Add Category
March Madness is aptly named.
While most US sporting phenomena can be compared to some sort of Australian equivalent, the college sports scene and the fervour around the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament is utterly alien to a culture whose biggest university sporting contest is a couple of weekends of OzTag.
But between the enormous betting markets, the knockout format and the relative mid-season lull in the NBA, March has long belonged to the college scene.
For decades that meant men.
Players like Christian Laettner, Donte DiVincenzo and Lorenzo Charles, who had middling to non-existent professional careers, were gods for a couple of months thanks to their thrilling college exploits.
The women's game had icons like Cheryl Miller, Sheryl Swoopes and Diana Taurasi but, thanks to a lack of media investment and the overwhelming dominance of one or two teams — Connecticut or Tennessee won 18 of 22 national championships from 1995 to 2016 — it struggled for prominence alongside the men's tournament.
That has changed in recent years thanks in no small part to a fresh wave of superstars that arguably started with Sabrina Ionescu at Oregon in 2016.
Around the same time Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors started winning NBA championships on the back of his devastating shooting from distances once thought fanciful, perhaps the most immediate impact was seen in the likes of Ionescu.
She showed similar range and fearlessness on her three-point shot and, while her Ducks never made it to the championship game from 2016 to the cancelled tournament in her 2020 senior year, the highlights on social media were an easy in and also paired with more broadcast investment.
The baton was perfectly passed to Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, who emerged after the COVID break and established herself as the most prolific scorer in division one college basketball history.
As well as surpassing Pete Maravich as the greatest collegiate scorer of all time earlier this year, she holds too many records to count, thanks mainly to a ridiculous 2023 run featuring multiple 40-point outings and more than 1,000 points' worth of scoring explosions.
But that brilliant tournament run ended in heartbreak in the championship game at the hands of the other shining star of the women's college scene, Angel Reese, which is the other side of the story.
Reese and the rivalry
As previously mentioned, overwhelming dominance, while commendable, can become boring and predictable to watch.
The University of Connecticut women's team lost just one game from their 2013 championship game to their fourth straight title in 2016, led by future WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart.
Stewart and hall of fame coach Geno Auriemma were literally peerless, winning 122 of 123 games in that time, adding to Auriemma's undefeated seasons in 1995, 2002, 2009 and 2010.
That's not the case for Clark, who has the perfect rival in Louisiana State University's Reese.
Both have bucketloads of confidence and charisma to go with their immense skill levels and, although Reese's inside scoring and rebounding game is completely different to Clark's outside shooting prowess, there is a mutual respect between the two fierce competitors.
They led their teams to the 2023 national championship game, where Reese's Tigers dominated Clark and the Hawkeyes 102-85.
Clark scored a game-high 30 points, but missed more than half her shots from the field and had six turnovers in the loss, receiving a send-off from Reese, who was named player of the tournament.
The images of her pointing to the finger where her championship ring would reside as Clark trudged off the court past her were instantly iconic.
And while Reese was criticised for a lack of class, she identified a double standard along racial lines as Clark, who is white, was not criticised for similar celebrations, including a John Cena-esque 'You can't see me' gesture just a couple of games earlier.
"I don't fit in 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," Reese said, adding that "Clark is a hell of a player".
"This is for the girls that look like me, that want to speak up on what they believe in. It's unapologetically you. It was bigger than me tonight."
(It's also worth mentioning that while the gesture is most famously associated with Cena, he has credited black rapper Tony Yayo's move from the 2005 So Seductive music video as his inspiration.)
Clark also came to her defence, saying Reese should not "be criticised at all".
"We're all competitive. We all show our emotions in a different way," she told ESPN.
"Angel is a tremendous player. I have nothing but respect for her. I love her game … I'm a big fan of her and even the entire LSU team. They played an amazing game.
"Men have always had trash talk … You should be able to play with that emotion … That's how every girl should continue to play."
Reese was outspoken of First Lady Jill Biden's off-hand suggestion that Iowa should join LSU for the customary visit to the White House, although she later attended and posed for photos with the Bidens.
Reese and Clark's rivalry will light up the stage again tomorrow, with third-ranked LSU beating UCLA and top seed Iowa taking down Colorado to advance to a match-up in the Elite Eight stage of the NCAA tournament.
Reese said she and LSU were happy to play the role of "good villains".
"We're impacting the game so much and all of us are super competitive and want to win and do whatever it takes to win. We're just changing the game," Reese said.
Clark, meanwhile, said "it's just going to be a really great game for women's basketball".
"We're excited. Anytime you have a chance to go up against somebody you lost to, it brings a little more energy," she said.
It really is hard to quantify how big this game could be.
On top of the ratings
The women's tournament has been regularly setting new highs for viewership numbers over the past few years, with this month's tournament the biggest on record by a number of metrics.
Last year's championship game was the most watched women's college game of all time, more than doubling the 2022 audience, and the trend has continued this year, particularly for Clark's games.
Since college players were allowed to make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL), it has promoted their games and teams, and given us a good metric as to the fame of the respective players.
At an estimated $US3.1 million ($4.8 million) Clark is fourth among college athletes on the NIL rankings, behind LeBron James's son Bronny, Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders (son of coach and NFL hall of famer Deion Sanders), and LSU gymnastics sensation Livvy Dunne.
In February, ahead of the NCAA tournament, Clark's jersey also passed Sanders's as the highest-selling piece of merchandise for a college athlete.
Reese, meanwhile, is eighth on the list of NIL earners at U$S1.8 million ($2.8 million), with the third most social media followers behind Bronny James and Dunne.
The Bayou Barbie, a nickname she trademarked after a fan coined it on her arrival in Louisiana, has been highlighted as one of the most influential people in the world of sports and pop culture by Time, Harpers' Bazaar and Forbes.
So it's easy to see how the reignition of the LSU-Iowa rivalry will be an enormous ratings winner (and a boon for betting agencies), but it is also the end of an era.
Both players are in their final years of college ball, meaning this will be the end of a remarkable period of college basketball.
But, as the ratings numbers have shown this season, there's a trickle-down effect from the biggest stars.
According to ESPN, the broadcaster as seen a 74 per cent increase from last year on games not featuring Iowa, continuing the wider trend.
Clark and Reese are special; their athletic brilliance is matched by magnetic personalities and a compelling narrative between the two.
It's unlikely it will be replicated straight away as many of those followers turn into WNBA fans, but as we saw when Clark took over from Ionescu at the start of this decade, there will be another superstar.
Perhaps it will be Paige Bueckers, who is also still alive in the tournament with Connecticut and has committed for her senior year despite projecting as a top-three pick in the WNBA draft.
Or Reese's teammate Flau'jae Johnson, or Arizona's Jada Williams, or an exciting freshman we don't know about yet.
The game is growing and while Ionescu grew up watching LeBron, Curry and Kobe, the next wave of girls had Ionescu, Clark and Reese on their backs and the game will be a better, more interesting place for it.
Sports content to make you think... or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Friday.