The Big Ten might be the top conference to watch this upcoming women’s college basketball season as it is deeper than ever. Things will be much different without Caitlin Clark at Iowa, and the addition of USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington is already shaking things up in the 18-team league.
“People have asked me often, what does that mean for the Big Ten?” Iowa coach Jan Jensen said of the conference’s additions. “I said, well, it means it gets a whole lot tougher to win the Big Ten championship, but also makes it a whole lot more fun. I think all of us in the Big Ten, what we love about it is, you know, there’s not a cupcake in the Big Ten.”
Although this will be Jensen’s first season at the helm of the program, she knows the conference quite well as she has been with Iowa since 2000. The Hawkeyes were the team to beat in the Big Ten last season, and now they have to get back to the drawing board without their biggest offensive weapon. Jensen has some strong pieces that could help her team, but the Hawkeyes will have to work hard to prove themselves with this different look.
In a normal year, Ohio State, Indiana and Maryland could have been considered the favorites while Iowa rebuilds, but conference realignment happened and this will be far from an ordinary season. USC and UCLA were hot in the Pac-12 conference and they are bringing that star power to the Big Ten.
“Iron sharpens iron. They’re just going to make us all so much better,” Indiana coach Teri Moren said. “I think the goal for our league is somebody needs to win a national championship. It’s been too long since a team in the Big has been able to do that. I’m hoping that this might be the year that the Big finally wins a national championship.”
Another interesting aspect of this season will be the schedule and travel now that the conference has teams on the West Coast. Here is a closer look at some of the major storylines for the 2024-25 season:
Top five teams in the coaches and media preseason polls
USC and UCLA are the top two teams in the preseason poll, and those high expectations are hardly a surprise. UCLA is fresh off its second consecutive Sweet 16. The Bruins lost their veteran leader Charisma Osborne to the WNBA, but they return all their other starters, including Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice — who made both the media and coaches’ All-Big Ten Team. Cori Close also added some solid transfers in Texas A&M’s Janiah Barker, Washington State’s Charlisse Leger-Walker and Oregon State’s Timea Gardiner.
Meanwhile, no other team in the country has picked up as much momentum as USC. Lindsay Gottlieb guided the Trojans to their first Elite Eight since 1994, and the key to that success was an outstanding freshman season for JuJu Watkins. Despite losing three starters, the Trojans were already looking like a dangerous team for the upcoming season because of the return of Watkins and Rayah Marshall.
However, they got stronger with the addition of Stanford’s Kiki Iriafen and Oregon State’s Talia von Oelhoffen, along with the top freshman class in the nation. Watkins and Iriafen made the media and coaches’ All-Big Ten Team.
Watkins was the preseason Player of the Year, and she was the unanimous selection in the coaches poll. This was very much expected as the USC guard set a new NCAA freshman scoring record with a total of 801 points, and that included an impressive 51-point performance against Stanford. She was the nation’s second top scorer last season, only behind Caitlin Clark, who is now one of the best guards in the WNBA.
“She’s unreal to be around every single day,” Gottlieb said of Watkins. “It starts with her effort and care factor. I’ve told this story before. Her first workout freshman year was a conditioning workout. She dove across the line to make her time. We’re, like, ‘OK, we think we’ve got something… She’s always trying to improve, and I think Big Ten fan bases and opponents will be excited because she just brings a level of intensity that makes the game better.”
The Hawkeyes have played in back-to-back national championship games, but they did not crack the Big Ten preseason top five. They not only lost Clark, the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer, but also other top contributors in Kate Martin, Gabbie Marshall and Molly Davis. Meanwhile, longtime head coach Lisa Bluder announced her retirement this summer and Jensen, the associate head coach, took over.
They already had a lot of work to do, and the Hawkeyes got hit with a big setback when Sydney Affolter had to get knee surgery this offseason. Affolter became a key player for Iowa when she stepped in for starting Davis after Davis suffered a knee injury in the final game of the regular season. Jensen did say Affolter could be back early November, so that’s a positive for Iowa.
In April, Jensen didn’t sound too worried and shared how Iowa could still be a strong team next season. She is not the only one who sees the potential as the Hawkeyes got returner Hannah Stuelke and Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen representing them in both the media and coaches’ All-Big Ten Team. The only other programs with two players making the cut were USC and UCLA. Olsen, averaged 23.3 points per game last season, which was third best in the nation behind Clark and Watkins.
For this upcoming season, everyone will face 16 teams once, and one other twice. Every team will get nine games at home and nine away. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said the schedule was set up this way instead of by regions to better integrate the new members and see what rivalries develop.
“Look, you want to connect the league, right? Playing everybody is really important,” he said. “I think a big thing if you had gone to divisions or do things that’s more regional-based, you kind of lose the connectivity of everybody playing everybody.”
The coaches seemed to like this decision because it felt balanced.
“I think it’s the only way you could do it. I think this first year I think it’s definitely the best road to take,” Close said. “I think there’s going to be some of it where we’re just going to have to feel it out this first year, but I love that it’s going to be — everybody is going to be pretty much balanced.”
Moren also agreed that it was “the best way to do it right now,” while Oregon’s Kelly Graves said playing a lot of different teams with different styles would be “great” and also “challenging as a coach.” However, he also said he would be missing one of the biggest benefits of playing a team twice.
“One of the things that’s interesting as a coach is the ability to make adjustments,” he said. “When you play a team twice, you know, you can — that’s kind of fun. It’s a fun challenge, and we just don’t get that opportunity.”
Last season, Nebraska put the conference on notice in February with an 82-79 comeback victory against the Hawkeyes, who were ranked No. 2 in the nation at the time. The team entered the Big Ten Tournament as the No. 5 seed and made it all the way to the title game, where they gave Iowa another tough battle before losing in overtime. They followed that performance by winning their first NCAA Tournament game in 10 years with a 61-59 result against Texas A&M.
Yes, this is a new season, and the Huskers will no longer count with All-Big Ten guard Jaz Shelley, but they got to keep four of their top-five leading scorers. This includes Alexis Markowski, who averaged 15.7 points and 10.5 rebounds per game and was named to the preseason All-Big Ten Team this year.
“I think our program took some steps forward convincing ourselves that when we are playing our best we can compete and beat anybody in the country,” Williams said. “Now we are really striving for consistency as we move into this year and being able to play at that level on a consistent basis. That’s what is going to take. You can’t lallygag in this league.”
The Huskers are adding five-star recruit Britt Prince, but another strong boost comes from within. They can look forward to the return of Allison Weidner, who hasn’t played much in two years because of she tore her ACL in her left knee and then her right knee. Before the injury woes, she averaged 10.2 points on 54.1% shooting and 6.2 rebounds in 13 games as a sophomore.
Head coach Amy Williams said she increased her basketball IQ while recovering because she spent a lot of time with the coaching staff and watched a lot of film. She added that Weidener has been the best player during several of the recent practices.
