If you follow American sports, you’ve probably heard of March Madness, a college basketball tournament consisting of 68 teams and four rounds. In each matchup, the winning team gets to carry on to the next round.
Despite sharing a name and branding, there are some important differences between the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments. For instance, the women’s tournament wasn’t allowed to use the March Madness branding until 2022, nearly 40 years after the tournament started. The professional leagues for men and women also operate slightly differently.
The WNBA has a minimum draft age of 22 for domestic players, while the NBA’s minimum age is 19, leading many of the women to stay in college longer. Many of the best men’s players leave college after only a year or two in order to enter the draft, while the women don’t have that option unless they’re going overseas. Since so many of the women’s players stay in college longer, it gives people more opportunities to watch them play, and leads to more players staying with their teams for a large chunk of college. The addition of the transfer portal is already impacting that, with multiple stars entering the portal, but those players are still in the college game, unlike many of the men.
The WNBA also pays ridiculously less than the NBA. WNBA first round rookies typically make anywhere from $70,000 to $80,000 depending on where they were picked in the draft, while NBA rookies who were picked in the first round make anywhere from $2 million to $10.5 million.
Out of the 64 teams in the first round of men’s March Madness, two of them are from Wisconsin: Marquette and Wisconsin-Madison. As a Wisconsin kid, I always have to support Wisconsin teams, but sadly Marquette and Madison didn’t make it far in this year’s tournament. Marquette lost to lower-seeded New Mexico in the first round, and Madison flamed out in the second round against lower-seeded BYU.
One fantastic performance from the first few rounds of the men’s tournament was that of Iowa State’s Milan Momcilovic in the Cyclones’s first round game against Lipscomb. Momcilovic, a Wisconsin native, ended the game with 20 points on 8–14 shooting, including going 4–8 from three in front of his home crowd at Fiserv Forum.
Another great performance was that of Walter Clayton Jr., who plays for the championship-winning Florida Gators. His performance throughout the tournament earned him the title of “Most Outstanding Player.” Despite having an inefficient scoring game in the finals, Clayton Jr.’s performance is one of the major reasons that Florida State pulled off a win. All of his eleven points came in the last eight minutes of the game, and, more importantly, his defensive stop on the final possession forced Houston into giving up the ball in order to avoid a travel, leading to a win for the Gators.
The men’s final game of the March Madness tournament was an exciting one, with Florida State and Houston keeping the score close throughout the game. Florida was down six with 12 minutes left, but they had the game tied up with less than a minute left. Houston didn’t score in the last two minutes of the game, which certainly helped the Gators win the championship with a final score of 65 to 63.
The women’s tournament has the same setup as the men, and included some exciting games like Alabama and Maryland’s double overtime game, which ended with Maryland winning 111 to 108.
Not everything that happened in the tournament was that fun to watch, however. JuJu Watkins, who is one of the stars of college basketball, tore her ACL during USC’s second round matchup against Mississippi State. Watkin’s first round performance was a strong one, however, and she ended up with 22 points, three steals, and eight rebounds. Her ACL injury will likely keep her out most, if not all, of next season, but hopefully she makes it back better than ever when she is able to return.
One of the standout players from the tournament is Paige Bueckers, predicted number-one pick in this year’s WNBA draft. Bueckers has been a star her entire college career, but this year she outdid herself. Her best performance in a string of fantastic games was her 40-point game against South Dakota State in the second round, where she broke her previous career high by six points. Bueckers also walked away with three steals and two blocks, in addition to getting her ticket punched for the Sweet Sixteen.
UCLA’s Lauren Betts also had a fantastic tournament, averaging 23.6 points and 8.4 rebounds throughout the five games UCLA played before being knocked out in the Final Four. In her game against Ole Miss, Betts scored 31 points extremely efficiently, making 15 out of her 16 shots in addition to three blocks.
In the women’s final, South Carolina, coached by Dawn Staley, went up against soon-to-be 12-time champions UConn, in a rematch of the 2022 title game. South Carolina came away with the title in 2022, but this time UConn got their revenge. In a surprising blowout, UConn beat South Carolina 82 to 59, behind a combined 65 points from UConn’s Big Three of Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, and Sarah Strong.
While the women’s final wasn’t as close as the men’s, that isn’t because of a lack of talent. It simply speaks to how incredible of a team UConn is. They won every game they played in the tournament by double digits, while consistently having high scoring games.