn is a huge whiner and constantly plays the victim card. It's gotten old, and a bad look for a team that has won 50% of the last 4 NC's... In fairness, she does give props to Paige, and she did last year to Caitlyn, but OMG. Your team has made it to 5 FF's in a row. Take a day off...

“Sometimes we create these narratives about great players — Caitlin was one of them; Paige is one of them right now — and we tend to forget the narrative about what our kids have been able to do, going for their third in four years,” Staley told the media on Saturday. “There’s a sentimental narrative about Paige. A great freakin’ player. Anybody would start their franchise with Paige because she’s a winner. … But when you put a narrative out there, everybody sees that, and it puts us at a disadvantage, whether you want to believe so or not. Officials see it. It’s all over TikTok. It’s all over ‘SportsCenter.’ It’s all over all of that.

“I just want to put it out there. I can’t not address it because it’s happening. It happened to us last year. Everything was about Caitlin Clark and her legacy and her ability to win a national championship. Yet we were coming into this thing undefeated, doing something that’s unprecedented at the time. We find ourselves back here in a similar situation.”

Not the same as saying too much talk about Paige. I took it as not enough talk about us. But just a matter of perspective.