The two mega-talents who can fill womens college hoops Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese void
How does women’s college basketball replace a transcendent superstar who became a new kind of household name, a buzzy rivalry between commercial-ready personalities and their respective teams’ quest to dethrone the reigning titan of the sport?How about with two mega-If the momentum is to continue into this college season, it will rest largely on the star power of UConn senior guard Paige Bueckers and USC sophomore guard JuJu Watkins.talents with major crossover appeal leading a pair of bicoastal powers and their quest to take down … that same reigning titan?Last season, Caitlin Clark set a new college scoring record and led her Iowa team on a run to the national title game — all with her signature dashes of ludicrous 3-point shooting and passing.Clark’s exploits catalyzed unprecedented levels of viewership and attention for the sport.The Caitlin Clark Effect, it was called.Three successive games set a record for the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history: Iowa’s payback win over LSU and Clark’s multi-year foil, Angel Reese, in the Elite Eight (12.3 million); Iowa’s controversial Final Four win over UConn (14.2 million); and Iowa’s loss to undefeated South Carolina in the championship (18.7 million).It was either an unrepeatable phenomenon, a unique story with the steep arc of one of Clark’s logo 3s, or a template for how women’s basketball could capture and then keep eyeballs.If the momentum is to continue into this college season, it will rest largely on the star power of UConn senior guard Paige Bueckers and USC sophomore guard JuJu Watkins.With the style and NIL profiles to match, the unanimous preseason All-America picks lead two of the projected three best teams in the nation.If Clark’s game evokes Steph Curry’s, Watkins is Kevin Durant, a smoothly unstoppable three-level scorer, and Bueckers is a kind of lanky LeBron James, an offensive dynamo who still prefers to pass and whom South Carolina coach Dawn Staley once...