And the crowd went wild…unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons.
Until things went sideways, the 2023 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championships on Sunday night was a helluva game and a long-overdue affirmation that women’s teams sell tickets and galvanize fans.
The Women’s March Madness Final Four tournament had become the most viewed women’s college basketball semi-final event in ESPN history, so by the time the LSU Tigers and Iowa Buckeyes met in the final match-up, the sell-out crowd of 19,482 fans (and a still unknown number of viewers) was ready. It was drama from the start. LSU had never had a winning basketball program and placed its hopes in Kim Mulkey, a coach with three titles under her bedazzled belt, who brought the team to the top spot after only two years on the job.
Did I mention the drama?
Iowa superstar Caitlin Clark—expected to lead her team to victory—received a controversial technical foul that kept her sidelined during a critical part of the game. Ultimately, LSU blew by Iowa 102-85, despite extraordinary gameplay from Clark and the Iowa team. The game had it all: Highs, lows, refs to yell at, the thrill of an underdog team going the distance, the agony of defeat, and diehard fans typically only seen in men's college basketball.
And then, it had some racism.
The trouble began when Louisiana State University star Angel Reese approached Clark and waved an open hand in front of her own face, a “now you see me, now you don’t” gesture popularized by WWE star John Cena (and borrowed from rapper Tony Yayo). It’s basketball. It’s a trash-talking, flamboyant, bring-the-emotion-delight-the-crowd kind of thing, and what athletes do all the time.
It's also the very thing that Clark, who is white, had done earlier in the tournament, and viewers loved it.
But when Reese, who is Black, mimicked the gesture, she was called “classless” by sports journalist Jose de Jesus Ortiz, a term I now recommend you add to your racist dog-whistle handbook. When former ESPN host Keith Olbermann called her an “idiot," other Twitter users piled on to dissect the gesture—some in her defense, others calling her some version of a thug—instead of enjoying the excellence displayed by young women athletes performing under enormous pressure.
Reese addressed the controversy immediately after the game.
“All year, I was critiqued for who I was. I don’t fit the narrative,” she said. “I don’t fit the box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don’t say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me. For those that want to speak up for what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you. And that’s what I did it for tonight. It was bigger than me tonight.”
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
