Sometimes, it pays to procrastinate.

While writing this column on Monday morning, news of the Angel Reese trade to the Atlanta Dream broke which delayed the release of the newsletter. Luckily it means we can link some content already in the pipeline. If you want to see me completely gobsmacked on video for ten minutes, you can check it out here:

Otherwise, onto the column we go!

What exactly does parity look like to people? Is it an NCAA Tournament in which mid-major programs have a path to a Final Four? Is it multiple lower seeds in a Sweet Sixteen or something else entirely? I ask because much has been made of how chalky this March/April has felt, with all four top seeds coming out of their regions relatively unscathed while there weren’t many true Cinderella stories outside Virginia’s improbable Elite Eight run (which feels a bit cheapened because of the firing of head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton amidst allegations of fostering a toxic work environment).

And yes, while it feels like the women’s tournament is more prone to blowout games than the men’s tournament is, there is a reality that’s undeniable: we haven’t had a back-to-back champion in ten years. Let’s run the numbers…

1982-1990: One repeat champion (USC 1983-84)

1990-1999: One repeat champion (Tennessee 1996-1998)

2000-2009: Three repeat champions (UConn 2002-2004, Tennessee 2007-2008, UConn 2009-2010)

2010-2019: One repeat champion (UConn 2013-2016)

2020-Present: No repeat champion

Is there a college football-esque fatigue about who is in the Final Four every year? You bet there is. What obscures the appearance of championship parity is the fact that we’re seeing a lot of the same teams in the semifinals every year. This April, for instance, was the second straight year of UCLA, Texas, South Carolina and UConn vying for a title. But the critique of how that affects the broader discussion of the game is a media issue, not one with the actual game.

If there is something of a pre-determined outcome as it pertains to the Final Four, then national media needs to recalibrate their expectations on the fly. But the problem inherent with an increasingly algorithm-cooked and enshittified media landscape is that large outlets with reach don’t want to build organic narratives from scratch anymore when you can let the analytics dictate your coverage. Instead of being tastemakers, national women’s basketball discourse is content to be governed and guided by casuals. While that can fly in the WNBA, the college game requires a different approach. I just hope we can keep that in mind as we head into next year.

This UCLA team was always staring us in the face.

Sure, they got run off the floor by UConn in the 2025 Final Four but I think it’s fair to now say that we, as national media, completely overblew its importance. The Bruins still went 34-3 last season, winning the Big Ten tournament and snapping South Carolina’s 43 game win streak in non-conference play.

And that team got better on paper.

In a lot of ways, the doubt around UCLA — a doubt, mind you, that still persists even as they begin their post-title win media tour — mirrors that of Indiana football. While Bruins women’s basketball isn’t synonymous with mediocrity within their sport the way IU was, you’d be wrong to assume the program’s pedigree is as elite as their male counterparts in Westwood. Outside of the 1978 AIAW National Championship run powered by Ann Meyers-Drysdale, Denise Curry and a host of other legendary figures, there really hasn’t been a ton of juice at UCLA.

Before Cori Close arrived in 2012, the Bruins had been to just 11 NCAA Tournaments in 30 years, finished in the AP Top 25 seven times and only advanced as far as the Elite Eight once (1999).

In the 14 subsequent years under Close, the Bruins have danced ten times, been to five Sweet Sixteen’s, one Elite Eight, two Final Fours and one national title. She is, quite literally, the best coach in the history of the program.

The problem is that it takes years and years of sustained success for people to truly be believers these days. Just ask Dawn Staley, who has been to six straight Final Fours and yet her Gamecock team is still left off ESPN’s NCAA Tournament promo graphics. You can chalk it up to laziness, enshittifcation of the sports media industrial complex or something else, but there was a boredom to covering UCLA this season that felt eerily reminiscent of how we wrote off South Carolina’s 2024 team (A mistake I personally made as a media member and will never make again) until we looked up and they were 38-0 national champions.

In that way, UCLA feels similar to Curt Cignetti’s national champion Hoosier football team because the proof was staring us in the face all year. Just look at who they beat this year. Oklahoma, North Carolina and Minnesota all went to the Sweet Sixteen. Duke and Michigan made the Elite Eight and Texas as well as South Carolina were in the Final Four.

Put another way, UCLA defeated nearly half of the Sweet Sixteen field this year by an average margin of 17 points.

They’ve been this dominant all year long and, outside of one loss to Texas in the Players Era Festival, are in the rarified air of being one of the most dominant teams of the last half decade.

Geno Auriemma showed his whole ass on Friday night. Let’s start right there.

I don’t care that Dawn Staley made him wait for a postgame handshake. I don’t care about Geno’s opinions about gamesmanship or working officials and how frustrating that is to coach against.

Simply put, the man who believes himself to be on top of the women’s basketball pyramid owes the game more than crashing out over something so miniscule. You’re the elder statesman. Act like it.

Beyond that, there was something sad about watching Staley in that moment, who appeared to be genuinely hurt and caught off guard by how Auriemma came at her in the postgame handshake line. There’s no doubt that both of them see the other as rivals to be beaten, but Staley isn’t just some random coach disrespecting a GOAT. They’re both Philly area kids and, although divergent in background, have their own stories of making their own destiny amid an upbringing that didn’t make it easy. These two have worked together at USA Basketball, competed with one another for years and have pushed the game forward in their own way.

It cannot be easy to see, in real time, how someone actually thinks about you.

The problem with Friday’s outburst is it’s the latest in a long line of behaviors Auriemma has exhibited towards women who he perceives as threats to his throne and greatness. While many see Pat and Geno as historical contemporaries, it actually belies the real history of their relationship: Tennessee had won three national championships before UConn ever touched their first Final Four. In many ways, Geno was the Dawn Staley in Summitt’s story.

But there was a sort of love and reverence that was shown to the Lady Vols head coach that Auriemma always has appeared to resent. There’s something about Pat’s near mythical status that he’s had an issue with and always been open about discussing. Whenever he’s ever been asked about whether or not his dominance from 2000 to 2015 was bad for the growth of the game, the UConn head coach hasn’t flinched. They’re his titles. They grew the sport in their own way. Check the numbers and talk to the rings.

It’s a very ‘ends justify the means’ approach and a zero sum game that we regularly associate with hyperfocused greats. The problem is that women’s basketball, and women’s sports by extension, operates under a different set of parameters. Its existence is political and advocacy driven, rooted in a codified federal regulation that breathed life into the sport in 1972. While some coaches, Auriemma among them, appear to bristle at that importance and instead seem to see the sport for what it is, it’s impossible to divorce the resonance of women leading the charge on behalf of other women.

Which is how we get to Aubrey Graham.

The Canadian hip hop superstar similarly wasn’t of the culture he came to inhabit. When he burst on the scene in the early 2010’s, his ascent was filled with bravado, a willingness to shoot at the greats and, most importantly, hit after hit after hit. Drake went at Jay-Z first, firing subliminals right as Watch The Throne dropped and started an on-and-off cold war that existed for almost a half decade. But by going one of the Kingmakers of the genre, the up-and-coming Canadian rapper was asserting that not only did he belong in the space, he could own it.

Other contenders came for him during this period. He dispatched Meek Mill with ease and then ran up on a true culture mover in Pusha T. Even though the latter artist wasn’t globally recognized in the way Drake is, those in the hip hop space respected Pusha and how he came up. In the midst of his greatest run of success, Drake was hobbled by someone who truly had his number. And while that slowed him down, the march continued on. Until a fateful summer in which the man that would be GOAT started to feel his dominance wasn’t getting the true respect it deserved.

In comes Kendrick Lamar, someone with not just the goods on wax to stand with Drake toe-to-toe but the culture completely behind him as well. Their longstanding cold war finally became a hot one, with Lamar taking full advantage of his opponents insecurities and seemingly precarious place among his peers to explain a simple truism: You are in the culture, but you are not of the culture.

Watching Geno blow up in a fourth quarter sideline interview, then again in the handshake line, then once more in the press conference where he was caught in not one lie but two, felt like the flailing of a King who forgot that there are indeed those that might not miss if they come for him. He’s come for greats and stood on their level (Pat Summitt), he’s had similar rivals that he’s dispatched (Tara Vanderveer) while others (Muffet McGraw) may not have his longevity in success but damn sure had his number when it counted.

Then comes Dawn Staley, a woman borne of this culture, who carries different resonance among her co-hort, and shows she can win the way Geno does (with overwhelming talent AND by coaching teams into overachieving). There’s always a strange sense of insecurity that’s guided Auriemma when it comes to the women that rival him and, in the worst way humanly possible, he let that get to him on a national stage.

Will Geno go out like Aubrey Graham? I highly doubt it.

But what doomed Drake in the cultural conversation was an inability to rein in his hubris. If Auriemma doesn’t have people in his corner giving it to him straight, he runs the risk of tampering with his legacy by trying to be a mob boss rather than a standard bearer.

Imagine my surprise, as I sit in Chattanooga writing a Monday column, to see a text that says “ANGEL!?!”

I get it. Easter Monday. He is risen, you know?

Nope.

It’s Angel Reese, being traded from the Chicago Sky to the Atlanta Dream for a pair of first round draft picks in 2027 and 2028.

Welcome to the WNBA offseason speedrun, everybody!

So much of the complexion of this protracted free agency period, draft and player acquisition process looks different now. The Dream have the exact type of piece they were missing to pair with Naz Hilmon and a bevy of backcourt players in a Karl Smesko system that will accentuate Reese’s best traits. Chicago is, more or less, committing to a long term rebuild and clearly signaling that they value the triad of General Manager Jeff Pagliocca, Chief Operating Officer Nadia Rawlinson and Majority Owner Michael Alter.

As we reported months ago exclusively on No Cap Space, the crisis of confidence in the Sky’s leadership group went far beyond Reese and their camp but it’s a unit that is committed to their way of doing things and a belief that their championship in 2021 validates their worldview.

I have no idea who is going to come out on top in that divorce but if I were a betting man I’d say Atlanta. It’s truly the first seismic trade we’ve had in the WNBA since Tina Charles was traded away from the Connecticut Sun in the mid 2010’s. And for a player that is on the upward trajectory of their career, on a sub-market value rookie scale contract AND bringing the audience she does? I just don’t understand if you’re Chicago how you feel this is good for you in the long term.

If nothing else, Dream GM Dan Padover deserves a mountain of credit as does Atlanta’s entire ownership group who are once again proving (along with Las Vegas owner Mark Davis) that independent owners are not the sole issue inhibiting the WNBA’s growth as a league. What a win for Larry Gottesdiener, Suzanne Abair, Renee Montgomery and the rest of that franchise. God damn.

There’s no two ways about it: what’s happening at the University of Tennessee is an abject disaster. The final holdout on the Lady Vols roster, Jaida Civil, entered the transfer portal late this morning and now the to-the-studs rebuild of the UT women’s basketball program is more or less complete.

We all knew when Athletic Director Danny White hired Kim Caldwell that there was a desire to get out from under the long shadow of Pat Summitt. After a few LVFL’s fell by the wayside and were unable to meet the lofty expectations of the fanbase, White went outside the family and hired a young, hungry coach with a unique system. In a column chock full of college football references, it reminded me a lot of when Rich Rodriguez left West Virginia to coach at Michigan.

The intent is there but the end result may be a complete and utter failure.

I guess, in the next year, we’ll truly find out.

Assistant coaches Roman Tubner and Gabe Lazo are gone. Some reporting out of Knoxville clumsily painted Tubner as an agitator in the locker room, which was roundly criticized and dispelled by nearly every player on the roster. The same type of defense didn’t occur for Lazo, who allegedly didn’t see eye-to-eye with Caldwell with regard to her system and substitution patterns.

Elite recruit Oliviyah Edwards asked to be released from her National Letter of Intent and now Tennessee is committed to a coach that very well could bottom out worse than this season’s disastrous 16-14 campaign that ended in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

If you wanted to get away from the Summitt era, be careful what you wish for.

The jury is still out on whether or not Caldwell can right the ship, if her system can truly work at this level and if just being in the second weekend of March is enough for Tennessee fans. I’m gonna guess it isn’t, but the question is if there is even enough left on the bone for the job to be appealing to the next coach that comes after Caldwell.

Sometimes you have to burn the past. Many a great program have had to face that. But doing that is a risky proposition. And if Tennessee doesn’t figure out by next year if Caldwell is the coach moving forward, you have to cut bait fast to salvage a declining national reputation in a very different college basketball world.

Tyler, Greer and Chauny’s recap from Phoenix…

UCLA postgame sound…

South Carolina postgame sound…

Andrew’s live postgame from The Panic Room…