Celebrate Dawn Staley, Caitlin, women’s hoops as S.C. reigns. Men’s final could not live up | Opinion

Caitlin Clark owned this entire women’s college basketball season. The national media swooned as the Iowa Hawkeyes star set all-time NCAA scoring records. She was dropping impossibly long three-point shots and lifting an entire sport.

It was all about Caitlin even as the team from Columbia, South Carolina, was tearing through the season ranked No. 1 and undefeated yet somehow overshadowed.

Clark owned the entire season right through the first quarter of Sunday’s national championship game.

Dawn Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks owned the rest and lifted the trophy.

The winning coach was gracious: “I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport,” Staley, 53, said in Cleveland as the confetti fell after her team’s 87-75 triumph. “She carried a heavy load. When she’s the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft she’s going to lift that league up as well. So Caitlin, you are one of the G.O.A.T.s of our game and we appreciate you.”

Sunday was set as the perfect stage to culminate the watershed season in which women’s college hoops made the leap to rival the men’s game for popularity. And it lived up, drawing a women’s-record 18.7 million viewers -- almost double last year’s LSU-Iowa final.

South Carolina was seeking to exact revenge after its only loss of last season came against Clark and Iowa in the NCAA Tournament semifinals. Clark, after setting a Division I record (men or women) with 3,951 career points, was after an elusive first national title.

The UConn-Purdue men’s title game Monday night could not live up. UConn rather routinely won a second straight crown, 75-60, to deny Purdue its first ever. The men could only hope to emulate the drama of the perfect women’s matchup.

Iowa led 10-0, fast. Clark would score 18 points in Sunday’s first quarter, the most ever in any one quarter of a woman’s final.

I was watching at home with my wife, both of us riveted. She was rooting for Clark and emitting “It’s all, Iowa!” sounds.

“South Carolina will win by 10,” I muttered.

I’m no Nostradamus. But I know what had made South Carolina a 6 1/2 point favorite going in — despite all the wishful money riding on Caitlin.

What coach Dawn Staley has built is awesome. South Carolina is the new dynasty in women’s hoops and will be for a good while or as long as Staley is there.

Iowa had the best player in the game.

South Carolina had the best team. That was obvious, and it wasn’t close.

Iowa has nowhere to turn when Clark is off or being defended smartly, like Sunday. Kate Martin is pretty good, but the Hawkeyes have few viable options if Clark is not being absolutely great. They are close to a one-woman team as there is.

And that came back to haunt as South Carolina flaunted its depth, not to mention its size advantage led by center Karmilla Cardoso.

The Gamecocks outrebounded Iowa 51-29 led by Cardoso’s 17 boards, leading to 30 second-chance points.

But bench play was the difference. Iowa’s bench provided 18 minutes and zero points. S.C.’s bench played 75 minutes and scored 37 points.

Stunningly unheard of — a major team in a game with such stakes scoring zero points off the bench.

Three Iowa players played all 40 minutes. Only two South Carolina players topped 30.

As the game wore on Iowa wore out, while Staley kept shuffling her deep deck and showing fresh aces..

Clark would score 30 points, but after that first quarter it was a mighty struggle. That was when Staley switched it up and had Raven Johnson start guarding Clark.

Quoth the Raven, Nevermore! (Sorry, Edgar Allan Poe, but it fits.)

Johnson would hold the two-time national Player of the Year to 3-for-11 shooting and force four turnovers from the second quarter on. Clark shot only 10-for-28 overall (5-for-13 on threes) in that arduous climb to 30.

Many times Clark would penetrate the paint but be unable to create a layup as Cardoso loomed large.

Clark is the presumptive No. 1 pick in next week’s WNBA Draft, and Cardoso assuredly will be top five.

Clark afterward showed great perspective: “Whether it’s the way the fans have supported me, the way I’ve been able to represent my state where I grew up, my family being at every single game — there’s not a regret in my mind of how things went,” she said. “I’ll be able to sleep every night even though I never won a national championship. I don’t sit and sulk about the things that never happened.”

Still, it may have hit closer to the heart and the hurt when she said: “The biggest thing is it’s really hard to win these things. I think I know that better than most people by now. To be so close twice really hurts.”

It wasn’t Clark failing but rather South Carolina’s excellence that inflicted that pain.

Staley just led her team to a perfect-season championship with five new starters, “the unlikeliest group to do it,” she said. Now she will have four back next year, with only Cardoso departing.

And because of Staley the Gamecocks are all but portal-proof.

Transfers are wreaking havoc with college basketball. On the men’s side as of Sunday 1,450 players had entered the portal, a 25 percent hike over last year. But in Columbia the door swings only one way. Nobody of a sound mind would want out of what Staley has created, where everybody plays a key role. Anybody would want in.

(As a parochial parenthetical, the Miami Hurricanes just hired coach Tricia Cullop from Toledo to replace retired Katie Meier. UM needs her knack for growing a fan base. The Canes need to vitally capitalize on the sport’s momentum created by Caitlin Clark and carried forth by South Carolina. Cullop also has to figure out a way to excellence, because nothing short will impede what Staley has going on.)

This was South Carolina’s sixth Final Four since 2015 and third national title. This season’s 38-0 record makes Staley’s teams 109-3 over the past three seasons.

Success doesn’t follow her; she brings it with her. Three Olympic gold medals for Team USA as a player and a fourth as a coach. Voted one of WNBA’s 15 all-time greatest players. And now arguably as good at the craft of coaching as anybody, woman or man, college or pro, any sport.

Let this be not a requiem for Clark but an appreciation.

Mostly, let it be a celebration of Dawn Staley.