Whittaker takes floor for ‘last dance’
Charlotte Whittaker hails from a town of 2500, outside Christchurch. Her US college basketball team will play in a game watched by millions this weekend, reports Andrew Voerman.
Weeks don’t come much bigger than the one New Zealand basketballer Charlotte Whittaker has had this week – but she would love for next week to be even bigger.
Her final season with the Colorado Buffaloes college team in the United States – her “last dance” – is almost over. Whittaker and the Buffs have made it to the round of 16 – the Sweet 16 – in the national women’s basketball tournament, known as March Madness, which whittles 68 teams down to one across three weekends of knockout action each year.
Next up in Colorado’s path on weekend two (tipoff 8.30am tomorrow, NZ time) are the better-fancied Iowa Hawkeyes and a player unlike anything the game has seen before. US star Caitlin Clark has revolutionised college basketball, showing a willingness and the ability to shoot from anywhere on her way to becoming the all-time scoring leader, men’s or women’s. A point guard, she also excels at creating shots for her team-mates, a skillset that will make her the first pick in the WNBA draft next month.
After Iowa beat Colorado last year, they won twice more, in the Elite Eight and the Final Four, but fell to the Louisiana State University Tigers in the national championship game, which was watched by 9.9 million viewers in the US – a record for women’s college basketball.
That means the big thing missing from Clark’s college résumé is a national title. Her pursuit of one and her breaking of long-held records in 2024 has attracted widespread attention to the point where ESPN’s website has a page titled: “Caitlin Clark Iowa tracker; March madness updates, stats, more”.
An audience of 3.23m watched Iowa’s first-round game this March – a record for a non-Final Four game that was eclipsed when 4.9m watched their second- round game and should be bettered again this weekend.
Those figures can some-times be hard to fathom for someone with a hometown the size of Whittaker’s.
Cust is a 40-minute drive northwest of Christchurch and home to about 2500 people. Even if they each brought four friends, there would still be a few empty seats at the MVP Arena in Albany, New York, where Colorado and Iowa will meet with a place in the last eight on the line.
Whittaker, 23, has been followed from Cust to the US by younger brother Mason, 21, and in his third season at American University in Washington DC, and younger sister Lauren, 18, a Tall Fern who is in her first season at Gonzaga University in Washington state.
Their father, Mark, a hero of the Canterbury earthquake response, died of a heart attack in 2018, just before Charlotte, then at St Andrew’s College in Christchurch, started visiting potential American college destinations, but he played a big part in fostering his kids’ love of basketball.
“When we moved into the main street of Cust, my dad built us a half court in the backyard,” Whittaker recalled. “It took up most of the garden, but I think it was worth it in the long run, with three kids being able to come over to college.
“All the other local kids used to come around and use the court here, which was super fun.”
This year, the fun has come on a different scale.
In mid-January, Colorado had a 10-day stretch to remember at their CU Events Centre home, when they hosted four of the biggest colleges in California.
First, they beat University of California, Berkeley; then they beat Stanford; then they lost narrowly to University of California, Los Angeles, in a game where they nevertheless set a home attendance record of 11,388; then they beat the University of Southern California.
What made that week extra special was the surprise Whittaker received following the Stanford win.
While talking with fans after the game, she heard someone call out her name and turned around, then burst into tears when she realised her mum, Caroline, had come to visit – a moment captured by Colorado on Instagram at the time, then shared to ESPN’s vast audience this week.
“I was so shocked,” Whittaker said. “Being able to beat Stanford and knowing that she was there to watch the game, and then her coming down to surprise me, was the coolest thing ever.”
Whittaker arrived in Colorado in 2019 and played 16 minutes per game in her first season, averaging six points and two rebounds. She will finish her fourth season having played 12 minutes per game, while averaging three points, two rebounds and one assist.
Her college career ended up taking a different trajectory to most, after she was diagnosed with a genetic hip disorder and went through a series of five surgeries which kept her out for the 2021-22 season.
“There was never a full guarantee about being able to come back and be the player that I was before,” said Whittaker, “so that was a bit scary and a bit up in the air, but I was willing to take that chance.
“The support I got from coaches and team-mates, dropping me off at the hospital and visiting me in the hospital when I had to stay for weeks at a time, was amazing.
“I went through it during Covid and couldn’t have any family there, so it was amazing to have my second family support me through that. I really couldn’t have done it without them.
“I’m glad I’m somewhat back to being the athlete that I used to be, which is exciting, and hopefully I can continue to get better.
“It’s a life journey with a genetic disorder – it doesn’t go away. I’ll be managing it throughout the rest of my life, but I’m very lucky to be able to still be doing what I love.”
After five-and-a-half years in Boulder, a city of 110,000 people at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Whittaker is moving on once Colorado’s season ends, whether that’s after a defeat or the dream scenario of four more wins, to pursue a professional playing career.
“I'm trying not to really think about how this could be it – how Saturday could be my last game,” she said. “I don’t think it will be. I don’t want it to be.
“It hasn’t really sunk in yet. We’re still in the mental state of still competing, and we still have a job to do.
“Once the final buzzer goes in the last game, there will be a huge bowl of mixed emotions.
“It will be bittersweet, but I think I’ll come away very proud of what I was able to do here, and of what we were able to do as a team.”
Colorado were at one stage this season ranked as the third-best team in the entire US in the Associated Press weekly poll, but stumbled down the stretch of the regular season to sit 17th heading into March Madness.
As the fifth seed in their 16-team region, they began by beating 12th-seeded Drake University, then upset fourth-seeded Kansas State on their home court, to create what Whittaker called “a full-circle moment” – a second Sweet 16 matchup with first-seeded Iowa in as many years.
“When we got put in the same bracket as them, it was like, oh, they want this Iowa-Colorado rematch so bad,” she said. “We wanted it so bad – to be able to compete with them again.’’