Pac-12 showdown on tap when Stanford faces Arizona in final
ESPN reports solid ratings for tourney
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The last time Tara VanDerveer and Stanford were playing for a national championship, the Pac-12 had just 10 schools and the Cardinal was the standard bearer for the conference.
Now 11 years later, the Pac-12 is on top of the women’s basketball world with the Cardinal facing Arizona on Sunday night for the title. The conference is guaranteed its first champion since the Hall of Fame coach and the Cardinal won its last title in 1992.
“I’m really proud of the Pac-12 to have two teams in the national championship game,” VanDerveer said. “You know, this is not something that a lot of people could have imagined … 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And it’s really, really exciting.”
Stanford was last in the title game in 2010, losing to UConn in the Alamodome — the same building the Cardinal will be playing in Sunday night. The conference became the Pac-12 a year later after expansion. The league has had six schools in the Final Four since 2013, but none reached the title game until Friday night when Stanford and Arizona advanced.
“In the Pac-12 we’ve been saying all along we have the best teams in the country and to have two Pac-12 teams speaks for itself,” Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. “Stanford won the Pac-12 championship and we were second. Both of us in the Final Four and championship game, it means a lot for our conference.”
To get to Sunday night’s game the Cardinal held on to beat South Carolina 66-65 on a basket by Haley Jones with 32 seconds left Friday night. After Jones’ shot put the Cardinal up, Stanford survived two lastsecond misses by the Gamecocks.
Arizona didn’t need any lastsecond karma to beat UConn 69-59. Wildcats All-America Aari McDonald scored 26 points and the team played stifling defense to put the clamps on the Huskies.
Arizona lost twice to Stanford during the regular season, but both teams are much improved from their last meeting Feb. 22, which the Cardinal won 62-48.
NO APOLOGY: TV cameras caught Arizona coach Adia Barnes in a passionate moment of celebration after the Wildcats’ upset of UConn. She’s not backing down a day later.
Barnes admitted Friday night that she used an expletive in telling her team to forget the people who didn’t believe in it. She wrote on social media Saturday that it was supposed to be a private moment with her team and no, she didn’t gesture at the camera.
“I’m not apologizing for it because I don’t feel like I need to apologize,” Barnes said. “It’s what I felt was my team at the moment, and I wouldn’t take it back.”
RATINGS REPORT: All 63 games in this women’s NCAA Tournament were broadcast nationally, with six on ABC, the first on a national broadcast network since 1995. And people have been tuning in. ESPN reports the Elite Eight averaged 1.186 million viewers, a jump of 6% from 2019. The Sweet 16 averaged 915,000 viewers for a 66% improvement and the most-viewed Sweet 16 since 2013. Second-round games averaged 375,000 viewers, while the 48 first- and second-round games averaged 261,000 viewers.
Viewership was up 11% from 2019 for the semifinals. ESPN reported Saturday that the games averaged 2 million viewers combined, with the audience peaking at 3.3 million for Arizona’s win over UConn. That game averaged 2.5 million, up 15% from 2019.