DALLAS — The women's basketball NCAA Tournament was chalk full of shocking upsets, drama, elite individual player performances, and colorful personalities - so it was no surprise to see the national championship give us a little bit of everything.
Kim Mulkey's LSU Tigers surprised everyone by defeating Iowa, 102-85, giving Mulkey her fourth championship and making her the first coach to win championships with two different teams.
LSU did it despite an outstanding performance from perhaps the most exciting basketball player on the planet right now, Caitlin Clark, who had 30 points and a championship record eight three pointers made. She finished the tourney as the all-time record holder in points, assists, and three pointers made - but her team fell short thanks to a balanced effort from the Tigers, as described by Locked on Women's Basketball host Isabel Rodrigues.
"The thing that stuck out to me is that, by halftime, [LSU forward] Angel Reese had taken two shots and the team as a whole had scored 59 points," Rodrigues told Peter Bukowski of Locked on Sports Today. "It was really those role players that came out of the woodwork and really made a difference."
The star for LSU was Jasmine Carson, who came off the bench to drop 21 points in the first half - helping the Tigers build an insurmountable 17 point halftime lead.
Iowa didn't go away, with a 15-2 run in the third quarter, but foul trouble for Clark (punctuated by a questionable technical foul call) put the Hawkeyes in a tough position and they were unable to complete what would have been the biggest comeback in NCAA Tournament history.
Instead LSU wins their first ever championship after multiple Final 4 appearances, and the 102 points dropped are the most ever in a title game.
The personality clash between Clark and Reese helped lead to record TV numbers for the championship game, with ESPN reporting 9.9 million viewers for Sunday's game - a 103% increase from last year.
Women's basketball has been on a steady rise, and this year's excitement should help the sport continue to grow in the coming years.