The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Balanced Big Ten emerges as leading women’s league
Decade of progress for the conference began just as Maryland joined before 2014-15 season.
Lisa Bluder walked into a packed room last month, with media members crammed shoulder-to-shoulder as if they were on the subway during rush hour, and couldn’t help but grin. The winningest coach in Big Ten women’s basketball history has experienced just about everything in her 24 seasons at Iowa, especially over the past four with Caitlin Clark rewriting the record book while becoming a household name.
But on this February night, Bluder had accomplished a first: a road win over Maryland.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been happy in this press room, so it feels pretty good,” Bluder said with a smile.
In a vacuum, the moment was just another victory for an elite Hawkeyes group that advanced to the national championship game in 2023 and ended this regular season ranked No. 3 in the nation. But in a broader sense, it was another example of how the number of top-tier teams in the Big Ten has grown as programs have steadily improved over the past decade. The conference could put a league-record seven teams in the NCAA tournament for the third time in the past four seasons, and it has a chance to exceed that mark.
Started with Maryland
This decade of progress for the Big Ten began just as Maryland arrived. When the Terrapins joined the conference before the 2014-15 season, they had gone three straight years with teams stronger than all of their soonto-be opponents in the Big Ten, according to Her Hoop Stats ratings. The program that won the 2006 national championship quickly found success in its new conference — winning the regular season and tournament titles the first three years — but the rest of the conference has caught up. Iowa beat Nebraska in overtime on Sunday to win the Big Ten tournament in Minneapolis.
“When I first got in the league, Maryland sort of ran the table, and Ohio State was right up there,” said Teri Moren, who took over at Indiana in 2014. “I think what we’ve seen throughout is that there’s just been different teams, whether it’s Michigan, whether it’s Indiana. And so that’s been what’s great about the league — everybody’s improved, everybody’s gotten better.”
A decade ago, the Big Ten wasn’t well represented in the top tier of women’s college basketball. From 2010 to 2015, the conference never had more than one program finish the season in the top 5 percent of all teams nationally, according to Her Hoop Stats ratings, which are schedule-adjusted measures of team strength.
Around that time, the Terps moved from the ACC and became the standard-bearers of their new league. But since then, the quality of play in the conference, particularly among the best teams, increased to create a cluster of contenders — a contrast to some past years, when one team stood far above the rest.
“The parity we have in our game, I think that’s attracting more and more people to want to turn on the TV and really enjoy our sport,” Clark said.
More teams join the party
Beginning with the 2019-20 season, the Big Ten has had at least three schools in the top 5 percent of all Division I teams and at least five in the top 10 percent each year, according to Her Hoop Stats ratings. (There are 360 teams in Division I this season, up slightly over the past 15 years.)
Iowa is No. 2 in the country this season, trailing only undefeated South Carolina, with a rating of 44.4, which indicates the predicted margin of victory per 100 possessions against an average Division I team at a neutral site. Maryland is the only Big Ten team to finish a season with a rating above 40 since 2010, when the Her Hoop Stats data begins, eclipsing that threshold four times. Indiana (39.3 last season and 36.4 this season) and Ohio State (35.1 this season) are also nearing that mark.
Maryland coach Brenda Frese compared the trend — other programs catching up with the conference’s most successful team — to when she first arrived at Maryland in 2002. Duke was the standard in the ACC, and she quickly recognized the need to switch things up.
“We knew we had to change our recruiting and be able to get the players in to be able to compete,” Frese said. “As you’ve seen with (Big Ten) teams, they’ve had to address the style of play, get more up-tempo defensively.”
The NCAA tournament numbers, as a baseline figure, have trended upward in kind. Between 1982 — the tournament’s first year — and 1994, the Big Ten had five teams make the cut only twice. From 1995 to 2012, there were fewer than five just six times. The league record of seven teams was set in 2012, but that has been matched in two of the past three tournaments, and the Big Ten, now with 14 members, has had fewer than six teams make the tournament just twice in the past decade.
The shift in the style of play has been a significant factor in the increased success.
“More athletic,” Wisconsin coach Marisa Moseley said. “There’s a faster pace of play, and back (then) the Big Ten was all about pounding it inside, big post players, guards who were physical. But it wasn’t really about the penetration. It wasn’t about that transition as much. And if you had a couple players like that, like once Maryland came into the league coming from the ACC, that kind of changed.”
Investment key to success
There has been greater investment in women’s sports in general, and the fruits of that labor can be seen in Big Ten basketball in particular. From the salaries available for coaches to funds for recruiting, better food and travel — all have equated to a better product. Moren, whose team finished the regular season at 24-4, said an institution needs the right president and athletic director in place, ones who understand the importance of women’s sports. She said there’s a sense of equality at Indiana between the women’s and men’s programs.
“A lot has changed. Administrators are hiring better coaches,” Frese said. “The support’s been there — the resources for every school in the conference. So it’s no surprise that ... any team can beat anyone. (From) charters for recruiting to practice facilities to support — I mean, everybody has a budget to be able to do what they need to do at the highest level.”
The Big Ten has entered a golden era of women’s basketball, and that can be seen in both the teams’ success on the floor and an increase in interest. Iowa regularly plays in front of full crowds as fans clamor to see Clark, and the conference tournament sold out for the first time this year. While Clark is a generational player who has had a significant impact on the league’s popularity, she also is the beneficiary of a variety of circumstances over the past decade that built a foundation for the league’s rising profile.