Man, what a Sunday that was.

Usually, the way this column is written is…I take some notes on little tidbits I find interesting throughout the week then sit down, gather my thoughts and get to writing.

And while there were plenty of interesting storylines this week in NCAA women’s basketball — Upset wins from Oregon, Columbia and Ole Miss on Friday alone — Sunday took the cake. As we’ll lay out in the second point of this week’s Five Out, it was really the day the sport needed to re-establish its juice as a product.

But there were a ton of things to talk about, big and small, throughout the day. So let’s get going. If you want to see our YouTube live recaps, from Tyler’s takes on UConn - Tennessee to our team coverage recap of Sunday’s action, you can find it on YouTube by clicking the button below!

UCLA is battling perception in two key places and, at this point in the year, it’s the only way I can properly explain why the No. 2 team in the country feels underrated and underreported.

The Bruins ran away from Iowa, powered by 22 points on 9/13 shooting from Angela Dugalic, who is excelling in her sixth woman role this year. All but one starter finished in double figures while Sienna Betts, the fabulous freshman making her own name in the UCLA frontcourt, is quietly become a devastating change-of-pace rotational piece.

Think about that.

A consensus top three player from last year’s high school recruiting class is the seventh player in this rotation and does enough with her time on the floor that you can see the future of the program being built in real time. Isn’t that the same flavor of “holy crap, they’re loaded” that we typically reserve for teams like UConn or South Carolina?

The notable difference here is that those two programs and coaches have pelts on the wall in the form of multiple national championships. So, right there is national-media-doubter-talking-point number one. The Bruins made it to the Final Four for the first time under Cori Close last year and were promptly run out of the gym by a UConn team that, in fairness to UCLA, obliterated everyone in the way of that title. I can see how, if you’re in charge of trying to position content for fanbases that can trend more casually (sup, ESPN), you may find it tough to market a possible UCLA vs. UConn title fight when the frame of reference is last years’ blowout and much of the same cast. What will be different this year? I get that.

But UCLA is indeed a much different and deeper team now. Charlisse Leger-Walker and Gianna Kneepkens make a huge difference in the backcourt while I don’t think people grasp how much of a force multiplier the younger Betts sister is. Lauren, Sienna’s older sister and the frontcourt centerpiece of this roster, also seems to have proven some people wrong this conference season. And while there’s a concern about guard athleticism, I think a lot of fans underrate Gabriela Jaquez and her ability to play that role.

So while there is a perception of ‘Can you get over the mountaintop?’, I’m not sure it fully explains the other reason why UCLA feels underdiscussed despite their dominance. Unfortunately (and fortunately) for the Bruins, I feel it may be a bigger macro issue out of their control and one that may have been solved this week.

All year long, our crew at NCS has wondered why it feels like this NCAA women’s basketball season hasn’t caught fire with national media the same way it has in prior years. The easiest answer is ‘Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers aren’t playing and JuJu Watkins is out for the year’. But there’s still a ton of individually bankable stars (see: Chavez, Aaliyah) and plenty of exciting stories to dig into.

Did we all just see UConn dominate the field last year and immediately fall back into the Breanna-Stewart-led-Huskies coverage mindset of 2012-16 that we should just wrap the year before it even starts? I don’t want to pour cold water on the number one team in the country that has crushed 90% of the teams in their path, including a top 15 Tennessee team on Sunday, but I feel I must for the sake of the sport. Someone’s gotta fall on the sword, you know?

Realistically speaking, UConn has seen one team that is a true Elite Eight contender in Michigan. That game was nearly an upset win for the Wolverines. The other teams — Louisville, Iowa and the Lady Vols — have Elite Eight ceilings but are not a team that I expect to be there the way I expect Michigan to be. So maybe, just maybe, we crowned UConn too early to the detriment of the sport? Especially with Texas getting Aaliyah Crump back, UCLA smoking their high-caliber opponents too and South Carolina/LSU/Michigan lurking out there in the mists of Avalon. While lacking some of the individual star power of past seasons, I’d argue there’s as many teams that could win a title as there’s been in the last couple of years.

Whatever the issues the sport was having, be it fatigue over the WNBA’s labor fight or the lack of a singular star to rally around, it seems like this week was about reminding people that women’s hoops still categorically has the juice.

I mean, did you see how many people converged on Philadelphia to see Unrivaled?

Can’t fake that funk, folks. The motion is not sold separately.

Couple that moment with wall-to-wall women’s basketball coverage, College Gameday in Austin and the first Sunday since August without NFL football and you get the release of tension. For all the tepid concerns about whether or not the sport was undergoing something of a plateau following the 2023-25 growth explosion, it sure feels as though the trend line is still going up even if it isn’t moving as steeply.

Texas Tech is quietly having the kind of season Nebraska football fans have been chasing since they fired Frank Solich and brought in Bill Callahan in the early 2000’s. For those not quite up on the lore of the Lady Raiders, allow your friendly Ball-Knowers at NCS to take you down memory lane real quick.

Marsha Sharp, a former member of the monumentally historic Wayland Baptist Flying Queens program, took over as the head coach of TTU in 1981-82 right as the governance of the sport was transitioning to the NCAA from the AIAW (the original governing body of women’s college athletics post Title IX). From 1989 to 2005, Sharp took the Lady Raiders to the NCAA Tournament every single year. In 1993, Tech went on what can best be described as the Caitlin Clark-before-Caitlin Clark-but-better run. Sheryl Swoopes essentially singlehandedly pulled TTU through the bracket and dropped 47 in the NCAA title game (a record that still stands) against Ohio State, winning the program’s only national title.

Through the 90’s and early 2000’s, the Lady Raiders were one of the most renowned programs in the state and the Big 12 writ large. But Sharp retired in 2006 and Kristy Curry was brought in as her successor, spending seven years in Lubbock before taking the Alabama job. Since Curry left in 2013, Texas Tech hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament.

That is surely changing this year.

Which brings me to Krista Gerlich, a coach that I had on the hot seat heading into this year and expected to see fired after she didn’t land hometown superstar Aaliyah Chavez. Tech instead retained a big chunk of their players and brought in Ole Miss guard Snudda Collins, who probably wasn’t in your top four of Rebs players in the four years she was there but is now indispensable in Lubbock. On paper and when compared to the supposed class of the conference, the roster looked, quite frankly, unremarkable going into the year. And that, dearest gentle reader, is why we play the damn games.

Tech is 20-3, 8-3 in Big 12 play and possesses tiebreaker wins over TCU, West Virginia and (as of this writing) Baylor. Those happen to be the other Big 12 contenders who now all sit within one game of each other in the standings. The door, especially with Baylor’s loss to West Virginia on Sunday, is wide open for the Lady Raiders to win the Big 12 for the first time in over two decades. With Collins, Bailey Maupin and Jaylynn Bristowe leading the way, Tech plays suffocating defense and, most importantly, is able to close tight games in tough road environments.

There’s still some work to do but the path is there for a conference regular season title. If the Lady Raiders can do it, I can’t think of any coach who has had a better turnaround than Gerlich with a roster that isn’t even portaled to the brim with high level outside talent. It’s just a good, old fashioned build and while I’m sure there was a good amount of NIL and revenue share money spent on retention, this is a triumph of scheme and development more than anything else. Put Gerlich in the mix folks and feel good about yourself when you’re proven right.

Yes, UConn and UCLA positively bullied their Sunday opponents but over on FS1, we got a Game of the Year contender.

In terms of rivalries, Michigan and Michigan State is one of the more grounded ones in college sports. While some programs find their mutual enmity by way of old traditions or sustained excellence against one another, there’s few athletic departments that try to kill the other and remain rivals. Back in the 1950’s, the Big Ten needed an additional member after the University of Chicago dropped out of the conference. Notre Dame was given an offer but declined, instead recommending Michigan State College. Initially, there was some hesitance because of their lack of status as a university. But ask any Michigan State fan steeped in the lore and they’ll tell you it was MSC and not MSU because of UM alumni in the state house trying to block the upgrade.

While a big chunk of the conference supported their entrance to the Big Ten, guess who didn’t. 70 years of beef and banter later, here we are. It may have taken awhile for women’s basketball to really get rolling but if there was ever a shot in the arm needed for each respective fanbase, look no further than MSU play-by-play commentator Dalton Shetler’s recounting of the moment a rivalry took off.

Spartan guard Ines Sotelo heaved a half court buzzer beater for a chance to win the game and missed, but not before hitting the backboard, dropping almost halfway into the basket before rolling around the hoop and out, taking the souls of 11,635 MSU fans in the Breslin Center along with it. There have been recent moments that have served as kindling for this rivalry. In 2022, Michigan State upset then No. 4 Michigan, effectively spoiling their chance to claim a Big Ten regular season title. Last year, both programs met in January as top 25 programs and, again the Wolverines took a loss but not before repaying the favor in East Lansing a month later.

If the last few years was the newspaper you throw on a fire to get it going, consider Sunday’s 94-91 Michigan win in the Breslin Center — when both teams are ranked no lower than 13th nationally — your idiot cousin with the hair spray bottle, a lighter and a lot of bad ideas. These are the games that make the kind of rivalries we discussed wanting on Ball Up Top last week. Players come and go, but programs and (sometimes) coach are what remains. That’s the lifeblood of women’s college basketball and, if we get more games like this one and a livelier rivalry in Michigan, the sport can be in really good hands.

Caitlin Clark’s highly anticipated run as a TV analyst kicked off this week as the Indiana Fever superstar joined Reggie Miller, Carmelo Anthony and host Maria Taylor for a bit of NBA work. There were some humorous moments — particularly Clark’s reaction to Miller comparing her game to NBA rotational guard Payton Pritchard — but the real head turner was what Clark said (or rather didn’t say) when asked about the state of the WNBA’s labor negotiations as several important deadlines draw closer.

Obviously, the newsworthy item here is that the WNBA and WNBPA are slated to meet this Monday and the hope is that something gets done before we start to enter work stoppage or delayed season territory. Like all things, Clark’s commentary was met with a wide swath of opinions on whether she said enough, too little or properly advocated for the PA’s position.

While the quote is a bit of generic PR-filtered playerspeak, I did find her choice to pivot to making the point that this is a women’s sports issue more than a women’s basketball one rather interesting. Keep in mind that a player of her caliber probably was told in pre-production meetings she would be asked about this and her answer was probably worked through with her agency and press team ahead of time. So deciding to keep the verbiage about making this a women’s sports fight instead of a women’s basketball fight is a purposeful choice.

If you contrast Clark’s statements with A’ja Wilson, another face of the league and the current best player in the WNBA, you’ll find it’s the one commonality they both have. While the Aces forward is a bit more out front about the mindset, she too pivots to making this a larger fight than just the WNBPA vs. the WNBA.

To me, it doesn’t feel accidental that a theme running through so many of these public comments from WNBA superstars that aren’t a part of the union committee actually negotiating with the league is rooted in something larger. Women’s sports, after all, has always been under siege and fighting for its keep since Title IX was signed into law in 1972. Tying this labor fight as not an individual battle but instead another flashpoint in a bigger war for women’s rights and empowerment in athletic spaces is not only smart, but legitimately true.

And Clark, for my money, doesn’t actually need to say any more than what she said on Sunday to make a massive impact. Let me explain…

A common refrain you’ll hear in activist political circles is the difficulty of coalition building. Some of it, especially in leftist and labor circles is sometimes making perfect the enemy of good and purity testing allies to the detriment of a budding collective. It’s a defensive posture but an understandable one at times, especially when looking at recent labor actions in other high profile sports (Remember when former President Barack Obama helped broker the end of the NBA’s 2020 wildcat strike and basically nuked the largest athlete labor action since the 1960’s? Good times!). Anyway, an idea can be seen as radical when first proposed.

Over time, a good idea can build support and start to mainstream itself. But there’s a significant inflection point once the idea breaks containment into those so-called ‘normie’ circles. Recent history, in U.S. labor specifically but in a variety of other places in public life, tells us that eventually a moderate position will be demanded in order to build common support for the good of all people and see the change passed. In essence, it’s a natural pivot to Americans predisposition for order even if it comes at the expense of liberty, equality and equity. Radical change could be good, but it can potentially be uncomfortable and chaotic. The moderate position, particularly in labor, can win out through dilution because of this inherent impulse Americans seem to possess.

If Clark’s skeptics — those that enjoy peddling the notion that she’s self-interested and more in alignment with the type of worldview that would see her be enriched at the expense of other union members — are right, then it actually may be for the best that she’s on the NBC desk giving you careful doses of word salad with a bit of balsamic.

At the end of the day, the only person who knows Caitlin Clark’s opinion on all of this is Caitlin Clark. For all we know, she could be behind the scenes telling everyone to get on the picket line with her as easily as she could be sitting there saying “I got mine. Just sign the papers and let’s throw the ball up". Is cohesive messaging from the union worth risking because some people on Twitter want to hear Clark tell Cathy Engelbert to retire?

And does that actually help the cause itself?

When we talk about this labor movement in the WNBA, we typically do so through the lens of marginalized communities. It’s a player base, after all, that has never shied away from getting involved in a number of advocacy missions. If the argument for the last two to three years has been that Clark, by sheer virtue of her drawing breath on this earth and shooting basketballs into a hoop from 38 feet away, is being centered ahead of women, many of whom are rooted in those marginalized communities, then wouldn’t the consistent thing be for her to do exactly this?

If Clark comes out with a fire-and-brimstone statement the way some folks want, then the WNBA labor story becomes a Caitlin Clark story. She wouldn’t have said anything different than Napheesa Collier or Breanna Stewart or any other veteran W player in the PA. But, because it’s Caitlin Clark saying it, then it becomes front page news and a news cycle unto itself. Is a one time dopamine hit of seeing a dunk on social media worth the collateral damage of the WNBPA’s possible labor win being framed as a win for Clark instead of a win for women’s sports? Because I can guarantee you that if that scenario plays out, the owners in other sports like the NWSL, PWHL or even the WNBA of the future get an easy out to weaponize at their leisure: “the reason that labor fight went the way it did was because of Caitlin.”

Great people of their time are not simply created in a vacuum. They are a product of their community and raised by the foundation of their collective. Wins are for everyone and, while players like Clark and Wilson would individually benefit by spearheading the charge, the truly heroic endgame for the WNBPA is to lay out a framework for all women’s sports to follow so the rising tide can, as we loved to say in 2024, lift all boats.

As utterly contemptuous I am of the term allyship (mostly because I think it is passive in nature and lends itself to aesthetic solutions instead of grounded ones), Clark staying somewhat out of the labor negotiations is the perfect thing she can do as an ally. Let the women at the forefront, the women that have been here and represent the unique and diverse pastiche that makes the WNBA so great, take the lead. The Fever superstar’s time will come, don’t you worry about that. Until then, allow her the space to ride the middle of the line, stay on message with the PA, advocate that she use her power in softer ways that we can’t see and where it can really matter, and understand that sometimes the best thing people can do for a cause is to sometimes stay out of the way.