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Dawn Staley, South Carolina achieve perfection against Iowa

South Carolina Gamecocks head coach Dawn Staley celebrates after defeating the Iowa Hawkeyes in the finals of the womens 2024 NCAA Tournament at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Winners, losers from women's tournament: Dawn Staley, South Carolina achieve perfection

By Adam Gretz | Last updated 4/7/24

With South Carolina's 87-75 win over Iowa on Sunday afternoon, the Gamecocks won their third national championship under head coach Dawn Staley and completed a perfect 38-0 season.

Now that the tournament is complete, let's take a look at some of the biggest winners and losers from the tournament as a whole.

Winners

Women's sports: Not just women's basketball. Not just women's college basketball. But women's sports in general.

This year's tournament seemed like a major turning point for women's sports with record TV ratings that outdrew NBA Finals games and World Series games and new found attention in the mainstream sports discussion.

It was also not just about Iowa's Caitlin Clark. The reality is that when Steven A. Smith and social media are delivering wild and hot takes about your play, that means you are true superstars. Women's sports has arrived.

Dawn Staley and South Carolina: As for this specific tournament, the biggest winner is obviously Staley and her program. With Sunday's win Staley has led South Carolina to three championships during her tenure and two in the past three seasons.

During this most recent three year run the Gamecocks have lost a total of three games, and two of them 2021-22 championship season. That is a 109-3 record over three years and 74-1 over the past two.

What makes this year's championship even more impressive is Staley had to almost completely rebuild the roster after last year's Final Four appearance and came back even better.

Kamilla Cardoso (South Carolina): Cardoso was one of the driving forces behind South Carolina's championship run, and she was at her absolute best in the NCAA tournament. She had a double-double in three of her five games in the tournament, and was an absolute force in the championship win over Iowa with 15 points, 17 rebounds and three blocks.

The Pac-12's last hurrah: The Pac-12 may not exist next season, but it made quite an impact in the women's tournament by putting five teams (USC, Stanford, Colorado, Oregon State and UCLA) into the Sweet 16.

Caitlin Clark's personal impact: No, she did not get a championship to end her career at Iowa but it is hard to imagine an individual player lifting a sport more than Clark did for women's basketball over the past two years, and especially this season. When the winning coach says this about you, that is significant.

Dawn Staley: "I want to personally thank Caitlin Clark for lifting up our sport. She carried a heavy load for our sport ... Caitlin Clark, if you're out there, you are one of the GOATs of our game, and we appreciate you." ❤️pic.twitter.com/R82Zb05kGM
— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) April 7, 2024

Losers

Fans of upsets: Ultimately people like to see the best teams playing for championships. We did end up getting that here. But Cinderella runs and upsets are also kind of fun. We simply did not get that this season as the tournament mostly followed the chalk.

There were only eight games in the entire tournament where a lower-seeded team won, and most of those were No. 4 vs. No. 5 or No. 3 vs. No. 2 matchups later in the tournament. Only one lower-seeded team won in the first 32 matchups in the first round.

Caitlin Clark not getting a championship: Like it or not, and whether it is fair or not, great players tend to be measured by championships. The debate around Clark leading into Sunday's final was whether or not she needed a championship to be considered the greatest in women's college basketball, a suggestion she rejected.

In the end, she did not get that championship and there are going to be people — a lot of them — that will hold their against her collegiate legacy even with all of the individual awards, accomplishments, records and impact.

Tennessee not getting beyond the Sweet 16 again: Tennessee is one of the all-time great women's basketball programs but things have really leveled off here over the past decade. This year was the seventh consecutive year the Volunteers did not make it past the Sweet 16.

They used to be a mainstay in the Final Four for decades, but have not been able to get back to that level since the early 2010s.

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