DALLAS — Praise for Kim Mulkey and LSU’s champions. Praise for Caitlin Clark and her NCAA record-setting run for Iowa. Praise for the elevation of the women’s game to the point where two teams, facing championship pressure, could make more than half their 3-point shots (25 of 47) in a 102-85 sold-out final at the AAC.
That’s what we should be reading and hearing today. To no one’s great surprise, we are not.
Angel Reese was named the Most Outstanding Player in the tournament after her 15-point, 10-rebound performance. That glory lasted about five minutes before she was castigated from coast to coast for following Clark all around the court and making a “you can’t see me” gesture and pointing at her ring finger.
The fact that Clark had more subtly made this same gesture (apparently made famous by wrestler John Cena years ago) was lost on many folks. The fact that LSU, which overwhelmed Iowa with its size and speed, is a mostly Black team compared to Iowa’s mostly white team and it was the Tigers getting the criticism, was not lost on anyone, especially Reese.
”I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto, y‘all told me that all year,” Reese said. “But when other people do it, y’all don’t say anything. Twitter’s gonna go on a rage. I’m just happy I helped grow the women’s game.”
And that’s really what the fallout from Sunday’s championship was about. Take any major sporting event — your average NFL playoff game, for example — and the chatter the next 24 hours is rarely about who won. It’s about who didn’t win the right way, how badly the losing team choked and why the referees were so awful.
And that last sentiment certainly applies to Sunday’s game. Just as you can celebrate the fact that the Women’s Final Four used all female officials, we can acknowledge the fact that female refs can completely botch a game just like the men can. There were 37 fouls called Sunday. It seemed everyone on both teams was in foul trouble with two minutes left in the first quarter. And Iowa’s supremely talented Clark, who puts on a better show than anyone playing in the men’s tournament, was given a technical foul for flipping the ball behind her back as it bounced to her during a stoppage in play.
With so many players in foul trouble — Clark and Reese included — fans from both teams were riled up all afternoon. So when the end came, and Reese followed Clark around the court longer than she needed to while taunting her, the Iowa side exploded. Sentiments did not always break down along the predictable racial or political lines. In fact, Keith Olbermann helped lead the charge against Reese on Twitter, which suggests mostly that people got worked into a frenzy and lost their minds watching this championship battle.
But it is a simple truth that media voices tend to praise Larry Bird or Clark for trash-talking but take an entirely different attitude when it’s someone who looks like the “Bayou Barbie” as Reese has been called. And that needs to be understood and addressed.
Otherwise, the controversy is all good for the women’s game. The ratings for the ABC broadcast, even for an afternoon game, are likely to shine. Consider the fact that the women don’t leave college to turn pro after one season. Reese will be back at LSU next season. Clark will return to Iowa. If there’s no rematch already on the schedule, can we please, please get one?
That’s the kind of discussion the women’s hoops game wants to be able to generate and now it has.
Clark is one of the most fascinating players I have seen in sports. We use “game-changing” on a regular basis to describe good athletes who really aren’t changing anything. I sat there at Thursday’s press conference listening to Clark talk about when she first started practicing 3-point shots from the logo (basically Luka distance). She scored 41 points in an upset of No. 1-ranked South Carolina Friday, then set the championship record with eight threes Sunday. Her first came from 32 feet, according to ABC. Clark’s 186 points are the most ever in an NCAA Tournament, men’s or women’s.
But I don’t doubt that Mulkey had her LSU players whipped into a frenzy over Clark and the national adoration she receives. I’m not sure I have seen a more unlikely and amazing performance off the bench in a big game than Jasmine Carson scoring 21 points in the first half, essentially saving the game while LSU survived foul trouble. Carson had scored no points in the previous three games.
Carson’s performance, Reese winning the fight in the paint, Clark desperately trying to keep Iowa alive with long-range shots — it was a hell of a championship game for any sport of any gender at any level. So just acknowledge that, and don’t get too worked up over the fact that people got way too worked up about Reese and her gestures.
If you’re watching the women’s game and feeling as though the players should be above the fray, behaving differently than men do, you’re still wrestling with that whole equality issue, aren’t you?
