After Sunday’s record-setting national championship game, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark seem destined to have a rivalry for the ages.

The inciting incident has sparked a heated online debate since it occurred Sunday: Reese staring down Clark as the clock ticked down on LSU’s title win, sending the Iowa star’s “you can’t see me” gesture back at her.

The LSU sophomore received backlash for the pointed celebration, but Clark herself remained unfazed, both in the moment of the game and later on, as she told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” on Tuesday afternoon.

“I don’t think Angel should be criticized at all,” she said. “No matter which way it goes, she should never be criticized for what she did. I’m one that competes, and she competed.”

That response should not come as a surprise from Clark. After all, the Hawkeyes’ junior guard herself went viral after performing the same gesture in the Elite Eight win over Louisville.

“I think everybody knew there was going to be a little trash talk in the entire tournament, it’s not just me and Angel,” Clark said. “I’m a big fan of hers.”

Reese seems similarly unbothered by the social media stir resulting from her post-victory celebration, which also included her pointing emphatically at her ring finger as she stared in Clark’s direction.

“All year, I was critiqued about who I was,” Reese said. “I don’t fit the narrative. I don’t fit in a box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year.

“But when other people do it, y’all say nothing. So this was for the girls that look like me, that’s going to speak up on what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you. That’s what I did it for tonight. It was bigger than me tonight. It was bigger than me.”

LSU’s national championship win against Iowa featured plenty of excitement, and the officiating injected a bit of extra drama into the proceedings.

The game featured 37 fouls. And while each team received its share, with 19 for Iowa compared to 18 for LSU, that just meant both sides took issue with the referees in turn.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey expressed her frustration after star Angel Reese received her second foul in the second quarter. At halftime, six of the 10 starters had at least two fouls to their names.

With one minute remaining in the third quarter, Iowa star Caitlin Clark received a technical foul — also her fourth personal foul — after she flipped the ball out of bounds following a play, a decision that baffled analysts and fans alike.

WNBA players were those who questioned the officiating, including two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne, who called on the refs to “please stop inserting yourselves in this game!”

Three of Iowa’s starters finished the game with at least four fouls, including Clark, who said the refs called a “very, very tight” game. Monika Czinano and McKenna Warnock fouled out of the 102-85 loss.

“Obviously foul trouble not really what you want in a national championship game, especially for our two seniors who have given so much to this program and had to finish their career on the bench,” Clark said. “It’s not something they deserved by any means.”

When asked specifically about Czinano, Clark repeated that sentiment.

“I was really bummed that someone that has made me a really good player had to spend the last five minutes on the bench,” Clark said of Czinano. “She deserved a little better than that.”

Iowa coach coach Lisa Bluder also voiced her disappointment after the game.

“I can’t comment on the officials. It’s very frustrating because I feel like I can’t talk to them,” she said. “They won’t even listen. That’s what’s frustrating is there wasn’t even a conversation that could be had.”

Kim Mulkey has grabbed attention with her her sideline fits throughout the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, and she did not disappoint in the grand finale.

In just her second year as the head coach for LSU, Mulkey has led the third-seeded Tigers to the national championship game. And along the way, she has turned heads and set tongues wagging with her fashion statements.

For Sunday’s title game against No. 2 seed Iowa, set to tip off at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC and ESPN+, the 60-year-old coach wore a pink-and-gold sequined suit with purple stripes, an homage to her team’s mascot.

Her tournament-long fashion show started with a sweater reading “Kiss Me I’m a Queen.” She followed that up with a polka-dot ensemble for LSU’s second-round win.

The Sweet 16 brought the most iconic look, a Neubyrne blazer with neon pink feathers running down each sleeve. She wore a sparkling rainbow blazer for the Elite Eight, from the aptly named Louisiana fashion company Queen of Sparkles. And for the Final Four, she wore a bright pink blazer decorated with large fabric flowers.

Mulkey’s style has evolved since she came to LSU after 21 seasons as the head coach at Baylor, she acknowledged when speaking with Baton Rouge newspaper The Advocate in February.

“I needed a little more flair here — it’s Louisiana,” she said, showing off the closet dedicated to her 105 pairs of high-heeled shoes.

Jennifer Roberts, LSU’s director of player personnel and influence, coordinates Mulkey’s looks. Roberts helps players with NIL deals, and she also helps Mulkey with her own brand.

LSU players and fans alike have taken notice of the coach’s style, Roberts said.

“The LSU fan base, they love it. It’s the culture here — big, loud, fun, happy, all the things,” Roberts told The Advocate. “They do everything big. … I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, ‘We come to the games to see what Kim’s going to wear.'”

Still, while while the fashion statements can be fun, Mulkey prefers to keep her focus on the court.

“Basketball is the most important part — much more important than what I wear,” Mulkey said. “Yes, my outfits are a little bit more sparkly, but I want to talk about the product on the floor — basketball.”

Kim Mulkey has treated the NCAA Tournament sidelines as her own personal fashion show, and she brought another showstopper to the Final Four on Friday night.

In just her second year as the head coach of the LSU women’s basketball team, Mulkey has led the third-seeded Tigers to the cusp of the national title game. And along the way, she has turned heads with her eye-catching outfits. (Don’t forget to vote for your favorite below.)

For Friday night’s Final Four showdown against No. 1 seed Virginia Tech, set to tip off at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, she wore a bright pink blazer with large fabric flowers running from the shoulders all the way down to the cuffs of her sleeves. Her granddaughter, Sage, wore a dress with matching pink ruffles around the collar.

Mulkey started the tournament with a sweater reading “Kiss Me I’m a Queen” (…or did it say “green”?) for her team’s St. Patrick’s Day win against Hawaii. She followed that up with a full polka-dot ensemble for LSU’s second-round win against Michigan.

The most iconic look so far came in the Sweet 16 against Utah, when she donned a Neubyrne blazer with neon pink feathers running down each sleeve. She wore a sparkling rainbow blazer for the Elite Eight, from the aptly named Louisiana fashion company Queen of Sparkles.

“I do not go pick these things out,” Mulkey said after the Sweet 16. “Look, we’re from Louisiana, we like sparkles, we like diamonds, we like Mardi Gras, we like to eat and we like to party.”

Jennifer Roberts, LSU’s director of player personnel and influence, coordinates many of Mulkey’s looks with Queen of Sparkles. The company, owned by Jaime Glas, has provided more than 50 of  the coach’s looks.

For the Final Four, which is being played at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Mulkey has brought some Texas flavor. The coach, who spent 21 seasons at Baylor and still has a home in Waco, wore a black straw cowboy hat emblazoned with the Final Four logo for media day.

“I was going to come in here and sing, ‘All my exes live in Texas,’” she told reporters Thursday. “Which is true. I only have one, though, only been married once.”

Some people have told Mulkey, “‘Coach, quite honestly, I don’t know anything about basketball, but I will come just to see what you wear,’” she admitted to the Wall Street Journal. But she’s just happy to expose them to the sport.

“I want those that come to the games for that reason to keep coming,” Mulkey said. “And I want them to learn the game of basketball.”

Brittney Griner returned to the United States in December after spending 294 days wrongfully detained in Russia. But her former college coach has not spoken with the WNBA star since her release.

LSU’s Kim Mulkey, who coached Griner at Baylor, has not been in contact with Griner, she revealed to reporters at the Final Four media day. Mulkey has led her current team to the cusp of a national title game appearance in Dallas.

“I’m glad she’s back. I’m glad she’s safe, she’s sound. I think everybody is. But no, I have not,” Mulkey said when asked about whether she had been in tough with Griner.

Together, Mulkey and Griner helped Baylor to a 40-0 record and an NCAA Tournament championship in 2012. Yet after Griner left Baylor in 2013 and was selected as the first overall pick by the Phoenix Mercury, details of their seemingly contentious relationship came to light.

Last year, while traveling to play for her Russian team, Griner was arrested for the possession of vape cartridges containing a small amount of cannabis oil. The Mercury center was imprisoned for 10 months before a prisoner exchange brought her home to the United States.

During Griner’s time in Russia, Mulkey declined to comment on her former player’s plight.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything from you on that,” a reporter note at LSU’s first preseason practice in September.

“And you won’t,” replied Mulkey, a response that brought criticism from some of her other former Baylor players, including 2019 national champions Queen Egbo and NaLyssa Smith.

Mulkey finally broke her silence on Griner’s imprisonment upon the WNBA star’s release in December.

“God is good. Prayers are powerful,” Mulkey said in a statement to ESPN. “Brittney is on her way home where she belongs. Our prayers remain with her and her family as they recover and heal together.”

When asked about her relationships with former players earlier in Thursday’s Final Four news conference, Mulkey noted that she does not stay in contact with every player she has coached.

“Let me make it clear. You’re not in contact with all your former players,” she said. “Some don’t like you. Then you’ve got those that you stay in contact with… But you hope that, when your career is over, you have more that love you and like you and appreciate you than don’t.”

Kim Mulkey has been turning heads with her fashion statements throughout the NCAA Tournament. That trend continued Thursday, as the LSU coach donned a Final Four cowboy hat at media day at American Airlines Center in Dallas.

The black straw cowboy hats, emblazoned with the Final Four logo, were provided to all the teams, and Mulkey wished she could complete the ensemble.

“They gave us these hats, and I was looking for some cowboy boots,” she said. “They didn’t have that. But I love country music, and I just thought it was appropriate.”

Mulkey has led LSU on a deep NCAA Tournament run in just her second season at the helm since she joined the team from Baylor. The Final Four has brought her back to her old stomping grounds; she spent 21 seasons at Baylor, and she still has a home in Waco.

After professing her love for country music, she even joked about her ex-husband with a brief rendition of a George Strait song.

“I was going to come in here and sing, ‘All my exes live in Texas,'” she crooned. “Which is true. I only have one, though, only been married once.”

Senior guard Alexis Morris also is at home in the Final Four as a native of Beaumont, Texas, and she was kicking herself for not wearing her own cowboy hat to LSU’s press conference.

“When I seen Coach Mulkey coming down the stairs in her cowboy hat, I was like, man, I wanted to wear mine,” Morris said. “I forgot to put it on.”

The No. 3 seed Tigers (32-2) will look for a home state advantage as they face No. 1 seed Virginia Tech (31-4) at 7 p.m. ET Friday on ESPN with a spot in the national championship game on the line.

Louisville coach Jeff Walz watched two very different basketball games Sunday: LSU’s low-scoring win against Miami, and then his own team’s high-scoring loss against Iowa.

Despite their disparate final scores, though, both Elite Eight contests featured high-quality basketball. Walz just wished that came across in the broadcasts.

He pointed to LSU’s 54-42 win against Miami as an example. As a keen observer, he found himself impressed by the defenses on display.

“But instead of complimenting that, we talk, ‘Oh, it’s a terrible offensive game.’ No, it’s not. It’s a great defensive game,” Walz said. “I’ve watched men’s games. They’re in the 20s. But every time I listen to an announcer on a men’s game in the 20s, they talk about what an unbelievable defensive game it is.

“We kill ourselves. We have to do better. It’s mind-boggling to me that we, as people who are trying to push and advocate for women’s basketball, we hurt ourselves. It’s got to stop. The stupidity has to end. It’s ignorance. I can’t figure it out.”

Walz’s words came as part of a seven-minute plea for more and better support for women’s basketball, made in the wake of his team’s 97-83 loss to Iowa. While he hopes fans “appreciate both sides” of the game, both the low-scoring and the high-scoring, the cue must come from those within the women’s game itself.

“We have to just continue to do a better job of being supportive of women’s athletics and women’s basketball,” he said. “I tell my players all the time, because this is something that’s important to me, when someone asks one of my players, ‘Who is your favorite professional player?’ I surely hope we say a WNBA player, because if we don’t, if you’re an advertiser and women’s basketball players are saying their favorite professional player is a men’s player, why would you advertise in women’s sports? You’re telling everyone, I prefer the men’s players.

“That, to me, I can’t figure out either. We have an unbelievable game, we have an unbelievable product, and we need to keep telling people and showing people that we do, but it starts with us.”

When LSU competed Sunday in the Elite Eight, each player and staff member wore a ring inked on one of their fingers with black marker as a reminder of the end goal.

With a win against Miami, the third-seeded Tigers advanced to the Final Four in Dallas, where they’ll compete for the real thing: a championship ring.

“This is what you’re built for,” star sophomore Angel Reese said of what the marks represented. “This is what we want.”

The rings garnered attention when, during a timeout late in the fourth quarter, Reese held out her left hand to teammate Sa’Myah Smith. Smith used a marker to re-ink the ring for Reese.

The idea, though, came from associate head coach Bob Starkey. As the assistant coach to Gary Blair at Texas A&M in 2013, he had seen Blair use a similar tactic to inspire his team in its conference tournament. The Aggies went on to win their first SEC tournament title.

So during LSU’s pregame talk, he used a Sharpie to draw a ring on the hand of every team member, The Athletic’s Chantel Jennings reported.

“I said, ‘This is just the loaner for now, but I want you to remember what you’re playing for,’” Starkey told The Athletic. “‘If you get tired, if you get frustrated, you get a bad call or you miss a shot, I want you to look down there and remember what’s in front of us.’”

Starkey’s idea paid off. Reese pointed to her ring several times throughout the game in celebration, and the Tigers have bought into their potential as they prepare to compete in the Final Four on Friday.

“I’m heading to Dallas,” senior guard Alexis Morris said after Sunday’s win. “I’m ending my senior night where I wanted it to be. Hopefully we can go cut nets in Dallas.”

More than seven years after playing in her last NWSL match, Sinead Farrelly is returning to the league with Gotham FC.

The 33-year-old midfielder joined the New Jersey-based club for the preseason as a non-roster invitee and the club  announced her signing on Saturday.

“I’m thankful for all the support I’ve received to help me reach this point, because I could not have done this alone,” Farrelly said in a press release issued by Gotham.

“I want to be a key player for Gotham FC, while also having grace and compassion with myself as I acclimate back into the professional environment. There were times when this did not feel possible for me. But I have made it to this moment, and I’m going to keep building on it. As I continue, I hope to inspire others to follow their dreams, no matter how far out of reach they may seem.”

Farrelly last played in an NWSL regular-season match for the Portland Thorns in 2015. In September 2021, she went public with her experience of sexual abuse at the hands of former Thorns coach Paul Riley.

The allegations made by Farrelly and by her former Thorns teammate Mana Shim prompted the firing of Riley by the North Carolina Courage and the opening of wider abuse investigations by the NWSL and its players association as well as U.S. Soccer.

Farrelly had played under Riley on a semi-pro team, in the Women’s Professional Soccer league and then with the Thorns, and the sexual coercion continued with each team, she told The Athletic.

After the 2015 season with the Thorns, Farrelly was traded to the Boston Breakers, but she sat out the 2016 season with injuries sustained in a car crash. She announced her retirement after the 2016 season.

“It took me years away from the game to gain the awareness of how power imbalance works and to be able to tell people close to me what happened,” she told The Athletic.

Thanks in no small part to her decision to speak out about her experiences, Farrelly returns to a changed league, one which is making sweeping changes to improve player safety.

The game, though, remains the same, and Farrelly proved this preseason that she still can play. She scored the opening goal for Gotham FC in the team’s second preseason scrimmage, a 4-0 win against Florida State in late February. She will be available in Gotham’s season opener against Angel City.

“Sinead is not only an outstanding athlete, but one of the most admired people in our sport,” Gotham FC General Manager and Head of Soccer Operations Yael Averbuch West said in the release. “She came into camp and earned a contract with her outstanding play. I know she sees this as just a first step, but everyone at Gotham FC is incredibly proud to be part of Sinead’s journey, and excited about all of the great qualities to brings to our team.”

The NCAA women’s basketball tournament deserves its own TV deal, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said ahead of her team’s Sweet 16 game.

As it stands, the tournament is lumped in with 28 other sports’ NCAA tournaments as part of a deal with ESPN worth $34 million. Yet women’s March Madness is worth between $81 million and $112 million per year on its own, independent media expert Ed Desser has estimated.

The current media rights contract with ESPN expires in 2024. As the NCAA negotiates its next media rights package, women’s basketball could stand on its own, as men’s basketball and football do.

“It should happen,” Staley said. “We’re at that place where we’re in high demand. I do believe women’s basketball can stand on its own and be a huge revenue-producing sport that could do, to a certain extent, what men’s basketball has done for all those other sports, all those other Olympic sports and women’s basketball. I do believe we’re at that place now.

“I do believe we were probably at a place years ago, but until we’re able to have the decision makers give us that opportunity… It’s slowly building up to that because there’s proof in the numbers.”

The 2023 edition of the women’s tournament already is setting records. The second round saw a 30% increase in viewership, with an average of 615,000 viewers, and the first round saw a 28% increase, with an average of 391,000.

The second-round game between No. 2 seed Iowa and No. 10 seed Georgia attracted 1.5 million viewers on ABC, the high-water mark for the early-round games across ESPN networks and ABC.

South Carolina’s 64-49 win against UConn in the NCAA tournament final last April averaged 4.85 million viewers across broadcast and streaming platforms, including 4.45 million viewers on ESPN. That game was the most-watched college basketball game on ESPN since 2008.

“For people to tune in and want to watch us, it means that our game is growing,” Staley said. “There’s an opportunity for our game to grow. I’m a Black coach, and I’ve got a majority, predominantly Black team, and for the viewers to tune into that, it means that we’re opening doors that were closed for a program like us.”

In 2023, the national championship game will air on ABC at 3 p.m. ET Sunday, April 2, from the American Airlines Center in Dallas. ESPN will broadcast the Final Four contests, set for 7 and 9:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31.