Brown: Louisville's Jeff Walz agrees, Vegas betting lines would boost women's basketball

Women’s college basketball captured the attention of the sporting public last year in a way that it never had before thanks to a mix of charismatic personalities and highly skilled players.

The 2023 NCAA title game between LSU and Iowa punctuated that interest by drawing a record 9.9 million television viewers, obliterating the previous mark of 5.7 million in 2002 when UConn beat Oklahoma.

One of the ways the sport can grow the fastest is getting a boost from Las Vegas.

"Obviously our kids aren't gambling, we're not gambling as a staff, but I'm not stupid," Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz said. "This is good for our game."

The No. 16 Cardinals welcome Duke on Thursday in their ACC home opener. Some betting sites won’t have a line for it until it's live. Others like FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and ESPN’s fledgling foray into developing a sportsbook, ESPNBet, have a partial offering of games to bet that doesn't include a complete menu of top-25 teams.

Sportsbooks don’t thoroughly cover women’s basketball with odds in the same manner they do the men’s game. There are not point spreads and over/unders readily available to wager on every game on every night.

That matters if the goal is to attract as many interested viewers as possible.

As more and more states have legalized sports gambling — including Kentucky as of last September — there’s a window of opportunity here for women’s basketball.

Gone are the days when UConn dominated the sport so heavily it moved casual fans beyond being curious in a dynasty and landed them disinterested. Sure there are programs that could be called dynasties, like what Dawn Staley has built at South Carolina, but there is no longer one team dominating the entire field.

There’s much more parity.

The die-hard college basketball fans know this already. And they’re already watching. But they’re not how a game sets a record of nearly 10 million viewers. It’s the casual fans who have to be roped into watching.

“Some like it, some don't, but I think the more Vegas (puts) lines on our games, the better,” Walz said.

Louisville senior guard Merissah Russell said social media has helped promote the game, with individual players' accounts building serious followings. The Cavinder twins, Haley and Hanna, had national name, image and likeness (NIL) deals from major brands including Victoria’s Secret and Boost Mobile. They have 4.5 million followers on their combined TikTok account. And, oh, they helped Miami reach the program’s first Elite Eight last season.

“A lot of women's basketball players from way beyond our years have personalities,” Russell said. “People actually care now because we can hoop. We have the skill. People are tuned in now; you can actually watch these things at the click of your thumb.”

The talent is more widespread than ever thanks in part to a lot of players using personal trainers and invested in playing year-round.

Caitlin Clark probably would have played for UConn had she come up in the game 20 years ago. Instead, she took Iowa to the brink of winning the national championship last season and is the most popular player in all of college basketball — men included. She may even be the best.

Clark is the reason why the Hawkeyes packed 55,646 into their football stadium for an exhibition game against DePaul and set a women’s basketball attendance record nearly doubling the old mark of 29,619 of that 2002 national championship game. (She had a triple-double by the way.)

LSU’s Angel Reese, who was glad to play the nemesis to Clark with some trash talk during last year’s national title game, helped spark more publicity from national media debating the sportsmanship of female athletes.

That pseudo controversy revealed the double standard still involved in women’s basketball, but ultimately it kept people talking about women’s basketball. And that’s a conversation that Vegas oddsmakers should find worthy of continuing.

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Sports betting: Women's basketball safe bet for Las Vegas oddsmakers