Most sports fans spend the offseason in mourning or desperately watching X for trade rumors. Women’s basketball fans got about a day and a half of it.
On Halloween night, Gabby Williams scored 30 points, 28 of them in the second half, and the Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 68-63 to win the WNBA title. It was the league’s first Game 7 in a championship series. The college season started Nov. 1, and this week teams across the country are lacing up. The confetti has barely been swept up, and the tip-offs are already here. I think this is the best stretch on the calendar, and this year’s engaging Finals were a big reason why.
Fans could start with what we just watched in professional hoops. The Valkyries became the first expansion team to win the title in just their second season. They also became the first champion without a single All-WNBA selection. That is a team built on defense, depth and trust rather than a marquee name, until Williams decided the night belonged to her. In Game 7 she became the first player in WNBA history to score 15 consecutive points in a Finals game. You can’t script that.
The Dream deserve their own paragraph. Atlanta was denied again in its fourth Finals try, and it lost with Angel Reese on the floor, the headline acquisition of the offseason. Reese finished Game 7 with eight points and 12 rebounds, and Jordin Canada had 18 points. A franchise that has never won will spend the winter asking what comes next.
Women’s Basketball: The College Game
Here is the part that makes this window special: the story doesn’t pause. It hands off, and the college game it hands off to has never looked deeper.
Look at this year’s preseason poll. The Big Ten set a preseason record with nine ranked teams, followed by the SEC with seven, the ACC with five and the Big 12 with three. That is a sport with power in every corner of the map. Duke earned its highest preseason ranking since 2013 at No. 4, and No. 5 Michigan received the best preseason ranking in program history.
Meanwhile, UCLA is fresh off its first NCAA Tournament trophy, which means the champion is a new face too. Even the opening weekend felt global, with Villanova and Notre Dame opening the season in Rome on Nov. 1, with that game being arguably better than the men’s one played before it.
At the top sit the two programs that have defined this era. South Carolina is the AP’s preseason No. 1, with 23 of 31 first-place votes; the fifth time in seven years Dawn Staley’s team has opened at the top. Chloe Kitts’ return from injury and a strong freshman class will aid the Gamecocks in their quest for a title. UConn is right behind at No. 2, its 33rd straight year in the preseason top ten.
The Huskies went 38-1 last season before South Carolina ended their run in the Final Four. Without Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd, they now belong to reigning national player of the year Sarah Strong, and they open against Cornell today at 5 p.m.
Then there’s the schedule, which reads like a dare. South Carolina will face five ranked teams in its first month. The Gamecocks meet No. 3 USC on Nov. 15, with JuJu Watkins back from her ACL tear, then UConn on Nov. 24 at Mohegan Sun Arena and Duke on Dec. 3. They’ll wait for Kentucky until the New Year. The best teams are not hiding until March. They are scheduling each other in November.
That’s why the gap matters. In most sports, the offseason is a void you fill with trade rumors. In women’s basketball, the champagne and the preseason poll arrive almost on top of each other. The player who was a Finals hero this weekend was a college star not long ago. The freshman getting her first minutes this week is auditioning for a draft night a few springs away, just days after March Madness ends. The sport isn’t ending and starting. It’s one long conversation, and you can hear both halves at once.
End Of My Women’s Basketball Rant
There’s a purity to it, too. Rankings haven’t had time to weigh on anyone. Every roster is still a promise, every transfer a question mark, every freshman a rumor. The first regular-season AP poll doesn’t drop until November 9th, so for now, nobody has been judged. The Dream’s heartbreak is two days old, and the Valkyries’ joy is fresher still. For a few days, disappointment and hope can sit side by side on the same screen.
March gets the glory, and it should, but March is where stories end. This week, a championship has just been won, hundreds of teams are tipping off, and nobody has yet been ruled out. That’s the best time of year to be a fan of women’s basketball.
