The check-in: How ESPN’s bracketology show finally gave women equal billing
The check-in: How ESPN’s bracketology show finally gave women equal billing
PLUS: The Courage honor Sam Mewis, Bianca St-Georges shines, and updates from around the women's sports world.
Hi, friends. It’s March. I’m assuming you’re aware of that, given it’s March 21. But I’m not talking about March, the month. I’m talking about March, the Madness.
The First Four of the women’s NCAA tournament started last night, with No. 16 Presbyterian and No. 12 Vanderbilt advancing to the second round — the round that most people consider the first round. Tonight on ESPN2, No. 11 seed Arizona and Auburn will face off at 7:00pm ET, and No. 16 seeds UT Martin and Holy Cross will meet at 9:00. The true madness will begin tomorrow.
This year, there is significant hype around the women’s tournament. Some — including Shaq — are proclaiming it to be more intriguing than the men’s tournament. Personally, I am not a fan of pitting the tournaments against each other in this way; success is not a zero-sum game, and you don’t need to put down the men’s game in order to exalt the women’s game.
This women’s tournament is set up to be remarkable all by itself, no comparisons needed.
Yes, a lot of that has to do with the “Caitlin Clark phenomenon” as the New York Times dubbed it today. But there’s also Dawn Staley trying to lead her undefeated top-seeded South Carolina Gamecocks to a third championship in the last seven tournaments behind the post play of second-team All American Kamila Cardosa, freshman and SEC tournament MVP MiLaysia Fulwiley, and Te-Hina Paopao, who is shooting a staggering 47.1% from three.
There’s Angel Reese and her star-studded teammates — Aneesha Morrow, Mikaylah Williams, Flau’jae Johnson, and Hailey Van Lith — trying to defend their title despite having one of the most difficult paths in recent history; No. 3 LSU could face No. 6 Louisville in the second round, No. 2 UCLA in the Sweet 16, and No. 1 Iowa in the Elite Eight (!!!!).
Then there’s No. 2 Stanford, led by superstar post players Cameron Brink, a senior playing in her final NCAA tournament, and Kiki Iriafen, a junior named the Pac-12 Most Improved Player of the Year and an honorable mention All American; No. 1 USC, led by Freshman of the Year JuJu Watkins; No. 1 Texas, led by freshman Madison Booker, the Big 12 Player of the Year, second-team All American, and one of the best stories in basketball this season; and No. 2 Notre Dame, led by freshman Hannah Hidalgo, the ACC tournament MVP.
Oh, and there’s also No. 3 UConn, more of an afterthought than they’ve been in decades, but led by the always-dangerous Paige Bueckers, who joined Clark, Brink, Hidalgo, and Watkins on the All American first team.
Women’s college basketball is undeniably soaring right now, zero qualifiers are necessary.
1. Bracketology has no gender
In my opinion, on Sunday night we got the biggest sign yet that the women’s NCAA tournament has made the transition from March Madness sideshow to co-star. (I am, of course, referring to the perception of the mainstream culture — to many of us reading this newsletter, the women’s tournament is and has been the main attraction.)
On Selection Sunday — which the women have only been a part of since 2022; before that, the women’s bracket was revealed on Monday — CBS, which has exclusive broadcast rights for the men’s tournament, unveiled the men’s bracket at 6:00pm ET. Then ESPN, which airs the women’s tournament, unveiled the women’s bracket at 8:00pm ET. Following the women’s bracket reveal, ESPN had a two-hour show on the schedule merely titled “Bracketology.” I assumed when I saw it on my programming guide that it would be dedicated to the men’s tournament, because that’s how these things usually work — the women’s tournament gets the bare minimum in news coverage, while the men’s tournament gets the deep dives and analysis and all the “extra” that really make sports fun.
But I was pleasantly surprised when I realized it was actually a joint bracketology show featuring analysts and experts on from both the men’s and women’s basketball worlds who alternated between breaking down the two brackets. The show didn’t pit the men and women against each other; it didn’t ask for hot takes about which tournament was going to be better; it merely treated them both like tournaments worth taking seriously, which they are.
Earlier this week, I spoke with Aaron Katzman, a coordinating producer at ESPN who oversees the College Gameday basketball franchise and who worked on the brackcetology show, about this strategy.
He said that discussions about doing a joint bracketology show began a few months ago.
“We're ESPN, and we celebrate and want to be at the forefront of all college basketball, period,” Katzman told Power Plays. “It just made sense to have it be a combination show. You have a women's audience that's been watching for the last hour for the Selection Show. Why not continue that momentum, but not just make it women's-specific, not just make it men's-specific, but just make it basketball specific?”
It turned out to be a smart business decision to try to retain the audience from the women’s Selection Show — according to Sports Media Watch, it averaged 1.94 million viewers, making it the most-watched women’s Selection Show in 20 years.
In many ways, the joint bracketology show was a continuation of ESPN’s increased integration of women’s basketball into their programming this season. Prior to 2023, ESPN had only done three women’s College Gameday shows in franchise history. In 2023, ESPN had three women’s Gameday shows. This year, College Gameday did five women’s shows — South Carolina at LSU on a Thursday night in January, then Sunday morning shows at South Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Iowa, followed by a show in Greensboro for the ACC championship game. At LSU, the arena was totally full an hour and a half before the game tipped of. In Blacksburg for the Virginia Tech game, people camped out the night before so they could come watch the Gameday show live.
“It was it was incredible,” Katzman said. “It's a growing process and there’s certainly a lot of room for growth on our side, but I think we laid a tremendous foundation and now have a huge ceiling with the show.”
Over the course of this March Madness, ESPN will obviously be talking a lot about women’s basketball, since it is airing the women’s tournament. But it is also looking to involve the women’s tournament in more of its general programming, too.
“We'll have some men's Gameday shows during the tournament on weekend mornings, and we are having those discussions about hey, how do we want to bring Caitlin Clark into our discussions? Or, if our show leads into a women's NCAA tournament game, could we get a pregame interview with a player warming up, or Dawn Staley if it's a South Carolina game or something like that?
“We're going all and in on everything we're doing around the women's tournament,” he said. “Our goal is to have ESPN to the wall the wall destination for college basketball over the next few weeks.”
2. Thank you, Sam Mewis
Besides the women’s bracket reveal, the biggest women’s sports story this past week was NWSL opening weekend. I’m not going to get into the weeds on all of the results, but I will link Pardeep Cattry at CBS Sports and Megan Swanick at ESPN so you can get your fix.
But I want to talk about the game I attended, the North Carolina Courage’s 5-1 victory over the Houston Dash. And as fun as the Courage’s performance on the field was, I mainly want to talk about what happened after the game, when Sam Mewis was inducted into the North Carolina Courage Ring of Honor.
Mewis was drafted by the Western New York Flash in 2015. She won a championship with the Flash in 2016, then moved with the team to North Carolina when it was sold in 2017. She played with the Courage for four seasons, leading the club to three straight NWSL Shields, three straight finals, and back-to-back championships in 2018 and 2019. She transferred to Manchester City in 2020, and rejoined the Courage in 2021, but by that time, a knee injury had begun to completely derail her career. She was traded to the Kansas City Current in late 2021, but barely played for them over the next two years as she underwent multiple surgeries and long rehab stints. Ultimately, she announced earlier this year that she was retiring from pro soccer.
Courage head coach Sean Nahas, who was an assistant coach when Mewis was with the club, immediately put plans into action to honor her when he heard the retirement announcement.
“It's what she deserves,” he told reporters after the game. “You know, she never got a proper send off here for many reasons [and we needed to] bring her home and honor her the way we did. She's such an important part of our club. These two stars that we have on our crest are because of Sam, and many others of course, but Sam was a massive foundation.”
I wanted to share a couple of speech excerpts from the emotional day with you all.
First, here’s a bit of what Denise O’Sullivan had to say:
O’SULLIVAN: It's a truly fitting tribute for Sam Mewis to be our first person inducted into our club’s Ring Ring of Honor. I can't think of anyone more deserving. I joined the Courage in 2017. Myself, [Meredith Speck], [Kayleigh Kurtz], Ryan [Williams], we've all had the privilege of playing with Sam Mewis. And she was the best player I've ever played with. But she was also the best person and the best teammate I've ever had. She was caring, she was modest, she showed up every day and worked hard. And when you're around someone like that every single day, you truly learn from them. And I can say I learned from the best. Sam set the tone for this club. She always had high standards. And she left a legacy behind that will impact this club forever. And I just want to say thank you so much for inspiring us for inspiring young kids. And thank you for what you've done for women's football and what you've done for this club.
PHEW,
And here’s most of Mewis’s speech:
MEWIS: I don't want to keep you too long, but I have been reflecting a lot on what I learned here when I was on the team. One of the things I learned was how to respond when things are hard.
I trained with players like [Ryan Williams] and [Kayleigh Kurtz], and they didn't see the field much, and now they're both starting. It's such an amazing reflection of this culture and this club and this team to come back here to see their success and to see how great they're doing and how they got here by working so hard every single day. So that was one lesson I learned, is when things are hard and you don't have what you want, you work hard.
I've also learned from the club how to respond in times of adversity. You take accountability, you fix things, you move on, you're honest. I think I take that into my life moving forward.
I have had a really hard time dealing with my injury and not being able to play anymore. (Begins to cry.) And I hope that I can take those lessons into my next chapter and the rest of my life. So I'm so grateful to be here and to have been reminded of what the Courage taught me. Oh my god, I'm like SOBBING. (Laughs.)
Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you so much to the club again. This means so much to me, I don't think anyone will ever know. To the team, you guys have been so gracious. I know not all of you know me, but I feel like we're friends. I love you guys, I'm here for all of you. Like, I'm part of the Courage forever.
Sorry for making you cry on a Thursday afternoon, but if I had to stomach that, so did you.
Sam Mewis forever.
3. Here are a couple of other Courage quotes that aren’t sad, I promise.
Like I mentioned above, the Courage had a great debut, winning 5-1 over the Dash. Malia Berkely got the Courage on the board in 19’, converting a penalty kick. When asked about the penalty after the game, her quote was great.
BERKELY: I'm just thankful that I was able to step up for the team in that moment and just place it, we do PKs in training, and it's just as easy as putting it where the keeper isn't. That's all you really need to do. So I'm glad that it kind of got the ball rolling for us and kind of settled us into the game and allowed us to really start playing our style.
IT’S THAT EASY, FRIENDS.
Haley Hopkins extended the lead at 55’, and then Bianca St-Georges put the game firmly out of reach after she subbed in for Tyler Lussi in the 74th minute, scoring back-to-back goals in the 76’ (Matsukubo) and 86’. Dani Weatherholt put an exclamation point on the game with a goal in the ninth minute of extra time.
Weatherholt and St-Georges were the Courage’s key offseason free agency acquisitions, and especially since last season’s MVP Kerolin will be out for at least another few months, it was a great sign for the Courage that both players made an impact immediately.
I thought St-Georges’ quote about why she joined the Courage was very interesting.
ST-GEORGES: What interested me? The winning culture. In my mind, I'm a winner, but I can't do it by myself. I need people to come with me, we need to level up. And I know that we're going to be better for all of this together. Because if my teammate loses, I lose. So we need to win together and we need each other for us to raise the standards. So there's no better place to me to be in a winning culture than Courage Country, and it was obvious to me, and I was lying to myself to convince me otherwise, so I knew I had to be here.
Courage Country is certainly glad you’re here, Bianca.
Checking in around the women’s sports world
The round-up of all round ups begins now!
Let’s start with NCAA softball, shall we? Here are your rankings this week:
Probably the most surprising softball result this past weekend? Ole Miss played a three-game series against No. 3 LSU in Baton Rouge, and shocked the world by winning said series — Ole Miss lost the first game 0-3, but then won bak-to-back games on Sunday and Monday 5-2 and 9-2, respectively. This is Ole Miss’s highest-ranked series win in program history, and certainly bodes well for an exciting season of SEC play.
Now let’s look at the PWHL standings:
When we checked in with the PWHL earlier this month, Montreal was at the top of the standings. But Now Montreal has dropped to third, behind Minnesota at 33 points and Toronto at 36 points. Toronto is the hottest team in the league by far, having won 11 straight (!!) games.
Here’s this week’s PWHL watch schedule.
While we’re talking women’s pro sports, let’s take a look at the Pro Volleyball Federation standings:
A few notable things from the land of the PVF: The Atlanta Vibe are on a four-match win streak and announced a local broadcast partner; the league already announced an increase in player compensation for 2025; the Omaha Supernovas broke the attendance record yet again with 12,090 fans in attendance on Saturday night.
Here’s the Week 9 PVF watch schedule.
Moving on to NCAA gymnastics, here’s a good wrap-up of week 11. (Spoiler alert: The Sooners still look unstoppable.) This weekend are the conference tournaments, and then on Monday, March 25, the NCAA will announce regional selections at 12:00 p.m. ET.
The Women’s Frozen Four field is set and the action will take place this weekend in Durham, new Hampshire. On Friday on ESPN+, No. 1 Ohio State will face No. 4 Clarkson, followed by No. 2 Wisconsin facing No. 3 Colgate.
The championship game will be aired at Sunday, March 24 at 4:00pm ET on ESPNU.
To get ready for the Frozen Four, here’s a good preview by Paige Capistran at ESPN and Nicole Haase at USCHO.
Oh yes, the NCAA swimming and diving championships are taking place this week, too! I’m sorry I do not have time to dive into that, pun intended, but here’s a link to a schedule and how-to-watch information.
Also, the figure skating world championships are happening now!!
Finally, this is the fourth and final weekend of Athletes Unlimited Basketball. Allisha Gray sits firmly atop the leaderboard, followed by Natasha Cloud and Odyssey Sims.
Here’s the Week 4 schedule, be sure to tune in on the WNBA App!
