History UsefulNotes / Basketball

D-I women have two (or maybe three) alternate tournaments as well. In 2023, the NCAA finally launched a direct counterpart to the men's NIT in the form of the Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), whose first edition will be held in 2024. Like the men's NIT, the WBIT will feature 32 teams and will be directly run by the NCAA. It will give an automatic invitation to any conference champion that fails to make the NCAA tournament, a practice the NCAA abandoned for the men's NIT in 2023–24. The Women's National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) had been the acknowledged second-tier women's postseason event before the launch of the WBIT. With the WBIT now getting first dibs of teams that didn't make the Big Dance, the WNIT will drop from 64 teams to 48 in 2024. Unlike the men's NIT, the WNIT, established in 1998, has never been run by the NCAA. Before the reduction to a 48-team field, the WNIT had a slightly different structure from the men's equivalent, with all 32 Division I conferences having at least one guaranteed bid to the tournament, plus 32 at-large bids. The organizers of the WNIT haven't announced how that tournament will fill its field going forward. A third tournament run outside of direct NCAA control has been the Women's Basketball Invitational (WBI), launched in 2010 and featuring 8 teams, but it remains to be seen whether it will continue after the addition of the WBIT.\\\

* '''South Carolina''': The two-time national champion Gamecocks emerged in the last half of the 2010s as the SEC's new kid on the block with double Hall of Fame player Dawn Staley as head coach. They've made every NCAA tournament since 2012, missing the Sweet Sixteen only once in that span, with four Final Fours and the 2017 and '22 national titles as well, in the latter season becoming the only team ever to beat [=UConn=] in a national title game. Not to mention they were the top-ranked team when COVID scuttled the 2020 tournament; Carolina claims a mythical national title from that season. Current WNBA superstar A'ja Wilson was the biggest star of the first title team, with Aliyah Boston, star of the 2020s teams, ready to join her in WNBA superstardom as the top overall pick in the 2023 WNBA draft and that year's unanimous Rookie of the Year. Even with Boston and several other stars gone in 2023–24, the Gamecocks finished that regular season unbeaten. The Gamecocks suffered rare tastes of defeat when they were upset by Kentucky in the 2022 SEC Championship Game, and again when one Caitlin Clark torched them for 41 points to lead Iowa to an upset in the 2023 NCAA semifinals, spoiling a previously unbeaten season.

* The second reason is if the team represents a school that is transitioning from a lower NCAA division (almost always Division II) to Division I. Such a transition requires four years,[[labelnote:*]]St. Thomas, a Twin Cities school making an unprecedented move straight from D-III to D-I, is getting a five-year time frame instead of the four used for transitions from D-II to D-I.[[/labelnote]] during which time the school is barred from NCAA-sponsored postseason play—either the NCAA men's or women's tournament, the men's NIT, or the newly launched (women's) WBIT. This issue has arisen three times in the 2020s:

* '''UsefulNotes/LosAngeles Sparks''': One of the inaugural franchises, founded in 1997. The only one with a NonIndicativeName of any kind (as there's not really a feminine equivalent to "Lakers"), their name came from a secretary watching a welder. Sometimes called [[FanNickname Sporks or Sharks]] by opposing fans. Three-time champions. This team was captained by basketball legend Lisa Leslie, who made WNBA history in 2011 by becoming the first alumna to become part owner of a team, though she and her group sold out two years later to a group led by Magic Johnson.
* '''UsefulNotes/{{Minnesota}} Lynx''': Founded in 1999, named as a counterpart to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Survived several rough seasons to stockpile approximately a metric crapton of young talent that has paid dividends since 2011. Once they picked up collegiate superstar Maya Moore and hometown hero Lindsay Whalen, [[TookALevelInBadass momentum immediately began to shift in their direction]], and they finally won a title in 2011, followed by three more in 2013, 2015, and 2017, officially becoming a dynasty.

* A group of players whom the WNBA heavily marketed in 2013 as the "Three to See", who entered the league as the first three picks in that year's draft. In order of selection, they are:
** '''Brittney Griner''': Center for the Phoenix Mercury, drafted from Baylor, where she was consensus NCAA player of the year in her last two seasons. The 6'8" (2.03 m) Griner, known in college for her dominant shot-blocking and as one of the few women who can routinely dunk, entered the league with as much hype as any player in years. Also made headlines in 2013 when she came out as lesbian. Had the league's top-selling jersey in her rookie season as well. A perennial All-Star, Griner led the league in blocks in each of her first seven seasons (sharing honors with Jonquel Jones in 2019), and has also led the league in scoring twice.
*** Griner's WNBA future was for a time in doubt. She was found guilty of drug charges in Russia, where she had played during the WNBA offseason, in 2022[[note]]specifically possessing cannabis-based vaping cartridges[[/note]] and sentenced to 9 years in prison, though she ended up being part of a US–Russia prisoner swap, serving 10 months in all, and returned to the W in 2023. Griner's predicament made her a poster child for the league's salary issues. Since at least the 2010s (and probably longer), about 70% of the league's players go overseas to play during the traditional basketball season, with the biggest stars making several times what the WNBA can offer. While the newest WNBA collective bargaining agreement is attempting to address the issue by effectively forcing the league's players to stay stateside year-round starting in 2024,[[note]]with a "soft launch" for said requirement in 2023[[/note]] many commentators fear this may backfire by encouraging American players to say "ScrewThisImOuttaHere" to the W.
** '''Elena Delle Donne''':[[labelnote:*]]Her family name is "Delle Donne", pronounced "DEL-uh DON".[[/labelnote]] Perhaps the most positionally versatile player ever in the women's game, the Delaware product, who spent her first four WNBA seasons with the Chicago Sky before being dealt to the Washington Mystics in the 2017 offseason, is listed as a guard and forward—despite being the size of most WNBA centers (6'5"/1.96 m). Center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard, point guard, swingman, stretch four, point forward, combo guard... you name it, [[FanNickname EDD]] can play it. With her arrival, the Sky [[TookALevelInBadass took multiple levels in badass]] and became legitimate title contenders... until the Fever swept them out in the first round. In 2013, EDD was the first rookie ever to be the top vote-getter for the All-Star Game, and was also the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. In 2015, she led the league in scoring and free throw percentage (unheard of for center-sized players), and earned MVP honors. In 2017, she forced a trade to the Mystics, the closest team to her Delaware home (significance noted below), and led the team to its first-ever WNBA Finals berth in 2018 and first title in 2019. She was also league MVP in the latter season on the strength of the first 50–40–90 season[[note]]shooting at least 50% from the field, 40% on three-pointers, and 90% on free throws[[/note]] in league history. Not to mention leading the league in jersey sales in 2019. EDD, the first player to be named WNBA MVP for two different teams, is also the current career free-throw percentage leader in league history (and has a better percentage than ''anyone in NBA history'' by a fairly wide margin).[[note]]The margin between EDD and current NBA leader Steph Curry is larger than the difference between Curry and ''18th place'' in the all-time NBA list.[[/note]] Back problems mostly scuttled her 2021 season, but she came back strong in 2022 (with her minutes carefully managed). EDD has since announced she won't play in 2024, and her WNBA future is uncertain.
*** For the first few years of her WNBA career, she was one of the very few high-profile WNBA players who never played overseas. (She has [[WordOfGod publicly stated]] that she normally stays in the States to help care for her disabled older sister; her family ties were seen as playing a big part in her desire to move to Washington.) EDD did join a Chinese team for that country's 2017 playoffs, but a flareup of post-Lyme disease syndrome[[note]](in 2008, she contracted the disease, which was initially misdiagnosed; she's dealt with the aftereffects ever since)[[/note]] forced her to return prematurely to the States. Her Lyme disease history, which has left her seriously immunocompromised, meant that she sat out 2020 despite the league turning down her petition to skip the abbreviated season (the Mystics announced they would pay her anyway). With disability causes so close to her heart, she's also a high-profile ambassador for Special Olympics, and is also heavily involved with Lyme disease charities.
** '''Skylar Diggins-Smith''': Was a superstar point guard at Notre Dame, where she graduated as the school's second-leading career scorer. Known for her charisma and good looks, Diggins (now Diggins-Smith) was hyped as the next great WNBA point guard after she was drafted by the then-Tulsa Shock in 2013. She got off to a slow start in her debut rookie season, however, shooting way below her points average from college. Lived up to expectations in 2014, being named first-team All-WNBA and the league's most improved player, as well as being an All-Star starter. Missed most of the 2015 season to a torn ACL, but came back strong, becoming another perennial All-Star. Another rare example of a WNBA star who doesn't play overseas, in her case because she has enough endorsement and outside business income to not need it, although she was considering playing in China in 2015–16 before her ACL injury. Missed the 2019 season while pregnant with her first child; when she became a free agent in 2020, the Wings sent her to the Mercury in a sign-and-trade deal during that offseason, getting three draft picks in return. After another maternity leave for her second child in 2023, she moved to the Storm.

* '''Indiana Fever''': Founded in 2000, named for Indiana's well-known basketball obsession. Saved from potential folding with a run to the 2009 Finals, and then won the 2012 Finals. Was projected to make its first profit in 2013 and remained a competitive force until the end of the 2010s. They share the Indiana Pacers' home of Gainbridge Fieldhouse in UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}} (though renovations displaced them for part of the early 2020s). The Fever may show signs of a resurgence in 2024, with 2023 ROY Aliyah Boston almost certain to be joined by all-time Division I career scoring leader Caitlin Clark.[[note]]The Fever will have the #1 pick in the 2024 draft, as it did in 2023, with Clark's selectionj being viewed as a foregone conclusion.[[/note]]

* The Elam Ending is TBT's most distinctive, and indeed iconic, feature. At the first dead ball with 4 minutes or less remaining in the fourth quarter, the game clock is turned off. At that point, a "target score" is set by adding a specified number of points to the score of the leading team (or tied teams). Initially, 7 points were added; since 2019, 8 points have been added. The game then continues with no game clock but with a shot clock, and the first team to meet or exceed the target score wins, thus eliminating overtime. The NBA All-Star Game adopted the Elam Ending starting in 2020 with a slightly different procedure (setting the target score at the end of the third quarter and adding 24).[[note]]The choice of 24 was an explicit tribute to Kobe Bryant, who had died in a helicopter crash three weeks before the 2020 ASG. He had worn that number during his last 10 seasons with the Lakers.[[/note]] The Canadian Elite Basketball League used the Elam Ending in a 2020 tournament that took the place of its COVID-canceled season, using the TBT procedure but adding 9 points to set the target score, and made this permanent when normal league play resumed in 2021. The NBA G League adopted the Elam Ending with a twist in 2022–23. First, overtime in all regular-season games is now played under Elam Ending conditions, with the target score set by adding 7 points to the final score in regulation. Second, games in December's G League Winter Showcase use the same format as the NBA All-Star Game, but with the target score set by adding 25 to the leading score after 3 quarters.\\\

** The NBA All-Star Game adopted the Elam Ending in 2020; its method is also discussed alongside the more detailed description of TBT.

** National team-wise, the male "Boomers" have nothing on the female "Opals". The Australian women - which have included past WNBA stars Lauren Jackson, Penny Taylor, and Sandy Brondello (now the Opals' head coach) and current WNBA star Liz Cambage - won medals in all Olympics from 1996 to 2012, and the 2006 World Championship.

There are 1,400-or-so four-year colleges in the United States[[note]]Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, just outside UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, is the NCAA's sole non-American school. The University of the Bahamas is reportedly seeking NAIA membership, and the Mexican school CETYS is reportedly seeking NCAA membership.[[/note]] who field varsity basketball teams. Around 1,100 of them are members of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), which splits its membership into three divisions. Most of the rest belong to the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics). About 360 schools' teams make up NCAA Division I, the top level of college basketball.[[note]]As of the current 2023–24 college season, 362 on the men's side, and 360 women's teams: Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, being predominantly male [[MilitaryAcademy military academies]], don't have women's teams. Both totals are down by one from 2022–23—Hartford dropped to Division III and St. Francis Brooklyn shut down its entire athletic program, while Le Moyne began a transition from Division II to Division I.[[/note]] Essentially all of them[[note]]One school is playing as an independent in 2023–24. Chicago State left the Western Athletic Conference, in which it was a major geographic outlier, after the 2021–22 season, but will join the Northeast Conference in July 2024. The previously noted Hartford began a transition from D-I to D-III in 2021–22 and played as a D-I indy before aligning fully with D-III in 2023. Before that, the last D-I school to compete as a basketball independent was NJIT, or the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which [[TheScrappy got left behind]] in the early-2010s conference realignment shuffle and was forced to play the 2013–14 and 2014–15 seasons as such. It finally found a home in the ASUN Conference, and has since moved on to the America East.[[/note]] play in one of 32 conferences. After each team has played somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 games each season, each conference has its own tournament, and the champion of each conference tournament is assured a place in the NCAA tournament... with a major exception noted in the next paragraph. Through the 2015–16 season, the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague granted its automatic bid to the team with the best record,[[note]]though occasionally one-game playoffs were needed when there was a tie, as in 2011 and 2015[[/note]] but the Ivies started holding their own conference tournament in 2016–17.\\\

Throughout TheSixties and TheSeventies the NCAA tournament was only open to conference champions and a few highly-ranked independent schools, with a total field of around two dozen teams. Eventually everyone recognized that this restriction was leaving a lot of good teams out of the tournament. In particular, the plights of USC in 1971 (the Trojans finished 24-2 and were clearly the second best team in the country, but UCLA's dynasty was in full gear and they took the Pac-8 title) and Maryland in 1974 (ranked #4 in the country, the Terrapins had nowhere to go after a crushing overtime loss in the ACC tournament title game against NC State) helped spur the NCAA to start handing out at-large bids. 1975 saw the NCAA field expand to 32 teams, a move that solidified it as the premier postseason tournament, demoting the NIT (see below) to also-ran status. Since 2011, the base of the tournament structure has involved up to 68 teams[[note]]starting with 32 teams, in 1979 it was expanded to 48 teams, expanded to 64 in 1984, 65 in 2001, and the current 68 in 2011[[/note]] divided into four groups and seeded within each group. Number 1 plays number 16, 2 plays 15, and so on. The tournament added a play-in game, in which two small schools play for a 16th seed, in 2001. Since 2011, there has been a new series of four games, the First Four, held in Dayton, Ohio (except for the first post-COVID tournament in 2021, when the NCAA moved the entire tournament to Indiana).[[note]]The VCU Rams made history in the very first year of the First Four's existence, going all the way from the First Four to the Final Four. The UCLA Bruins matched that feat in 2021.[[/note]] Two of the games feature the four lowest-ranked conference champions playing for #16 seeds. The other two involve the four lowest-ranked at-large entries; they most often play for #11 seeds (18 times through 2023), though in the past they have played for #12 (four times), #13 (once), and #14 seeds (once). Confused yet here?\\\

After 68 teams are chosen to play selected and seeded, the announcement of the field is made one Sunday in mid-March on CBS, it's time for people from across America from all walks of life--up to and including a certain [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama former president]][[note]]Not terribly surprising, given that he's a former college basketball player himself (University of Hawaii) who's been known to play basketball to blow off steam--often against his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who led the Harvard Crimson in the late '80s and played pro ball in Australia for four years[[/note]]--to pick the teams they think will win each game by "filling out the bracket." This is done for fun, but some play betting games and hold office pools, which the NCAA (officially) looks down on. The study of the bracket is often referred to as "bracketology".\\\

* '''University of Southern California''': USC, or the Women of Troy. At their peak in the mid-'80s, their stars included the [=McGee=] twins, Pamela and Paula (if you're an NBA geek, you might recognize Pamela's son [=JaVale=], and if you're a WNBA geek you may recognize Pamela's daughter Imani [=McGee-Stafford=]), Cheryl Miller (if you follow basketball at all, you probably recognize her kid brother Reggie), and Cynthia Cooper. They had a renaissance in the mid-'90s, then faded out. Cooper was their head coach for four seasons until stepping down after the 2016–17 season.

* '''Stanford''': The Cardinal (yes, Cardinal, the color, not the bird) was the lone representative of high-quality women's basketball on the West Coast for a loooong time until the very recent emergence of other Pac-12 schools, such as Oregon (thanks largely to Sabrina Ionescu; see the WNBA section), Oregon State, and Arizona (whom the Cardinal narrowly defeated for the 2021 title). Three-time national champions and several more times bridesmaid, they're coached by Tara [=VanDerveer=], who became the second D-I women's head coach with 1,000 wins in 2017 and passed Pat Summitt for the most wins by a D-I head coach in 2020, with Auriemma hot on her heels. The Cardinal's 2021 championship ended the program's and [=VanDerveer's=] ''29-year'' title drought—the longest gap between titles for any NCAA Division I coach ''in any sport'', not just basketball. They ended [=UConn's=] 90-game winning streak.[[note]]Stanford was also the last team to defeat the Huskies before they started their 111-game overall and 126-game regular-season streaks.[[/note]] You might not want to mention [[BerserkButton Harvard]] around them. [[note]]In 1998, Harvard upset Stanford in the first round of the NCAA Women's Tournament, making the Crimson the first No. 16 seed to win a tournament game (a feat that wasn't matched in the men's tournament until 2018). And to boot, first-round games were played on the home court of the higher seed at the time.[[/note]]

* '''South Carolina''': The two-time national champion Gamecocks emerged in the last half of the 2010s as the SEC's new kid on the block with double Hall of Fame player Dawn Staley as head coach. They've made every NCAA tournament since 2012, missing the Sweet Sixteen only once in that span, with four Final Fours and the 2017 and '22 national titles as well, in the latter season becoming the only team ever to beat [=UConn=] in a national title game. Not to mention they were the top-ranked team when COVID scuttled the 2020 tournament; Carolina claims a mythical national title from that season. Current WNBA superstar A'ja Wilson was the biggest star of the first title team, with Aliyah Boston, star of the 2020s teams, ready to join her in WNBA superstardom as the top overall pick in the 2023 WNBA draft and that year's unanimous Rookie of the Year. The Gamecocks suffered rare tastes of defeat when they were upset by Kentucky in the 2022 SEC Championship Game, and again when one Caitlin Clark torched them for 41 points to lead Iowa to an upset in the 2023 NCAA semifinals, spoiling a previously unbeaten season.

[=UConn=] and Tennessee [[TheRival are fiercely opposed to each other]]. The rivalry became an annual series, until Summitt ended it in 2007, accusing Connecticut of improper recruiting. Many attempts were made to reconcile the two sides, or at least have them meet in the NCAA tournament. It took the ''Naismith Hall'' to broker a deal to have them play again; they finally played again in 2020 and 2021, and kept the series going through at least 2023. Neither is particularly fond of Rutgers. And the Huskies are not totally fond of Notre Dame these days (though the Irish are at worst a SitcomArchNemesis, and perhaps even {{Worthy Opponent}}s).\\\

* '''Indiana Fever''': Founded in 2000, named for Indiana's well-known basketball obsession. Saved from potential folding with a run to the 2009 Finals, and then won the 2012 Finals. Was projected to make its first profit in 2013 and remained a competitive force until the end of the 2010s. They share the Indiana Pacers' home of Gainbridge Fieldhouse in UsefulNotes/{{Indianapolis}} (though renovations displaced them for part of the early 2020s).

** '''Elena Delle Donne''':[[labelnote:*]]Her family name is "Delle Donne", pronounced "DEL-uh DON".[[/labelnote]] Perhaps the most positionally versatile player ever in the women's game, the Delaware product, who spent her first four WNBA seasons with the Chicago Sky before being dealt to the Washington Mystics in the 2017 offseason, is listed as a guard and forward—despite being the size of most WNBA centers (6'5"/1.96 m). Center, power forward, small forward, shooting guard, point guard, swingman, stretch four, point forward, combo guard... you name it, [[FanNickname EDD]] can play it. With her arrival, the Sky [[TookALevelInBadass took multiple levels in badass]] and became legitimate title contenders... until the Fever swept them out in the first round. In 2013, EDD was the first rookie ever to be the top vote-getter for the All-Star Game, and was also the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year. In 2015, she led the league in scoring and free throw percentage (unheard of for center-sized players), and earned MVP honors. In 2017, she forced a trade to the Mystics, the closest team to her Delaware home (significance noted below), and led the team to its first-ever WNBA Finals berth in 2018 and first title in 2019. She was also league MVP in the latter season on the strength of the first 50–40–90 season[[note]]shooting at least 50% from the field, 40% on three-pointers, and 90% on free throws[[/note]] in league history. Not to mention leading the league in jersey sales in 2019. EDD, the first player to be named WNBA MVP for two different teams, is also the current career free-throw percentage leader in league history (and has a better percentage than ''anyone in NBA history'' by a fairly wide margin).[[note]]The margin between EDD and current NBA leader Steph Curry is larger than the difference between Curry and ''18th place'' in the all-time NBA list.[[/note]] Back problems mostly scuttled her 2021 season, but she came back strong in 2022 (with her minutes carefully managed).

** '''Skylar Diggins-Smith''': Was a superstar point guard at Notre Dame, where she graduated as the school's second-leading career scorer. Known for her charisma and good looks, Diggins (now Diggins-Smith) was hyped as the next great WNBA point guard after she was drafted by the then-Tulsa Shock in 2013. She got off to a slow start in her debut rookie season, however, shooting way below her points average from college. Lived up to expectations in 2014, being named first-team All-WNBA and the league's most improved player, as well as being an All-Star starter. Missed most of the 2015 season to a torn ACL, but came back strong, becoming another perennial All-Star. Another rare example of a WNBA star who doesn't play overseas, in her case because she has enough endorsement and outside business income to not need it, although she was considering playing in China in 2015–16 before her ACL injury. Missed the 2019 season while pregnant with her first child; when she became a free agent in 2020, the Wings sent her to the Mercury in a sign-and-trade deal during that offseason, getting three draft picks in return.
* '''Sabrina Ionescu''' joined the league in 2020 as ''the'' face of American women's basketball, starting her pro career with the New York Liberty as the first overall pick out of Oregon and having already entered FirstNameBasis.[[note]]She's the only D-I player, male or female, with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 1,000 assists in a college career... for now. Iowa's Caitlin Clark will almost certainly join her in that club in 2023–24 barring misfortune.[[/note]] Unfortunately, her rookie season came to a premature end, as she went down with a severe ankle sprain in the Libs' third game in the COVID bubble. When the league came back to home markets in 2021, Sabrina didn't take long to have a signature moment. In her first game in Brooklyn, she sank a buzzer-beating game-winning three. Two games later, she became the youngest WNBA player to record a triple-double. However, she was still recovering from the previous season's injury, putting up solid but not spectacular numbers for the rest of the season. She still ended up with the league's top-selling jersey in 2021, also appearing in a couple of commercials for State Farm Insurance alongside NBA superstar PG Chris Paul. Finally fully healthy in 2022, Ionescu picked up where she left off after her 2020 injury, first becoming the most recent of four players with a second career triple-double (achieving that one while ''sitting out the fourth quarter'') and then becoming the second after Candace Parker (below) with two triple-doubles in a season and three in a career. And also becoming the first W player ever with [[MasterOfAll 500 points, 200 rebounds, and 200 assists]] in a season.[[note]]It doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind two facts: (1) the WNBA regular season was 36 games in 2022 (increased to 40 for 2023), compared to the NBA's 82, and (2) regulation WNBA games last only 40 minutes instead of the NBA's 48.[[/note]] In 2023, she set a new W single-season record for three-pointers (although the league's expansion to 40 games helped); blew away the field in the All-Star Game three-point contest, making all but two of her 30 final-round attempts for a record 37 points; and got her own signature shoe ''and'' apparel line from Nike, all being marketed as ''unisex'' (though the shoes don't come in larger men's sizes).

* '''Kelsey Plum''': Drafted by the San Antonio Stars #1 overall in 2017 after breaking the D-I women's basketball all-time scoring record (since surpassed) while at Washington, the point guard mad the move with the team when they moved to become the Las Vegas Aces the next year, sticking around as a core part of the team as they built towards their back-to-back titles in 2022-23.

The biggest part of college basketball is the special feeling that sweeps the nation for the NCAA tournament, a time and a feeling known as March Madness. Also known as The Big Dance, it is commonly considered the first major sporting even in the American sports calendar after the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl[[note]]except by UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} fans, who would say "after the Daytona 500"[[/note]] and sometimes winds up being even ''more'' of a party since the tournament is spread across three weeks. As is the case with other sports postseasons, this is when teams get by far the most attention they will get all year. Since 1987, it even has its own television [[EndingTheme closing theme song,]] "One Shining Moment" which accompanies a [[HardWorkMontage montage of memorable events across the tournament]] as the [[FinaleCredits credits roll]].\\\

The biggest part of college basketball is the special feeling that sweeps the nation for the NCAA tournament, a time and a feeling known as March Madness. Also known as The Big Dance, it is commonly considered the first major sporting even in the American sports calendar after the UsefulNotes/SuperBowl[[note]]except by UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} fans, who would say "after the Daytona 500"[[/note]] and sometimes winds up being even ''more'' of a party since the tournament is spread across three weeks. As is the case with other sports postseasons, this is when teams get by far the most attention they will get all year.\\\

* '''UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} Sky''': Founded in 2006, notable for being the first franchise to be founded without NBA ties. Named for the Chicago skyline. They made an especially strong run in 2011, [[EveryYearTheyFizzleOut but never made a playoff appearance]] until picking up college superstar Elena Delle Donne in 2013. During [[FanNickname EDD's]] time in Chicago, their flameouts came in the playoffs (first-round exit, swept in the Finals, first-round exit, second-round exit). They slid back to mediocrity after her departure to Washington, but rebounded once Courtney Vandersloot made a habit of setting new WNBA single-season assist records, and the arrival of Candace Parker in 2021 was followed by their first-ever title.

* '''Sheryl Swoopes''': One of the game's greats, originally assigned to the Houston Comets, later with the Seattle Storm and, after a two-year retirement, the Tulsa Shock for one final season in 2011. A brilliant defensive player and incredible slasher in her prime. Her marriage to her high school sweetheart and pregnancy with son Jordan was [[HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday heavily marketed by the league]]. Revealed in 2005 that she was gay and in a relationship with her former assistant coach Alisa Scott. Now remarried to a man. If you're having trouble keeping up, you're not the only one. After retiring for good, she went into coaching; she had been the head coach at Loyola University Chicago before being fired during the 2016 offseason amid allegations of mistreatment of players. Entered the Naismith Hall in 2016 and the Women's Hall in 2017. Also of note is that she was the first WNBA player ever to collect a triple-double, and one of only four to have had more than one in the league;[[note]]for a long time, she was the ''only'' one with multiple triple-doubles[[/note]] her other triple-double was the first (and for a long time only} one in playoff history.

* '''Sabrina Ionescu''' joined the league in 2020 as ''the'' face of American women's basketball, starting her pro career with the New York Liberty as the first overall pick out of Oregon and having already entered FirstNameBasis.[[note]]She's the only D-I player, male or female, with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 1,000 assists in a college career... for now. Iowa's Caitlin Clark will almost certainly join her in that club in 2023–24 barring misfortune.[[/note]] Unfortunately, her rookie season came to a premature end, as she went down with a severe ankle sprain in the Libs' third game in the COVID bubble. When the league came back to home markets in 2021, Sabrina didn't take long to have a signature moment. In her first game in Brooklyn, she sank a buzzer-beating game-winning three. Two games later, she became the most recent (at that time) WNBA player with a triple-double, doing so in her sixth game. The previous league record for fastest triple-double was held by Swoopes, whose first came in her 59th career game. However, she was still recovering from the previous season's injury, putting up solid but not spectacular numbers for the rest of the season. She still ended up with the league's top-selling jersey in 2021, also appearing in a couple of commercials for State Farm Insurance alongside NBA superstar PG Chris Paul. Finally fully healthy in 2022, Ionescu picked up where she left off after her 2020 injury, first becoming the most recent of four players with a second career triple-double (achieving that one while ''sitting out the fourth quarter'') and then becoming the second after Candace Parker (below) with two triple-doubles in a season and three in a career. And also becoming the first W player ever with [[MasterOfAll 500 points, 200 rebounds, and 200 assists]] in a season.[[note]]It doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind two facts: (1) the WNBA regular season was 36 games in 2022 (increased to 40 for 2023), compared to the NBA's 82, and (2) regulation WNBA games last only 40 minutes instead of the NBA's 48.[[/note]] In 2023, she set a new W single-season record for three-pointers (although the league's expansion to 40 games helped); blew away the field in the All-Star Game three-point contest, making all but two of her 30 final-round attempts for a record 37 points; and got her own signature shoe ''and'' apparel line from Nike, all being marketed as ''unisex'', though the shoes don't come in larger men's sizes.

''Note'': The first year of the WNBA had only one championship game, where winner takes all. After that, the WNBA had a best-of-three series until 2005, when the championship series became best-of-five. Also, keep in mind that the WNBA begins their season in the middle of the year. Also, since 2016, the league has not used conference affiliation to determine playoff spots; the top eight teams in the regular season, regardless of conference, make the playoffs. (Since then, three finals matchups have been East vs. West, namely 2018, 2021, and 2022.)

There are 1,400-or-so four-year colleges in the United States[[note]]Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, just outside UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, is the NCAA's sole non-American school. The University of the Bahamas is reportedly seeking NAIA membership, and the Mexican school CETYS is reportedly seeking NCAA membership.[[/note]] who field varsity basketball teams. Around 1,100 of them are members of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), which splits its membership into three divisions. Most of the rest belong to the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics). About 360 schools' teams make up NCAA Division I, the top level of college basketball.[[note]]As of the next college season in 2023–24, 362 on the men's side, and 360 women's teams: Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, being predominantly male [[MilitaryAcademy military academies]], don't have women's teams. Both totals are down by one from 2022–23—Hartford dropped to Division III and St. Francis Brooklyn shut down its entire athletic program, while Le Moyne began a transition from Division II to Division I.[[/note]] Essentially all of them[[note]]One school is playing as an independent in 2023–24. Chicago State left the Western Athletic Conference, in which it was a major geographic outlier, after the 2021–22 season, but will join the Northeast Conference in July 2024. The previously noted Hartford began a transition from D-I to D-III in 2021–22 and played as a D-I indy before aligning fully with D-III in 2023. Before that, the last D-I school to compete as a basketball independent was NJIT, or the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which [[TheScrappy got left behind]] in the early-2010s conference realignment shuffle and was forced to play the 2013–14 and 2014–15 seasons as such. It finally found a home in the ASUN Conference, and has since moved on to the America East.[[/note]] play in one of 32 conferences. After each team has played somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 games each season, each conference has its own tournament, and the champion of each conference tournament is assured a place in the NCAA tournament... with a major exception noted in the next paragraph. Through the 2015–16 season, the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague granted its automatic bid to the team with the best record,[[note]]though occasionally one-game playoffs were needed when there was a tie, as in 2011 and 2015[[/note]] but the Ivies started holding their own conference tournament in 2016–17.\\\

* The second reason is if the team represents a school that is transitioning from a lower NCAA division (almost always Division II) to Division I. Such a transition requires four years,[[labelnote:*]]St. Thomas, a Twin Cities school making an unprecedented move straight from D-III to D-I, is getting the same four-year time frame used for transitions from D-II to D-I.[[/labelnote]] during which time the school is barred from NCAA-sponsored postseason play—either the NCAA men's or women's tournament, the men's NIT, or the newly launched (women's) WBIT. This issue has arisen three times in the 2020s:

Another difference is that since the 2021 season, the WNBA has held a mid-season tournament, a rare feature in major US team sports.[[note]]Unheard of in football, baseball, hockey, or for the longest time the NBA. Long before [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]] or even the original NASL, men's soccer has had the U.S. Open Cup, analogous to [[UsefulNotes/BritishFootyTeams England's]] [[UsefulNotes/TheFACup FA Cup]]. The National Women's Soccer League has the NWSL Challenge Cup, but it's not an exact equivalent to the U.S. Open Cup. Even with a format change in 2023 to hold it during the regular season, it's open only to NWSL teams, making it a closer but not exact equivalent to England's EFL Cup. In 2023, the Leagues Cup, previously a low-profile invitational tournament involving select teams from MLS and Mexico's Liga MX, expanded to include all teams from the two leagues. The NBA added a mid-season tournament in 2023–24, conducted in a slightly different format from the Commissioner's Cup. All games in both the NBA and WNBA tournaments, except the championship finals, count as regular-season games.[[/note]] Through 2023, the Commissioner's Cup started with 10 regular-season games for each team, specifically the first home and away games against each other team in its conference. In 2024, this will be reduced to 5 games, one against each in-conference team (with two or three at home), all in the first half of June. After all teams play their Cup games, the teams that top each conference in the Cup standings advance to a one-off Cup final. The Cup was planned to debut in 2020 before COVID-19 got in the way.\\\

* The '''WNBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player''' is just that. Like the seasonal playing awards, voted on by the media, in this case immediately after the game so that the trophy can be handed out in the postgame festivities. Unlike the NBA's ASG, which is held every season, the WNBA version hasn't been held in every season. From 2004 through 2020, no game was held in any Olympic year. In 2010, the ASG was replaced by a game between Team USA and a WNBA all-star team; that game is not considered an official ASG. The same format was followed in 2021, serving as a warm-up for Team USA prior to the delayed Tokyo Olympics; unlike the 2010 game, this one ''was'' an official ASG. Lisa Leslie and Maya Moore have the most awards, each with three.

Another difference is that since the 2021 season, the WNBA has held a mid-season tournament, a rare feature in major US team sports.[[note]]Unheard of in football, baseball, hockey, or for the longest time the NBA. Long before [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]] or even the original NASL, men's soccer has had the U.S. Open Cup, analogous to [[UsefulNotes/BritishFootyTeams England's]] [[UsefulNotes/TheFACup FA Cup]]. The National Women's Soccer League has the NWSL Challenge Cup, but it's not an exact equivalent to the U.S. Open Cup. Even with a format change in 2023 to hold it during the regular season, it's open only to NWSL teams, making it a closer but not exact equivalent to England's EFL Cup. In 2023, the Leagues Cup, previously a low-profile invitational tournament involving select teams from MLS and Mexico's Liga MX, expanded to include all teams from the two leagues. The NBA added a mid-season tournament in 2023–24, conducted in a slightly different format from the Commissioner's Cup. All games in both the NBA and WNBA tournaments, except the championship finals, count as regular-season games.[[/note]] The Commissioner's Cup starts with 10 regular-season games for each team, specifically the first home and away games against each other team in its conference. After all teams play their 10 Cup games, the teams that top each conference in the Cup standings advance to a one-off Cup final in August. The Cup was planned to debut in 2020 before COVID-19 got in the way.\\\

* Point forward – As the name implies, a small forward who possesses strong enough ballhandling skills and general knowledge of the game's fundamentals to be able to run a team's offense and defense as a point guard. (Arguably, Nikola Jokić can be termed a point ''center'', though that concept hasn't really taken hold in the basketball community.)

Competitively, basketball is played worldwide on near-all levels. However, it is most popular in North America, where it, over the past fifty years, has steadfastly been neck-and-neck with baseball for second place, after American Football; the Philippines, where it's by far the most popular sport; and the Baltics, with Latvia winning the first ever Eurobasket and hosting it in 2015, producing several European basketball and NBA stars like Jānis Krūmiņš, Maigonis Valdmanis, Valdis Muižnieks, Valdis Valters, Igors Miglinieks, Gundars Vētra, Andris Biedriņš, Kristaps Porziņģis and Dāvis Bertāns, and ASK Riga winning the [=EuroLeague=] three times in a row before becoming defunct, and Lithuania winning Eurobasket three times, hosting it twice, winning the [=EuroLeague=] once, earning 8 other medals in the Eurobasket, the World Championships and the Olympic Games, the men's national team having extremely high TV ratings with three quarters of the country's population watching their games live in 2014, and producing several NBA players, including the father-son pair of Arvydas and Domantas Sabonis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, and Jonas Valančiūnas. The elder Sabonis and Marčiulionis are both in the Naismith Hall of Fame. Quite close behind are the Balkans, in particular Serbia, where the sport goes neck to neck with football; some of the more notable Serbian (or of Serbian origin but living elsewhere) players include Vlade Divac, Pe(d)ja Stojakovic, Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić.

International basketball is governed by FIBA (a name taken from the French acronym for "International Basketball Federation", Fédération Internationale de Basketball; pronounced FEE-ba), a body based in Switzerland.[[note]]FIBA originally stood for "International Amateur Basketball Federation". When the international game opened itself to professional players, the governing body dropped "Amateur" from its name, but kept the acronym because it still worked in French.[[/note]] Near-all leagues around the world play under FIBA's rules, with the main exceptions being those based in the US. The Philippine Basketball Association uses a mashup of FIBA and NBA rules. The Basketball Tournament (TBT), a 64-team men's event held in the US during the offseason with a $1 million winner-take-all prize, uses NCAA rules with some unique modifications. That said, the rule sets aren't all that different. The main differences in the rule sets are:

* Lithuania: A former Soviet Republic where basketball seems to be the only sport practiced. Some famous NBA players were born here, including [=LeBron=]'s buddy Žydrūnas Ilgauskas, and the legendary Arvydas Sabonis (7'3"), who could have been the best player ever if he hadn't often been injured.[[note]] He still had the best stats in NBA for the minutes he was playing at age 35, after suffering a rupture of both Achilles tendons, and was then basically playing without jumping nor running. In fact, when he came to Portland in 1995, the Blazers' team doctor told the GM that Sabonis ''would qualify for a {{handicapped|Badass}} parking space based solely on his leg X-rays!''[[/note]] A few other Lithuanians, among them Arvydas' son Domantas, play in the NBA; many others play in major European teams. The domestic league is usually a battle between Žalgiris, the elder Sabonis' old club from Kaunas, and Rytas, from the capital city of Vilnius.

* Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia: Formerly known altogether as Yugoslavia, they are, along with Team USA, the most successful team in Basketball World Cups, each with 5 golds. Always have a tough national team, and they are able to beat almost anybody, even after the collapse of the original country. Home to players like Darko Miličić, Peja Stojaković, Goran Dragić, and Luka Dončić, known for their tenacity and accuracy beyond the three-point line. Slovenia won a surprise [=EuroBasket=] title in 2017 behind Dragić (who had previously announced this would be his international finale) and then-teenage sensation Dončić, and Serbia finished second at the 2023 World Cup despite two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić sitting out.
** While they were still Yugoslavia, their team was dominated by close friends Vlade Divac (a Serb) and Dražen Petrović (a Croat) who were later both signed to the NBA, but after the split of Yugoslava and Divac throwing a Croatian flag[[note]]Divac claimed in an ESPN ''30 for 30'' documentary that if the guy who approached the team on the floor was waving a ''Serbian'' flag, he would still have thrown it to the ground, because he wasn't too happy with that basketball game being politicized as it was[[/note]], the two stopped talking and Divac was never able to patch up his relationship with Petrović before Petrović died in a [[DownerEnding car accident in Germany]].

* Argentina: Dominates the sport in South America—or at least did until the core players from their heyday in the early 21st century got old, though they're still no pushovers, as evidenced by a silver medal at the 2019 World Cup. Was the first world champion, and grabbed the Olympic gold in Athens 2004. Were FIBA's #1 after the Beijing Olympics, but now are #4. Better known for Hall of Famer Manu Ginóbili, who won four NBA titles with the San Antonio Spurs, led the 2004 gold-medal team, and also made it into the World Championship All-Tournament team twice, in 2002 and 2006.
** Before Argentina, there was Brazil: A potency in the 1950s and 1960s, with two World Championships and two Olympic bronzes (plus a third in 1948). In the '80s and '90s, it was the team of Oscar Schmidt, who holds the world record for points scored with 49,702[[note]]the NBA's leader, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 38,387[[/note]], many of them thanks to his three-point shooting proficiency. But the team has struggled since Schmidt's retirement in 1996, specially because volleyball started to take basketball's popularity in Brazil. However, the country brought out some good NBA players in Nenê, Leandro Barbosa, Anderson Varejão and Tiago Splitter[[note]]Quick bit of trivia: Schmidt himself was picked by the New Jersey Nets in the 1984 Draft, but he refused because he wanted to keep playing for the Brazilian team - at the time, since international basketball was amateur, NBA players could not represent their countries in the international arena[[/note]], and they qualified for the 2012 Olympics after three non-appearances - in which Brazil nearly trumped rival Argentina in the quarterfinals.

* Turkey: They may have only four or five notable teams found in this country (Anadolu Efes and Fenerbahçe usually being the big two, with Beşiktaş gaining some recent notice due to them grabbing big-name NBA players like Allen Iverson and Deron Williams, and Galatasaray and Karşıyaka also picking up recent titles), but they also have some good players that came from there like Hedo Türkoğlu, Mehmet Okur, Ersan İlyasova, Ömer Aşık, Semih Erden, and recent Turk Enes Kanter Freedom[[labelnote:*]]who adopted "Freedom" as his new surname upon becoming a US citizen in November 2021; see his entry in the "Real Life" folder of TheStateless for more details[[/labelnote]]. Basically, they gained interest in basketball starting in 2001 when they got a silver medal in the European Tournament and will more likely than not gain ''more'' interest with ''another'' silver medal while being the hosts for the 2010 FIBA World Championships.

** Turkey: Anadolu Efes, Fenerbahçe

There are 1,400-or-so four-year colleges in the United States[[note]]Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, just outside UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}}, is the NCAA's sole non-American school. The University of the Bahamas is reportedly seeking NAIA membership, and the Mexican school CETYS is reportedly seeking NCAA membership.[[/note]] who field varsity basketball teams. Around 1,100 of them are members of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), which splits its membership into three divisions. Most of the rest belong to the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics). About 360 schools' teams make up NCAA Division I, the top level of college basketball.[[note]]As of the next college season in 2023–24, 362 on the men's side, and 360 women's teams: Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, being predominantly male [[MilitaryAcademy military academies]], don't have women's teams. Both totals are down by one from 2022–23—Hartford dropped to Division III and St. Francis Brooklyn shut down its entire athletic program, while Le Moyne began a transition from Division II to Division I.[[/note]] Essentially all of them[[note]]One school is expected to play as an independent in 2023–24. Chicago State left the Western Athletic Conference, in which it was a major geographic outlier, after the 2021–22 season; it has yet to find a new conference home. The previously noted Hartford began a transition from D-I to D-III in 2021–22 and played as a D-I indy before aligning fully with D-III in 2023. Before that, the last D-I school to compete as a basketball independent was NJIT, or the New Jersey Institute of Technology, which [[TheScrappy got left behind]] in the early-2010s conference realignment shuffle and was forced to play the 2013–14 and 2014–15 seasons as such. It finally found a home in the ASUN Conference, and has since moved on to the America East.[[/note]] play in one of 32 conferences. After each team has played somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 games each season, each conference has its own tournament, and the champion of each conference tournament is assured a place in the NCAA tournament... with a major exception noted in the next paragraph. Through the 2015–16 season, the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague granted its automatic bid to the team with the best record,[[note]]though occasionally one-game playoffs were needed when there was a tie, as in 2011 and 2015[[/note]] but the Ivies started holding their own conference tournament in 2016–17.\\\

* ''All-Rookie Team:'' Aliyah Boston, F/C, Fever; Jordan Horston, G/F, Storm; Dorka Juhász, F, Lynx; Diamond Miller, F, Lynx; Li Meng, G, Mystics

* '''Sue Bird''': Point guard for the Seattle Storm from her 2002 selection out of [=UConn=] as the #1 overall pick until her retirement [[LongRunners in 2022]]. The quintessential GirlNextDoor- if the girl next door could find you blind on the fast break or drain a dagger three in your face. Her especially clutch play in 2011 earned her the FanNickname "Die complaines". Bird is the WNBA's all-time leader in seasons played, games played, and total assists, but doesn't have the per-game assists record (see Courtney Vandersloot below). She and fellow [=UConn=] alum Diana Taurasi (below) are the only two basketball players with five Olympic gold medals, and Bird herself is the only player, male or female, with four golds and five total medals in the FIBA World Cup. Also half of one of American sports' most prominent power couples, as the long-term partner (and now fiancée) of US women's soccer star Megan Rapinoe, and began appearing in commercials for national used-car dealer [=CarMax=] in 2021. Bird is also the [[CoolOldLady oldest player]] ever to play in a full WNBA season; her final game in the 2022 playoffs was about six weeks before her 42nd birthday.[[note]]The oldest player to appear in a WNBA game was Nancy Lieberman (the namesake of the best-known award for top D-I PG), who appeared in a single game in 2008 at age 50.[[/note]]

* ''Brazil'': The gender dynamic of basketball and soccer is, for the most part, reversed between Brazil and the US, which has resulted in Brazil being a world power in women's basketball for a looooong time. Like other Brazilian athletes, they are best known by their first names or nicknames ("apelidos"). Their legends include Magic Paula (real name Maria Paula da Silva, and yes, the nickname comes from Earvin Johnson's), Hortência Marcari and Janeth Arcain; current stars include Érika de Souza and Damiris Dantas.

While the NCAA tournament is the sport's official championship, there are some other postseason events. Most notable among these is the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which is actually one year older than the NCAA tournament (the first NIT was 1938, the first NCAA was 1939[[labelnote:*]]Though that 1939 tournament was actually organized by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the trade association for college men's coaches, the NCAA took it over the next year, and [[{{Retcon}} recognizes the 1939 NABC event as its own]].[[/labelnote]]). It had been run outside of NCAA control until the NCAA bought it in 2006. For the first part of its history, all NIT games were played at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which gave schools important media exposure in the era before widespread television coverage of sports. Up until the end of TheFifties, the NIT was considered the equal of the NCAA tournament, but as the NCAA tournament started expanding, the NIT's importance gradually faded, and it became a tournament for teams not quite good enough to make the Big Dance. The NIT started expanding as well, finally settling on 32 teams, with early rounds played at home arenas, while the semifinals and championship game were still at Madison Square Garden through 2022. (Again, except in 2021, when the NCAA reduced the field to 16 and moved the tournament to Dallas–Fort Worth.) The NCAA has announced that for at least the 2023 and 2024 editions, the NIT semifinals and final would not be in NYC; Las Vegas hosted in 2023 and Indianapolis will do so in 2024. The 2024 edition will see a major change to the NIT selection process—the NCAA has scrapped its recent practice of giving an automatic NIT invite to any conference champion that fails to win its conference tournament and doesn't make the NCAA field. Instead, the consensus top six conferences in men's basketball (the [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballPower5Conferences Power Five conferences]] plus the Big East) receive two autobids each, which go to the top two teams from each league that don't make the NCAA tournament (as determined by the computer ranking the NCAA uses as its primary tournament selection tool)... ''regardless of regular-season record.''[[note]]This change was made to preempt Fox Sports' reported plan for a future tournament involving the top 16 teams from the Big East, Big Ten, and Big 12 that didn't make the NCAA tournament.[[/note]] The remaining 20 teams are selected on a purely at-large basis, with deference given to NCAA's official "first four out" (i.e., the four teams that were atop the selection committee's ranking of teams that didn't get in the Big Dance). The 12 automatic qualifiers, plus the top four teams from the remaining 20 entrants, host first-round games. The NIT champ is sometimes derisively called the "69th best team in the country".[[note]]However, it is argued that an NIT winner could probably best some of the teams which only made it in the Big Dance as conference champions.[[/note]] There's also the College Basketball Invitational, featuring 16 teams with all games at a single venue; that event invites members of power conferences sometimes, but in the past few years none of them have shown up. Two other postseason tournaments have been played in this century, but both have gone belly-up. The Basketball Classic, an effective 2022 rebranding of the [=CollegeInsider.com=] Postseason Tournament (normally 32 teams; made a point of not even inviting teams from major conferences), wasn't renewed after its 2022 edition. The Vegas 16 (which had an [[NonIndicativeName 8-team]] field but was aiming for 16), tried to revive the old NIT format of all games at a single venue, but folded after only one edition in 2016. Collectively, they are pretty much college basketball's equivalent to those otherwise non-important bowl games whose only purpose are to give Creator/{{ESPN}} something to do in mid-December. The majority of fans never take them seriously, and teams turn down those bids regularly. The NIT is generally considered to be the best of these tournaments, and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane have frequently promoted their two NIT wins as being part of their "championship tradition". Some recent Cinderella runs in the NIT (Cal State Bakersfield making the semifinals in 2017, [[UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}} Lipscomb]] making the championship game in 2019) have brought some renewed attention to that tournament. The COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the 2020 editions of all of these events and also scuttled the 2021 CIT.\\\

* '''South Carolina''': The two-time national champion Gamecocks emerged in the last half of the 2010s as the SEC's new kid on the block with double Hall of Fame player Dawn Staley as head coach. They've made every NCAA tournament since 2012, missing the Sweet Sixteen only once in that span, with four Final Fours and the 2017 and '22 national titles as well, in the latter season becoming the only team ever to beat [=UConn=] in a national title game. Not to mention they were the top-ranked team when COVID scuttled the 2020 tournament; Carolina claims a mythical national title from that season. Current WNBA superstar A'ja Wilson was the biggest star of the first title team, with Aliyah Boston, star of the 2020s teams, likely to join her in WNBA superstardom as the top overall pick in the 2023 WNBA draft. The Gamecocks suffered rare tastes of defeat when they were upset by Kentucky in the 2022 SEC Championship Game, and again when one Caitlin Clark torched them for 41 points to lead Iowa to an upset in the 2023 NCAA semifinals, spoiling a previously unbeaten season.

* '''Academic All-America Team Member of the Year''': The sport's BadassBookworm award, presented by College Sports Communicators[[note]] (known before 2022–23 as the College Sports Information Directors of America)[[/note]] since 1988 for both men and women. CSC names "Academic All-Americans" in five men's and five women's sports, as well as "at-large" men's and women's teams covering all other NCAA championship sports, based both on academic accomplishment and excellence of play (but greatly emphasizing the academic side). In basketball, three levels of Academic All-Americans are recognized, with one player from each sex recognized as the Team Member of the Year.
** ''Most recent winners'': Ben Vander Plas, Virginia (men);[[note]]Repeated from 2022, when he was playing for Ohio.[[/note]] Clark (women)[[note]]Went on to be named CSC's D-I Academic All-American of the Year across all sports.[[/note]]

* '''Old Dominion''': The Lady Monarchs, out of the Hampton Roads city of Norfolk, Virginia, were a dynasty of the early '80s, coached by the aforementioned Marianne Stanley. Its stars included Anne Donovan and Nancy Lieberman, both of whom are members of the Naismith and Women's Halls. When power schools were forced to pay more attention to women's sports, their star faded, though they are still a force in their conference.

While the NCAA tournament is the sport's official championship, there are some other postseason events. Most notable among these is the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which is actually one year older than the NCAA tournament (the first NIT was 1938, the first NCAA was 1939[[labelnote:*]]Though that 1939 tournament was actually organized by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the trade association for college men's coaches, the NCAA took it over the next year, and [[{{Retcon}} recognizes the 1939 NABC event as its own]].[[/labelnote]]). It had been run outside of NCAA control until the NCAA bought it in 2006. For the first part of its history, all NIT games were played at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which gave schools important media exposure in the era before widespread television coverage of sports. Up until the end of TheFifties, the NIT was considered the equal of the NCAA tournament, but as the NCAA tournament started expanding, the NIT's importance gradually faded, and it became a tournament for teams not quite good enough to make the Big Dance. The NIT started expanding as well, finally settling on 32 teams, with early rounds played at home arenas, while the semifinals and championship game were still at Madison Square Garden through 2022. (Again, except in 2021, when the NCAA reduced the field to 16 and moved the tournament to Dallas–Fort Worth.) The NCAA has announced that for at least the 2023 and 2024 editions, the NIT semifinals and final would not be in NYC; Las Vegas hosted in 2023 and Indianapolis will do so in 2024. The 2024 edition will see a major change to the NIT selection process—the NCAA has scrapped its recent practice of giving an automatic NIT invite to any conference champion that fails to win its conference tournament and doesn't make the NCAA field. Instead, the consensus top six conferences in men's basketball (the [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballPower5Conferences Power Five conferences]] plus the Big East) receive two autobids each, which go to the top two teams from each league that don't make the NCAA tournament (as determined by the computer ranking the NCAA uses as its primary tournament selection tool)... ''regardless of regular-season record.'' The remaining 20 teams are selected on a purely at-large basis, with deference given to NCAA's official "first four out" (i.e., the four teams that were atop the selection committee's ranking of teams that didn't get in the Big Dance). The 12 automatic qualifiers, plus the top four teams from the remaining 20 entrants, host first-round games. The NIT champ is sometimes derisively called the "69th best team in the country".[[note]]However, it is argued that an NIT winner could probably best some of the teams which only made it in the Big Dance as conference champions.[[/note]] There's also the College Basketball Invitational, featuring 16 teams with all games at a single venue; that event invites members of power conferences sometimes, but in the past few years none of them have shown up. Two other postseason tournaments have been played in this century, but both have gone belly-up. The Basketball Classic, an effective 2022 rebranding of the [=CollegeInsider.com=] Postseason Tournament (normally 32 teams; made a point of not even inviting teams from major conferences), wasn't renewed after its 2022 edition. The Vegas 16 (which had an [[NonIndicativeName 8-team]] field but was aiming for 16), tried to revive the old NIT format of all games at a single venue, but folded after only one edition in 2016. Collectively, they are pretty much college basketball's equivalent to those otherwise non-important bowl games whose only purpose are to give Creator/{{ESPN}} something to do in mid-December. The majority of fans never take them seriously, and teams turn down those bids regularly. The NIT is generally considered to be the best of these tournaments, and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane have frequently promoted their two NIT wins as being part of their "championship tradition". Some recent Cinderella runs in the NIT (Cal State Bakersfield making the semifinals in 2017, [[UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}} Lipscomb]] making the championship game in 2019) have brought some renewed attention to that tournament. The COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the 2020 editions of all of these events and also scuttled the 2021 CIT.\\\

D-I women have two (or maybe three) alternate tournaments as well. In 2023, the NCAA finally launched a direct counterpart to the men's NIT in the form of the Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT), whose first edition will be held in 2024. Like the men's NIT, the WBIT will feature 32 teams and will be directly run by the NCAA. The Women's National Invitation Tournament (WNIT) had been the acknowledged second-tier women's postseason event before the launch of the WBIT. With the WBIT now getting first dibs of teams that didn't make the Big Dance, the WNIT will drop from 64 teams to 48 in 2024. Unlike the men's NIT, the WNIT, established in 1998, has never been run by the NCAA. Before the reduction to a 48-team field, the WNIT had a slightly different structure from the men's equivalent, with all 32 Division I conferences having at least one guaranteed bid to the tournament, plus 32 at-large bids. The organizers of the WNIT haven't announced how that tournament will fill its field going forward. A third tournament run outside of direct NCAA control has been the Women's Basketball Invitational (WBI), launched in 2010 and featuring 8 teams, but it remains to be seen whether it will continue after the addition of the WBIT.\\\

While the NCAA tournament is the sport's official championship, there are some other postseason events. Most notable among these is the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which is actually one year older than the NCAA tournament (the first NIT was 1938, the first NCAA was 1939[[labelnote:*]]Though that 1939 tournament was actually organized by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the trade association for college men's coaches, the NCAA took it over the next year, and [[{{Retcon}} recognizes the 1939 NABC event as its own]].[[/labelnote]]). It had been run outside of NCAA control until the NCAA bought it in 2006. For the first part of its history, all NIT games were played at Madison Square Garden in New York City, which gave schools important media exposure in the era before widespread television coverage of sports. Up until the end of TheFifties, the NIT was considered the equal of the NCAA tournament, but as the NCAA tournament started expanding, the NIT's importance gradually faded, and it became a tournament for teams not quite good enough to make the Big Dance. The NIT started expanding as well, finally settling on 32 teams, with early rounds played at home arenas, while the semifinals and championship game were still at Madison Square Garden through 2022. (Again, except in 2021, when the NCAA reduced the field to 16 and moved the tournament to Dallas–Fort Worth.) The NCAA has announced that for at least the 2023 and 2024 editions, the NIT semifinals and final will not be in NYC, with Las Vegas set for 2023 and Indianapolis for 2024. Today, any conference champion that fails to win its conference tournament and doesn't make the NCAA field gets an automatic NIT invite (except in 2021, when the reduced field was all at-large), and the NCAA's official "first four out" (i.e., the four teams that were atop the selection committee's ranking of teams that didn't get in the Big Dance) become the top four NIT seeds. The NIT champ is sometimes derisively called the "69th best team in the country".[[note]]However, it is argued that an NIT winner could probably best some of the teams which only made it in the Big Dance as conference champions.[[/note]] There's also the College Basketball Invitational, featuring 16 teams with all games at a single venue; that event invites members of power conferences sometimes, but in the past few years none of them have shown up. Two other postseason tournaments have been played in this century, but both have gone belly-up. The Basketball Classic, an effective 2022 rebranding of the [=CollegeInsider.com=] Postseason Tournament (normally 32 teams; made a point of not even inviting teams from major conferences), wasn't renewed after its 2022 edition. The Vegas 16 (which had an [[NonIndicativeName 8-team]] field but was aiming for 16), tried to revive the old NIT format of all games at a single venue, but folded after only one edition in 2016. Collectively, they are pretty much college basketball's equivalent to those otherwise non-important bowl games whose only purpose are to give Creator/{{ESPN}} something to do in mid-December. The majority of fans never take them seriously, and teams turn down those bids regularly. The NIT is generally considered to be the best of these tournaments, and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane have frequently promoted their two NIT wins as being part of their "championship tradition". Some recent Cinderella runs in the NIT (Cal State Bakersfield making the semifinals in 2017, [[UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}} Lipscomb]] making the championship game in 2019) have brought some renewed attention to that tournament. The COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the 2020 editions of all of these events and also scuttled the 2021 CIT.\\\

As with the NBA and college basketball, the WNBA presents a boatload of awards at the end of the season. The specific awards are as follows. The "most recent winners" are from the 2023 season unless otherwise indicated; announcement dates for upcoming 2023 recipients are provided. Team affiliations reflect those in the season for which the award was presented. Except as indicated, all awards have been presented since the league's first season in 1997, and the voting body for all awards consists of media members. Unlike the NBA, which has gone the award-show route to present its awards (or at least ''did'' before COVID-19), the WNBA announces all awards separately.

** ''Most Recent Winner:'' Sylvia Fowles, C, Lynx (2022); ''2023 winner to be announced on October 24''

* '''Alyssa Thomas''': Forward for the Sun since 2014, when she was picked #4 overall out of Maryland, Thomas has become the most prominent among several players who became major triple-double threats in the post-COVID era—yes, even more so than Sabrina. For her first several season, she was a strong defender who regularly averaged double-figure points, but took major levels in badass in 2022. In that season, Thomas had four triple-doubles, two in the regular season and two in ''back-to-back'' Finals games, making her the W's career leader in that category and also the first ever to record one (much less two) in the Finals. The following year, she recorded six in the 2023 regular season and one more in the playoffs, and came pretty close to averaging a triple-double ''for the season''. Not to mention that she led the league in rebounds. Thomas made All-WNBA both seasons (second team in 2022, first team in 2023), and narrowly lost out on the season MVP award to Stewie.[[note]]Thomas actually had more first-place votes, but Stewie won on overall points.)[[/note]]

* '''UsefulNotes/LasVegas Aces''': The two-time defending WNBA champions, founded in 1997 as the UsefulNotes/{{Utah}} Starzz (named for their SpearCounterpart, the Utah Jazz, and the Jazz's precursor, the ABA's Utah Stars), moved to [[UsefulNotes/OtherCitiesInTexas San Antonio]] in 2003 as the Silver Stars and brought into the fold of the San Antonio Spurs. Started off lousy, but they got better in San Antonio, turning a profit in 2011. Dropped "Silver" from their name shortly before the start of the 2014 season. In 2017, the Spurs sold the Stars to MGM Resorts, who moved the team to Vegas and rebranded the team as the Aces. MGM Resorts sold out in January 2021 to Mark Davis, de facto owner of the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders.[[labelnote:*]]He and his mother own a controlling interest, which they inherited from his late father Al. Mark represents the Raiders at NFL owners' meetings.[[/labelnote]] Becky Hammon, a former franchise star from the San Antonio era, was brought in as HC in 2022 and immediately led the Aces to both the Commissioner's Cup and the first title in franchise history, and following it up with a second title in 2023. Currently have their own "superteam" cred, with Candace Parker joining A'ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum for 2023 (though Parker missed most of the season to injury). Also in 2023, Creator/TomBrady became a minority investor.

* '''Sabrina Ionescu''' joined the league in 2020 as ''the'' face of American women's basketball, starting her pro career with the New York Liberty as the first overall pick out of Oregon and having already entered FirstNameBasis.[[note]]She's the only D-I player, male or female, with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds, and 1,000 assists in a college career... for now. Iowa's Caitlin Clark will almost certainly join her in that club in 2023–24 barring misfortune.[[/note]] Unfortunately, her rookie season came to a premature end, as she went down with a severe ankle sprain in the Libs' third game in the COVID bubble. When the league came back to home markets in 2021, Sabrina didn't take long to have a signature moment. In her first game in Brooklyn, she sank a buzzer-beating game-winning three. Two games later, she became the most recent (at that time) WNBA player with a triple-double, doing so in her sixth game. The previous league record for fastest triple-double was held by Swoopes, whose first came in her 59th career game. However, she was still recovering from the previous season's injury, putting up solid but not spectacular numbers for the rest of the season. She still ended up with the league's top-selling jersey in 2021, also appearing in a couple of commercials for State Farm Insurance alongside NBA superstar PG Chris Paul. Finally fully healthy in 2022, Ionescu picked up where she left off after her 2020 injury, first becoming the most recent of four players with a second career triple-double (achieving that one while ''sitting out the fourth quarter'') and then becoming the second after Candace Parker (below) with two triple-doubles in a season and three in a career. And also becoming the first W player ever with [[MasterOfAll 500 points, 200 rebounds, and 200 assists]] in a season.[[note]]It doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind two facts: (1) the WNBA regular season was 36 games in 2022 (increasing to 40 for 2023), compared to the NBA's 82, and (2) regulation WNBA games last only 40 minutes instead of the NBA's 48.[[/note]] In 2023, she set a new W single-season record for three-pointers (although the league's expansion to 40 games helped); blew away the field in the All-Star Game three-point contest, making all but two of her 30 final-round attempts for a record 37 points; and got her own signature shoe ''and'' apparel line from Nike, all being marketed as ''unisex'', though the shoes don't come in larger men's sizes.

* '''Alyssa Thomas''': Forward for the Sun since 2014, when she was picked #4 overall out of Maryland, Thomas has become the most prominent among several players who became major triple-double threats in the post-COVID era—yes, even more so than Sabrina. For her first several season, she was a strong defender who regularly averaged double-figure points, but took major levels in badass in 2022. In that season, Thomas had four triple-doubles, two in the regular season and two in ''back-to-back'' Finals games, making her the W's career leader in that category and also the first ever to record one (much less two) in the Finals. The following year, she recorded six in the 2023 regular season and one more in the playoffs, came pretty close to averaging a triple-double ''for the season''. Not to mention that she led the league in rebounds. Thomas made All-WNBA both seasons (second team in 2022, first team in 2023), and narrowly lost out on the season MVP award to Stewie.[[note]]Thomas actually had more first-place votes, but Stewie won on overall points.)[[/note]]

* '''Connecticut Sun''': Founded in 1999 as the Orlando Miracle (tied to the Orlando Magic), moved to Connecticut in 2003 to become the Sun (named for the [[EnforcedPlug Mohegan Sun]] casino where they play). The Sun was the first WNBA team to be owned independently of an NBA team (specifically by the Mohegan UsefulNotes/{{Native American|s}} tribe) and the first profitable team in league history. This is potentially because of their location: the Sun are the only WNBA team to not share a market with another "Big Four" professional sports team, and said market has been especially crazy for women's basketball since [=UConn=]'s meteoric ascent in the '90s. The team is even [[FanNickname called USunn]] due to the plethora of [=UConn=] alumnae on the roster (five out of eleven players in 2013).

** ''Most Recent Winner:'' A'ja Wilson, F, Aces[[note]]Repeated from 2022; led the W in blocks and finished in the top 10 in defensive rebounds and steals while the Aces had the league's best regular-season record[[/note]]

** ''Most Recent Winner:'' Satou Sabally, F, Wings[[note]]Recorded career bests in scoring, rebounds, assists, steals, and field goal percentage, dramatically increasing her numbers in all categories except FG%, and eventually made the All-WNBA first team[[/note]]

* '''Becky Hammon''': A point guard out of Colorado State who played 16 seasons in the league before retiring at the end of the 2014 season. Although small by WNBA standards (5'6"/1.68 m) and not exceptionally fast, she made up for her relative lack of physical skills with an extraordinary basketball IQ. Represented Russia internationally; that country was one of her many overseas stops during her career. A six-time All-Star, Hammon was named one of the league's 15 greatest players at its 15th anniversary in 2011. Before the end of her final season as a player, she made headlines when the San Antonio Spurs hired her as an assistant (effective at season's end). Hammon became the first woman to be a full-time coach in any of America's four major professional leagues and remained with the Spurs through the 2021–22 season, by which time she was increasingly being seen as a potential NBA head coach in the making. On New Year's Eve 2020, she became the first woman to act as an NBA head coach, taking over after Gregg Popovich was ejected from a game. Hammon returned to the W in 2022 to become head coach of the franchise where she had finished her playing career, now known as the Las Vegas Aces, and in her first season led the Aces to the league's best record, earning her Coach of the Year honors, following that up with the franchise's first WNBA title. This made her the W's first HC ever to win the title in her first season in the position.[[note]]Van Chancellor, the coach who led the Houston Comets to the first four WNBA titles, had previously been a high school and college HC for more than 30 years.[[/note]] Hammon entered the Women's Hall in 2022 and entered the Naismith Hall in 2023, in both cases as a player.

* '''Sheryl Swoopes''': One of the game's greats, originally assigned to the Houston Comets, later with the Seattle Storm and, after a two-year retirement, the Tulsa Shock for one final season in 2011. A brilliant defensive player and incredible slasher in her prime. Her marriage to her high school sweetheart and pregnancy with son Jordan was [[HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday heavily marketed by the league]]. Revealed in 2005 that she was gay and in a relationship with her former assistant coach Alisa Scott. Now remarried to a man. If you're having trouble keeping up, you're not the only one. After retiring for good, she went into coaching; she had been the head coach at Loyola University Chicago before being fired during the 2016 offseason amid allegations of mistreatment of players. Entered the Naismith Hall in 2016 and the Women's Hall in 2017. Also of note is that she was the first WNBA player ever to collect a triple-double, and one of only four to have had more than one in the league;[[note]]for a long time, she was the ''only'' one with multiple triple-doubles[[/note]] her other triple-double was the first (and for a long time only} one in playoff history.[[labelnote:*]]Said playoff triple-double remains the only one to have been recorded ''in regulation''; the second such performance, by Courtney Vandersloot (below), was in an overtime game.[[/labelnote]]

* '''Lindsay Whalen''': Hall of Fame point guard for the Minnesota Lynx. Started out as the hometown hero of the University of Minnesota, where she graduated the all-time leading scorer. Known for her quiet yet machine-like consistency of play, she helped made women's college basketball popular in the state by bringing twice as many people to the arena during games. She won many college titles while playing. She was drafted #4 overall by the Connecticut Sun in 2004 and helped lead them to two Finals appearances, but was traded back to her home state of Minnesota in 2010 to play for the Lynx. In 2011, she helped lead the Lynx to their first title in WNBA history, followed by another three that decade before retiring in 2018 to immediately become the head coach at her alma mater of Minnesota, serving in that role for five seasons. She made the Naismith Hall in 2022 and will enter the Women's Hall in 2023.

*** Griner's WNBA future was for a time in doubt. She was found guilty of drug charges in Russia, where she had played during the WNBA offseason, in 2022[[note]]specifically possessing cannabis-based vaping cartridges[[/note]] and sentenced to 9 years in prison, though she ended up being part of a US–Russia prisoner swap, serving 10 months in all, and is returning to the W in 2023. Griner's predicament made her a poster child for the league's salary issues. Since at least the 2010s (and probably longer), about 70% of the league's players go overseas to play during the traditional basketball season, with the biggest stars making several times what the WNBA can offer. While the newest WNBA collective bargaining agreement is attempting to address the issue by effectively forcing the league's players to stay stateside year-round starting in 2024,[[note]]with a "soft launch" for said requirement in 2023[[/note]] many commentators fear this may backfire by encouraging American players to say "ScrewThisImOuttaHere" to the W.

* '''A'ja Wilson''': Power forward for the Las Vegas Aces and a rising face of the league. The 6'4" Wilson grew up in a small South Carolina town not far from the state capital of Columbia, and went to that city to play under Hall of Fame guard Dawn Staley at South Carolina, leading the Gamecocks to a national title in 2017 and sweeping all major NCAA player of the year awards the next season. Carolina has since put up a statue of her in front of its arena. After going #1 overall to the Aces in the 2018 draft, she lived up to her billing, being named Rookie of the Year and making the All-Star Game. Wilson further cemented her status in the 2020 bubble, averaging over 20 points and 8 rebounds, leading the league in blocks, and being named league MVP. She would be named MVP again in 2022 and go on to collect her first championship ring. And yes, her first name ''does'' come from the Music/SteelyDan [[Music/AjaAlbum album]]... actually, its title track, as it was her father's favorite song.

** Most wins: 2,385

* '''Kentucky Wildcats''' - Coached by the great Adolph Rupp, aka "The Baron of the Bluegrass", from 1931-72. Won eight NCAA tournaments, including four under Rupp, and have appeared in more NCAA tournaments than any other program. Three of those came in just four seasons (1948-51). Two years after the third, the team was forced to suspend operations for a full year due to several of its players being implicated in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCNY_point-shaving_scandal CCNY point shaving scandal]]; while the other six programs punished by this scandal never fully recovered from the NCAA's "death penalty", Kentucky was almost unfazed. The Wildcats are the only program to have won national titles under five different coaches—Rupp, his successor Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, and current coach John Calipari. They were the program that lost the 1966 final to the considerably less prestigious Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso, or UTEP), and that's the story in the movie ''Film/GloryRoad''. Before being passed by Kansas during the 2022 NCAA tournament, they were all-time winningest team in college basketball, and still have won more Southeastern Conference titles than any of the other teams... combined. The Kentucky women's team had been making some strides as well, briefly interrupted by off-court turmoil in 2015–16, though they've so far had a bad case of EveryYearTheyFizzleOut. The Kentucky women however did manage to achieve an incredible feat when they upset [[TheJuggernaut top-ranked (and eventual national champ) South Carolina]] in the 2022 SEC Women's Basketball Tournament Final by the score of 64-62.[[note]]Though it ''was'' the tournament championship game, South Carolina had already won the ''official'' SEC title. That conference determines its men's and women's basketball champions solely by regular-season conference record. The tournaments only determine the SEC's autobids to the men's and women's NCAA tournaments.[[/note]]

Also after the regular season, all-league teams are chosen honoring the best players in three different categories. Recipients listed here are those for 2022.