How it unfolded
South Carolina beat Iowa 87-75 to win the title. Dawn Staley's South Carolina finished the season a perfect 38-0, and it was Staley's third championship as a head coach. Iowa's Caitlin Clark scored 30 points but shot inefficiently and turned the ball over often. The game was decided in the paint — South Carolina dominated the offensive glass, and center Kamilla Cardoso finished with 15 points and 17 rebounds. South Carolina also overwhelmed Iowa in bench scoring, a reflection of a team that had the smallest gap all season between its starters and reserves. Iowa led at times in the first half, but the margin widened after the third quarter. The historic number from this game came off the court: an average audience of 18.9 million and a peak of 24.1 million — about four million more than the men's final that same year. It was the first time in American sports broadcast history that a women's championship game outdrew the men's final in the same sport.
Why it still matters
This match marks the point where women's basketball can be said to have crossed from niche to mainstream. Clark left college with an NCAA Division I all-time scoring record of 3,951 points and turned pro immediately after; the WNBA went on to shatter attendance and viewership records, and a new media rights deal worth roughly $200 million a year takes effect starting in 2026. The league plans to expand to 18 teams by 2030. No single game produced that shift, but this was the night that proved it in numbers.