U.S. women’s national team midfielder Lindsey Horan is on loan from the Portland Thorns with Lyon this season, but she’s still feeling the effects of the turmoil surrounding the NWSL.

Horan has played for Portland since 2016, winning a championship in 2017 and NWSL Shields in 2016 and 2021. She’s always been proud to be a Thorn, but after hearing about the roles Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and former general manager Gavin Wilkinson played in covering up abuse from former coach Paul Riley, Horan is struggling to find that pride.

“It’s hard to read this and look back at that and feel proud to play for an organization like that,” she told reporters on Thursday from London, where she is training with the USWNT. “That’s really hard for me personally, and especially with all the work you’ve put in for that team and that club, that’s where I feel hurt and disturbed and obviously, just so much anger for these players as well.”

Wilkinson was relieved of his duties with the Thorns on Wednesday, along with president of business Mike Golub.

This came after the release of the Sally Yates report on abuse in the NWSL, which found Wilkinson, Golub and Paulson had been complicit in Riley’s sexual coercion and harassment of former players Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly. Despite conducting an internal investigation of Riley’s behavior and parting ways with the coach in 2015, the club cited on-field results as the reason for his departure and recommended him for his next job.

Paulson still owns the Thorns but said he would be stepping away from team-related “decision-making” as Portland enters the NWSL playoffs.

“I cannot apologize enough for our role in a gross systemic failure to protect player safety and the missteps we made in 2015. I am truly sorry,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

But many NWSL players don’t think that’s enough.

“It is my opinion that every owner and executive and U.S. Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players and failed to protect the players, who have hidden behind legalities and have not participated fully in these investigations, should be gone,” Becky Sauerbrunn said on Tuesday.

USWNT and OL Reign star Megan Rapinoe echoed those comments on Thursday, as the team prepares for a friendly match against England at Wembley Stadium on Friday.

“I don’t think Merritt Paulson is fit to be the owner in Portland. I don’t think Arnim [Whisler] is fit to be the owner in Chicago,” Rapinoe said during a press conference.

USWNT member Crystal Dunn has played for Portland since 2020. Prior to that, she was with the North Carolina Courage from 2018-20, where Riley was at the helm from 2017-21.

She feels similarly to Horan when it comes to representing an organization that failed to protect its players in the past.

“Yeah, I think that is probably one of the hardest things as players that we are facing now, is feeling a sense of pride in playing,” she said. “The jerseys that we’re wearing, it’s hard to be happy in them, it’s hard to find joy in wearing it.”

The Yates report, Dunn says, has caused feelings of anger and sadness within the USWNT. Together, the players are trying to find a balance between those emotions and the on-field focus needed to compete with England, the reigning Euro champions, on Friday.

“A lot of us are trying to find joy in playing this game,” Dunn said. “There’s an amazing game ahead of us on Friday. I think we’re all trying to individually navigate that as best we can. Some of us are just able to separate the two and focus on training one training at a time.”

WSL side Manchester City parted ways with manager Gareth Taylor on Monday, just five days before the club faces table-leaders Chelsea in Saturday’s League Cup final — and nine days before they meet Chelsea once again in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals.

In his nearly five years at the helm, Taylor led Man City to an overall 117-15-29 record, picking up the 2020 FA Cup and 2022 League Cup along the way.

Taylor departs just one year into a three-year contract renewal with the club.

"Manchester City prides itself on competing at the top of the WSL and on its outstanding record of qualifying for European competition," said Man City managing director Charlotte O'Neill in a club statement. "Unfortunately, results this season have so far not reached this high standard."

Former City coach Nick Cushing — who led the team from 2013 to 2020 — will take over interim manager duties for the remainder of the season.

Taylor’s dismissal follows a number of big-name WSL coaching changes, with Arsenal’s Jonas Eidevall and Liverpool’s Matt Beard both exiting the league this season.

Eidevall has since taken over as head coach for the NWSL’s San Diego Wave.

Despite rumblings that Taylor could follow suit and fill the vacancy with the Wave’s SoCal rival Angel City, those rumors appear to be overblown.

Manchester City still in the hunt for non-WSL titles

Sitting 12 points behind Chelsea with just six matchdays left in their 2024/25 season, fourth-place Man City's WSL title hopes have dimmed. However, they remain very much in the running for the League Cup, FA Cup, and Champions League honors.

That said, the Citizens are staring down an unusually demanding gauntlet against one of the world’s top clubs this month.

After facing Chelsea in Saturday's League Cup final and next week's Champions League quarterfinals, City will again take on the Blues in a March 23rd regular-season matchup before wrapping up the pair's two-leg Champions League quarters on March 27th.

Ultimately, the pressure for top WSL teams to properly challenge Chelsea’s years-long dominance is mounting — and some coaches appear to be bearing the brunt of those ambitions.

The buzzer sounded on the eight-week regular season of Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball on Monday, as the inaugural league bids farewell to two teams who failed to advance to the four-squad playoffs.

Both the Mist and Phantom BC fell below the four-team cutoff line, eliminating each club from playoff contention and sending superstars like Unrivaled co-founder Breanna Stewart and Phantom center Brittney Griner home.

Neither team fully found their rhythm in 3×3 play, with both struggling out of the gate to ultimately take the longest to register their first wins in the offseason league.

That said, while the Phantom's elimination was clear-cut, the Mist fell from the playoffs on what was arguably a technicality.

Locked together with Vinyl BC on the Unrivaled table, the final postseason spot came down to multiple tiebreakers. With head-to-head records being equal at 1-1, the final semifinal spot went to the team with the better record against the other three playoff teams — the Lunar Owls, Rose BC, and Laces.

The Vinyl's 3-6 record against that trio edged the Mist's 2-7 record — though one of those three Vinyl victories came from a February forfeit by the injury-laden Laces.

That stat booked Rhyne Howard and the No. 4-seed Vinyl a semifinal matchup with co-founder Napheesa Collier and the top-seeded Lunar Owls, a team that blasted through the season to finish with five more wins than any other club.

After clinching the No. 2 seed, Rose BC — the only team to defeat the Lunar Owls all season — will battle Kayle McBride's No. 3-seed Laces in the second single-elimination semifinal. That said, Rose may be without star Angel Reese, who exited Monday's regular-season finale after re-injuring her wrist.

How to watch the 2025 Unrivaled 3x3 Basketball semifinals

The four squads still standing tip off Unrivaled's first-ever playoffs on Sunday, March 16th, setting the stage for Monday's championship game.

The first semifinal between the Rose and Laces will begin at 7:30 PM ET, immediately followed by the Vinyl's battle against the Lunar Owls.

Sunday's semifinals will air live on TNT.

ESPN’s college women's basketball coverage has exploded across the broadcast giant's platforms, with regular-season viewership 3% up from last year’s record-breaking run and 41% up from 2022/23.

ESPN reports that 2024/25’s overall ratings were their highest since the 2008/09 season, with 2.9 billion minutes of live college women's basketball games consumed.

While this year’s regular-season peaks outdrew last year’s top matchups, ESPN also saw significant growth in steady viewership.

Across the 87 games the broadcaster aired, each game averaged 280,000 viewers, with a record-breaking 15 games drawing over 500,000 viewers.

Due to network partnership deals, ESPN is still missing the rights to Big Ten coverage, while the SEC continues to pull in the heaviest numbers.

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Flagship channels see top women's college basketball viewership

The company's flagship networks also saw significant individual ratings growth in their NCAA women's basketball coverage. Games on ESPN drew an average of 511,000 fans, for an increase of 13% over last season's coverage on the network.

Even more, the three games the broadcaster upgraded to ABC gave the channel an average of 1.3 million viewers, for an overall increase of 120% over 2023/24 games.

ABC also the regular season's two biggest audiences.

Just one week after ESPN broke the 1 million viewer mark with then-No. 4 Texas' upset win over No. 2 South Carolina, ABC's February 16th UConn vs. South Carolina plus Texas vs. LSU shattered double-header that stat.

Then-No. 5 UConn’s 87-58 blowout of the reigning national champion Gamecocks attracted the season’s biggest audience, garnering an average of 1.8 million viewers with a peak of 2.2 million.

Texas’s 65-58 victory over the then-No. 7 Tigers snagged the 2024/25 season's second-biggest audience, peaking at 2.3 million viewers while drawing an average of 1.7 million fans.

Besides leading this season's ratings, those two blockbuster matchups registered as the third and fourth highest regular-season women's college basketball viewership in ESPN's history.

Monday night's NCAA Big East basketball final saw No. 3 UConn lift their fifth straight trophy, winning the conference tournament title with a 70-50 defeat of No. 22 Creighton.

Star senior Paige Bueckers led the Huskies' charge, finishing with 24 points, eight rebounds, three assists, and a pair each of blocks and steals.

Freshman Sarah Strong also showed out with her third straight double-double, registering 13 points, 11 rebounds, four assists, six steals, and three blocks.

Notably, Bueckers made UConn history with the win, exiting her college career with a perfect 66-0 conference record and becoming the first-ever Husky to win three Most Outstanding Player awards at the Big East tournament in the process.

"For her to be able to constantly come up with these kind of performances, time and time again, she just has that thing that those kinds of players have," said UConn head coach Geno Auriemma after the game.

UConn now holds a record 30 conference tournament titles — eight more than any other Division I program.

"We have a belief system in our program that this is the expectation," explained Auriemma. "I truly believe that the higher you set expectations, the closer you get to achieving those. And we have tremendously high expectations every year, those never go away. And some years you fall short, but most times we don't."

NCAA conference tournaments impact AP Poll rankings

Thanks to their command of the Big East, UConn became to the only Top 15 team to hold steady in Monday afternoon's AP Poll update, as the Top 25 list saw significant shifts in the lead-up to Selection Sunday.

After defeating USC for the Big Ten tournament title on Sunday, UCLA earned a three-spot rise to reclaim the No. 1 ranking, while their rival Trojans fell from No. 2 to No. 4 with the loss.

Meanwhile, South Carolina rose from No. 5 to No. 2 after downing former No. 1 Texas in Sunday's SEC finale, putting the defending NCAA champs in a neck-and-neck race with the Bruins for the No. 1 overall seed in this year's national tournament.

The Longhorns now clock in at No. 5, despite still being a likely candidate for one of Sunday's four No. 1 seeds.

Making history just behind Texas are Big 12 champions TCU, whose two-spot leap to No. 6 gave the Horned Frogs their highest-ever ranking.

The Top 10's biggest climber, however, was Duke, who jumped four spots to No. 7 after their title-winning upset run through the ACC tournament.

At the same time, once-No. 1 Notre Dame's slide continued, with the Irish dropping two more spots to No. 8 after exiting their conference tournament in the semifinal round.

Rounding out the Top 10 are ACC tournament runners-up NC State, who fell two spots to No. 9, and SEC semifinalist No. 10 LSU, whose one spot drop comes after injuries to the team's two top scorers hindered the Tigers' conference tournament play.

AP NCAA Basketball Top 25: Week 19

1. UCLA (30-2, Big Ten)
2. South Carolina (30-3, SEC)
3. UConn (31-3, Big East)
4. USC (28-3, Big Ten)
5. Texas (31-3, SEC)
6. TCU (31-3, Big 12)
7. Duke (26-7, ACC)
8. Notre Dame (26-5, ACC)
9. NC State (26-6, ACC)
10. LSU (28-5, SEC)
11. Oklahoma (25-7, SEC)
12. North Carolina (27-7, ACC)
13. Kentucky (22-7, SEC)
14. Baylor (27-7, Big 12)
15. Ohio State (25-6, Big Ten)
16. West Virginia (24-7, Big 12)
17. Oklahoma State (25-6, Big 12)
18. Maryland (23-7, Big Ten)
19. Kansas State (26-7, Big 12)
20. Tennessee (22-9, SEC)
21. Alabama (23-8, SEC)
22. Creighton (26-6, Big East)
23. Florida State (23-8, ACC)
24. South Dakota State (26-3, Summit League)
25. Ole Miss (20-10, SEC)