Over the weekend, social media became saturated with photos and videos of packed stadiums and sellout crowds at the women's Final Four and championship game in Dallas, the latter of which set an attendance record with more than 350,000 fans. That shift became increasingly evident during this year's NCAA March Madness tournament. Although there are many more disparities between men and women collegiate basketball players, the tide seems to be changing. As a lover of the game, it's frustrating to see fewer camera angles and instant replays during women's basketball games in comparison to men's - no wonder people think it's a slower and less exciting game. Some might say men's sports have higher-quality coverage and commentary, larger production values, and more fans. Believe the hype.Fact: women's sports receive less recognition and pay than their men counterparts. This upcoming game between Duke and North Carolina is something we’ve never seen before and it’s something that we will never truly see again.
#Womens final four hype video series#
If you were going to write the series finale of a long-running show, it would be hard to come up with a scenario as neat as what will take place on 2 April: one final battle between the protagonists and antagonists with everything on the line.
So, that’s what’s at stake on Saturday: either Krzyzewski’s career will end at the hands of a North Carolina team that has already humiliated him in his final home game or he will defeat them and earn the opportunity to win one final title.
He’s never had the chance to lead Duke to a victory over their long-time nemesis on the game’s biggest stage. Love him or hate him, and chances are it’s the latter, it’s likely he will be remembered as the greatest college basketball coach of his generation.Īnd yet, there’s one more thing he has never done, if only because he has never had the opportunity to do so. He has 1,200 wins in Division 1 basketball, placing him well ahead of the competition. In his 42 seasons with Duke, he has won five national championships and will be playing in his record 13th Final Four on 2 April. In the modern era, no coach has ever been as closely identified with their program as Coach K has been with the Blue Devils and – given changes in the power structure that are currently underway – it feels likely that his retirement will mark the end of an era for college coaches. In any case, this week’s game has added spice given that the next time these teams meet it will be without Krzyzewski, arguably the greatest coach in college basketball history. It’s to the credit, perhaps, of the chaotic nature of the NCAA tournament: the single-elimination format has established it as the most unpredictable event on the US sports calendar. Given that Duke and UNC have been playing one another for over a century, it’s hard to understand how they have not met in the Big Dance before. A look at the current Duke roster led by top NBA prospect Paolo Banchero, who is multiracial, shows that the Blue Devils don’t resemble the stereotypical monochromatic teams of the increasingly distant past.īut back to the present. Thomas, however, goes on to emphasize that the reality never fully meshed with the image and that in recent years the program has given us a wide variety of Black stars such as Kyrie Irving, Jayson Tatum and Zion Williamson (he also describes Laettner as “one of the coolest cats on the Mavericks”). They reeked of entitlement and embodied everything so many people despised in a way that went beyond sports.” Or, as Michigan Wolverines legend Jalen Rose once put it in a documentary: “I felt like only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms.” Writing for the Guardian, former NBA player Etan Thomas, who was briefly on the same Dallas Mavericks team as Laettner, summarized it as follows: “The understanding was that everything was given to Duke players, especially Christian Laettner: that he could get away with anything and everything on the floor. It also doesn’t help that in the basketball world, Duke came to represent a certain type of white privilege.
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