Staley’s stance - “ I’m not changing” - meshed well with that of LSU’s Reese, the “Bayou Barbie” who wore a literal crown on top of her championship hat, and tweeted back in January that she understood all too well that her style on and off the court was “too hood” and “too ghetto” for mainstream basketball narratives. We’re not thugs.” She pushed back against describing teams like her Gamecocks in such terms while designating White players as “passionate” and “ fierce.” She shrewdly and astutely called out media narratives that portray Black women on the court as overly physical and aggressive.Īccording to the Greenville News, Iowa’s coach, Lisa Bluder, said before Friday’s game that she was told that rebounding against Staley’s team was akin to “going to a bar fight.” After the loss, Staley was direct in her rejection of this characterization: “We’re not bar fighters. We might be talking about the women, but we aren’t talking about them the same wayĪfter Iowa’s women felled the mighty defending champions from the University of South Carolina Friday night in a game that netted ESPN a record-breaking 5.5 million viewers, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley used the postgame microphone to double down on a stance she has taken throughout the season. It is to emphasize that without question, and on many levels, this year’s NCAA tournament, women’s and men’s, with LSU and UConn crowned champions, was one for the ages.ġ. This isn’t to say sexism in sports is fixed or to discount the important questions about race being asked after LSU’s defeat of Iowa in the women’s final. We are, days later, still debating the ethics of trash talk and the problem of bad, or at the very least inexperienced, officiating. Instead of having to make the case for women’s basketball (again), we know by dint of the buzz and controversy stirred by Reese and Clark (and their critics) that it’s arrived. This year, women’s Final Four ticket prices were higher than the men’s - albeit somewhat because Dallas’s American Airlines Center, where the women’s games were held, is significantly smaller than NRG Stadium in Houston, the site of the men’s finals (normally a space for football and rodeo). That change came after gender disparities surfaced in a deluge of social media posts, initiated by Oregon’s Sedona Prince (who has entered this year’s WNBA draft), in 2021, noting inequities in everything from the food to the weight room facilities.
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