THE LATE SUB WITH CLAIRE WATKINSHOSTED BYJUST WOMEN’S SPORTS
The Late Sub with Claire Watkins brings you the latest news and freshest takes in women’s sports. This is the weekly rundown you’ve been missing, covering the USWNT, NWSL, WNBA, college hoops, and whatever else is popping off in women’s sports each week. Special guest appearances with the biggest names in women’s sports make The Late Sub a must-listen for every fan.
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Puts the pressure back on the WNBA and on these individual teams to seize the moment. People talk about salaries. People talk about resources, flights, revenue share, All of the infrastructure has to be built. You cannot keep building the plane in the air, and I'm hopeful that the m WNBA has a has a possibility here to be proactive instead of reactive in laying the foundation for what the new era of the league is going to be. Now Clark is is joining kind of an interesting situation, I think, on the court. With with Indiana. Now the drafting of Aliyah Boston last season made them better. They were a much better team in 2023 than they were in 2022. But they still had some imbalances in the way that they played, notably being Aliyah Boston is this high efficiency post player She's getting your rebounds. You get the ball inside. Not many people could stop her. She had a great year last year. But sometimes they struggled with the ball distribution of how do you utilize your guards inside, outside draw the defense out. Sometimes we saw a little bit of the guards holding onto the ball too long, probably, not just looking to pitch it to Boston. Get those inside buckets. I think the the Adage is there for a reason. There's only one ball, and I I'm interested to see how Indiana integrates Clark, who again, big star coming in with big expectations, not only on her, but probably by her of of what her rookie year is going to look like. How are you going to make that work with Boston and with the other guards that you already have? Now, Clark was very clear on Monday night. She's excited to pass the ball to Aliyah Boston. She said that over and over and over again. And I liked that not only because I think she's telling the truth, but also because I think she was setting a tone. I think Clark was coming in with the expectation of I'm gonna learn from this player who just went through a rookie season. I'm going to become the key guard to the post player that that has been so efficient for this team. And through that, I am going to develop a strong rookie year and develop into the league hopefully hit some logo threes on the way, but to solidify her role not only with the
Era where sometimes the personal brand can kind of feel like everything to these players, and they're looking for playing time, and they're looking for that conversation. They're like, you know, people didn't talk about South Carolina's players the way that they talked about Caitlin Clark because there was no individual carrying that team. But that's also what led them to the big one. I think that's what that's what Staley said. She said, you know, a player like Maysha Phil Wylie might want different things next year. She might want a little bit more playing time. She might want some of that national attention that you get when you're given the opportunity to play a lot of minutes, score points, make assists, show people what you can do. But it was the sacrifice that allowed them to win this championship. And I just think it's, again, an incredible testament to Staley, to her to her flexibility, to her ability to connect with her players. And, also, just, again, x's and o's, the defensive game plan for Clark was really solid, and I don't think the fact that she kind of lit them up in the Q1 was that not going to plan. It was more we're going to test this out, we're going to be flexible, and we're going to adapt. And that landed on Raven Johnson, and Johnson had an incredible game. I also wanna shout out. This was something that Lisa Bluder said after the game as well, and I also noticed this, which is the talking about defensive game plan for Iowa, Iowa did actually force South Carolina into a lot of kind of midway mid range, like, floaters or mid range jump shots, and South Carolina's players just made them every time. So you did have Cardoso being dominant in the paint, but sometimes Iowa would be playing the exact right scheme, exact right defense. They would force 1 of the guards into a pull up jumper, but South Carolina made them. It's kinda like Caitlin Clark versus LSU. You you dare them to beat you with the shot that you're willing to give them, and they did it. They beat them. So I I was just so impressed by by what the Gamecocks pulled off this year. They're gonna be just as good next year. I think they they do lose Camilla Cardoso to the WNBA draft, but they have very talented players also coming in. They have Joyce Edwards coming in who is going to I don't think people realize necessarily just how good they're going to be next year. And like I said, I, I felt very
We're gonna start with the Iowa versus LSU game. That's the one that that was, you know, the the one that everyone was really excited for once that got on the docket after LSU beat UCLA, which is not was another fantastic game. The national championship rematch from last year, Angel Reese versus Caitlyn Clark. Who's gonna go all the way? Who's going to you know, you you can see all of the the narratives playing out in real time. Can can LSU go back to back? Can Iowa reach the final 4 again in Caitlin Clark's final tournament? Can they avenge that loss? So they downplayed on the Iowa side, they kinda downplayed the revenge factor. Obviously, a national championship game is a national championship game. As fun as this was, this was not that. Nothing could take that national championship away from LSU. But, again, it's the stuff that you kinda geek about covering women's sports, being a fan of women's sports. This is the kind of that apex of mainstream interest that you don't see all the time and you certainly haven't seen for a long time. Almost 7,000,000 people watched Iowa play Colorado in the sweet 16. We're probably gonna be getting numbers there today. We're recording this on Tuesday afternoon. Imagine that's gonna blow those out of the water. This might actually compete with some final four ratings records. It's it's incredible. It's really, really cool. Like we said, going into this, we knew that this was the final tournament for Caitlin Clark. She's already declared for the WNBA draft. Angel Reese, it's still a question. She hasn't made a decision yet. But when we watch this game being played between Iowa and LSU, you could feel both of these players rising to the moment. Now we know with Clark, like we said, we know with Caitlin Clark that this is going to be it. With Reese, I don't know what decision she's going to make, but she wasn't out there playing like she thought she was gonna have next year. This was laying it all out on the court. It's about legacy. And what we got in this game was that sort of ascension from, okay, we know these players are good, and we know what they did
Also simultaneously saying it wasn't going to be a distraction to her team, which I think at this point is obviously not true. Players are being asked about it in the locker room. They're being asked about her. We saw Angel Reese basically decline to comment. We've seen other players give more basic, comments of positivity towards their coach. This became something that was put in front of the media before the piece came out, like I said, primarily by Mulkey by making this statement. And and so it's hard to say what this is going to mean for them mentally going forward. It's hard to say if this had an impact on their performance on the court. I think some of their issues, at least in that middle Tennessee game, were a little bit more mundane than feeling like they were distracted completely or or off their game. It was actually just a little bit timid, to be honest, in the first half against middle Tennessee, and I think they tightened up a lot in the second half and looked great. So LSU put their best half of basketball together in the second half of the second round, and it'll be really fascinating to see if everything that's happening off the court is going to impact these players. Because there there was talk on ESPN about it kind of being galvanizing, and I I don't know if I think that that is either happening or probably good for them. I don't think you want the highs to get too high. I don't think you want the lows to get too low. I don't think you wanna walk in frustrated or with a chip on your shoulder. I think that that is not always useful, especially or with a chip on your shoulder. I think that that is not always useful, especially when there's something happening that has to do with your coach and and you have to focus on you. So I I don't know. LSU LSU is tricky. It's been a little bit disappointing from them so far on the court, and I think that everyone is just looking forward to seeing what exactly this this report brings because I'm sure there's some really important journalism in there. But kinda classic Kim in classic Kim Mulkey style, She deflected the possibility that she was culpable for this being a distraction while also perhaps making it a bigger one. Moving in to the sweet 16, the next time we chat, the next time we have our little chat here, we will be through the c sweet 16 and the elite 8. Like I said, a lot of chalk to talk about in this first segment, not a ton of upsets. I don't mind that overall. I don't think I think we would like to see some of these truly blockbuster matchups later in these
Of their best basketball right now too. So all of which to say, I I feel like there were some curveballs in in what we're seeing in the seating, but, also maybe just some natural extensions of the story lines that we sort of expect. Right? Pac 12 teams may be a little bit under seated at the top. You know, some some you say something like Stanford at the number 2 or UCLA at the number 2. I'm sure those teams would say, yeah. We're numb we play like number 1 seeds, and so you should be worried about us, lurking in the bottom of your bracket. LSU's seeding on their strength of schedule is not always indicative of how they actually play. They could possibly be one of the top four most talented teams in this, in this tournament, but you have to base it on body of work. Right? So you have these teams all all brewing on one side of the of the bracket. We're seeing teams like Arizona and Vanderbilt make it in on strength of conference. There's there's is that sort of ongoing respect for the Pac 12, for the SEC. ACC probably didn't get quite the benefit of the doubt in the same way. We're not seeing Miami in this tournament. ACC also did not get a number one seed. So just interesting to see how that that that that conference is so competitive, but I am curious kind of what the logic is there to say, okay. This is a very competitive conference, but we're not going to place, I think their highest seating was was was Notre Dame at that number 2. And then also, we've got some Cinderella stories, things to watch out for. The Ivy League did really well. It's only the second time in NCAA tournament history that 2 Ivy League teams are are going to the big dance. Princeton is in as the winner. Columbia gets an at large. They will be doing some of the play in games this week. Other teams to watch, Ole Miss is good. That's that's a team that was playing really good basketball in the SCC tournament. Some people are circling Fairfield versus Indiana. Indiana kinda struggling through. They might not have Mackenzie Holmes completely available. Fairfield being a really, really good mid major team. But regardless, it's it's a talented talented field. The thing I always struggle with, and maybe this is just me being
