The brightest stars and top storylines for the 2024-25 women’s college basketball season

Posted by Admin November 4, 2024 Basketball

Women’s college basketball has never been in a better place. Yes, there has always been great talent in the sport, but now the entire world sees it. Last year’s Iowa-South Carolina national championship game drew an average of 18.7 million viewers — with a peak viewership of 24 million. That shattered previous records set earlier in the NCAA tournament, which shattered previous records set the year before in the postseason.

The Caitlin Clark effect was very real, as the two-time National Player of the Year and her insanely deep threes attracted millions of new fans, many of whom stuck around to watch Dawn Staley’s dynasty as well as UConn’s attempt to return to the mountaintop of the sport. But Clark is off to the WNBA, and there are plenty of superstars ready to step into that vacated spotlight.

Oh, and Staley’s team is certainly ready to repeat as national champs, too, even though the way the Gamecocks win will look a bit different with the loss of Kamilla Cardoso. Plus, we’ve got the two schools in Los Angeles now favored to win the Big Ten conference, a changing of the guard at Stanford and so many more storylines to follow as the season gets underway in earnest.

Here are the top storylines for the 2024-25 women’s college basketball season:

Caitlin Clark is gone. Who’s got next?

Clark was a generational talent and a draw unlike anything we’ve seen in any sport in a long time. The NCAA’s all-time leading scorer led Iowa to two national championship game appearances, but, to me, the most memorable images from her college career will always been the lines of fans looped around arenas and parking lots waiting to get a chance to see her play. Or the photos of little girls (and boys) grinning as Clark signed autographs for them.

Caitlin was a first-name kind of household name. The stars of the college game this season are, too — or if they’re not, the will be soon. JuJu Watkins at USC, last year’s National Freshman of the Year and the ESPY winner for Best Breakthrough Athlete, is ready to take over the sport, bun and all. UConn guard Paige Bueckers has been the face of this sport in the past and plans to be again, as long as her Huskies can stay healthy. And we can also expect Notre Dame sophomore Hannah Hidalgo to take another step toward greatness as one of the game’s most exciting young players.

Between JuJu, Paige and Hannah, the National Player of the Year race could be one of the most competitive in years.

The Big East runs through UConn, Bueckers

Analyst Kim Adams joins Zora Stephenson and Meghan McKeown to examine the Big East, where they expect UConn and Paige Bueckers to continue their dominance.

Can South Carolina go back-to-back?

Of course the Gamecocks can, and they return so much talent that it’s understandably quite tempting to pick them to become the sport’s first repeat national champions since UConn did it in 2016. I’d never count a Dawn Staley-coached team out, but especially not this year. South Carolina returns four starters, with MiLaysia Fulwiley, Te-Hina Paopao and the rest of the talented, deep backcourt leading the way. The biggest question mark for South Carolina will be its inside presence.

Center Kamilla Cardoso led the Gamecocks last season in points, rebounds and blocks. She was an obvious difference-maker, as evidenced by the national title game against Iowa. Without her, how does Staley decide to attack and defend the paint (especially in early-season matchups against UCLA and Iowa State)? It’s unclear at the moment, with forward Ashlyn Watkins suspended since an August arrest. Freshman Joyce Edwards may be the answer, but she’ll have to learn on the fly.

South Carolina may be more dangerous in SEC

Carolyn Peck joins Zora Stephenson and Meghan McKeown to preview the SEC, where the South Carolina Gamecocks may be even more dangerous than the team that won a national championship last year.

Will the new-look Big Ten run through — *checks notes* — Los Angeles?

There’s a very good chance it does. USC was picked to finish first in the Big Ten in the league’s preseason poll, followed by UCLA. Now, it shouldn’t be surprising that former Pac-12 women’s basketball teams are top contenders in their new leagues, especially with how deep the Pac-12 was a year ago in its final season. But both USC and UCLA are uniquely positioned to take over the Big Ten in their first year. Both teams are loaded with talent and experience, and neither is afraid to say it is chasing a national championship.

The Trojans are led, of course, by JuJu Watkins. And coach Lindsay Gottlieb went out and added two former familiar foes in Kiki Iriafen (from Stanford) and Talia von Oelhoffen (from Oregon State) as well as the top-ranked freshman class, led by Kennedy Smith, to take this USC team to another level.

Meanwhile, the Bruins are led again by Kiki Rice and Lauren Betts, two of the best players in the country in their own right. Coach Cori Close went out and added pieces around them, too, with Texas A&M transfer Janiah Barker, Washington State transfer Charlisse Leger-Walker and Oregon State transfer Timea Gardiner. UCLA was frustrated with its Sweet 16 exit a season ago, which will continue to motivate and push this team forward now.

How else will realignment affect women’s hoops?

Well, it’s going to take some time to get used to it, but that’s the case in every sport this year. The strangest part of the new world order in college athletics when it comes to women’s basketball is the dissolution of the Pac-12 as we knew it. That league was the gold standard for women’s basketball, and it was home to some of the sport’s greatest coaches — like Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer, who has won more games than any other Division I college basketball coach. VanDerveer decided to retire after the school’s final Pac-12 season, which felt fitting for the end of an incredibly successful era. It’s now going to be weird to see Stanford traveling across the country to play Virginia and Syracuse in ACC play. It’s also going to be strange to see Arizona as a member of the Big 12 and Washington playing Rutgers in the Big Ten. As discussed, the two L.A. schools may dominate a conference that had previously been known for its midwestern roots.

And then, of course, Texas is joining the SEC. Can the Longhorns knock the Gamecocks off their top perch? The Longhorns return Rori Harmon (from injury) and Madison Booker (who is coming off a stupendous freshman campaign in which she won Big 12 Player of the Year honors), and that might very well be the best backcourt in the country. The transition to SEC play could be challenging (and will certainly be physical), but Texas is also coming into its new league in its best possible position.

Which new coaches will fare best in Year 1?

This is always tough to predict, and it’s even tougher in the transfer portal era. But I feel really good about Kentucky’s hire of Kenny Brooks, who took Virginia Tech to the Final Four in 2023. Star guard Georgia Amoore followed Brooks to Lexington, which will help set a strong foundation for Brooks in Year 1. I also think Jan Jensen’s first season will go relatively smoothly, with Hannah Stuelke back and Villanova transfer Lucy Olsen in the fold.

The two most interesting first-year coaches to monitor should be Tennessee’s Kim Caldwell and Stanford’s Kate Paye. Both take over iconic programs that expect excellence. Caldwell is an out-of-the-box hire for athletic director Danny White, who hopes that her up-tempo style of play translates to wins for the Lady Vols. Meanwhile, Paye is directly following a Hall of Famer — and leading a program into a new conference that plays most of its games 3,000 miles away from Palo Alto. That’s a tall task, to say the least.