All Ball Sports: Girls Got Next: Redondo’s Zimmerman, Costa’s Yeh leading the way
by Paul Teetor
Women’s basketball is having a cultural moment – locally with great players at both beach city high schools, nationally with USC’s star freshman JuJu Watkins and professionally with some great rivalries in the WNBA.
After years of being ignored and belittled by the great unwashed mass of male sports fans – and by the sports media that sets the daily agenda — it feels like maybe, just maybe, the female version of the sport has finally hit an inflection point where it is getting the fan interest and the media coverage it so richly deserves.
The skill level has gotten better and better every year. Now, with several generations of players having been to all the summer camps, mastered all the skill drills, and played for all the off-season club teams, it seems America – and the rest of the world – is ready to accept female hoopers as accomplished, highly skilled athletes in their own right.
Every revolution needs a leader and the main catalyst for this cultural turning point is Iowa shooting guard Caitlin Clark, who this week set the all-time NCAA scoring record for a major college career – man or woman – with 3,687 points and counting.
She has been the subject of so many stories and profiles this winter – last week she made the cover of the Wall Street Journal — that she is now the most recognizable college player in the land, regardless of gender.
She is, literally, the face of college basketball this year.
Even All Ball, who pays close attention to the men’s college game to get an early fix on future pros, can’t name a single great college player who has broken through this year – except for Clark. That’s partly because this is shaping up as a historically weak year for the NBA draft, but mainly because Clark has stolen the spotlight that normally shines on the men.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the scoring record she broke was set by one of the most well-known players in college history, “Pistol” Pete Maravich of Louisiana State University, who set the record 54 years ago.
He was one of the most colorful and charismatic players in college history, and so is Clark.
Her signature shot is a 25-foot, three-point bomb from anywhere on the court, and her celebration with both arms raised and both fists pumping has been seen all over the media the last two weeks as she approached and then broke the NCAA record.
Just as Stephen Curry all by himself transformed the three-point shot from a novelty and a desperation ploy into the key weapon in the modern NBA game, so Clark has made the three pointer the key to transforming the women’s game and adding greatly to its fan appeal. The women may not be able to out-jump or out-dunk the men, but they can shoot long range shots just as proficiently.
And let’s be real here: just as Larry Bird gave white NBA fans someone to identify with and cheer for back in the 1980’s, the Caucasian Clark has performed a similar function for college fans, even as the American society at large has made great strides in terms of racial equality.
But it is only human nature to identify with people who look like you, and that is still true no matter how much we wish it wasn’t. A color-blind society is an aspirational goal, not a reality.
Not yet – but we’re getting there, ever so slowly.
Clark broke Maravich’s record on a foul shot, thus disappointing those who wanted her to break it with a signature 3-point shot.
Asked in a television interview at halftime if she was aware of the record when she stepped to the foul line, Clark said: “Not really. When they announced it and everybody screamed, that’s when I knew.”
On Thursday, Clark announced that she would enter the 2024 draft and skip the fifth year of college eligibility available to athletes who competed during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is projected to be the top pick in the WNBA draft.
Clark averages 28.3 points per game for her career and was playing in her 130th game Sunday. Her career-best output was 49 points against Michigan on Feb. 15, when she passed Kelsey Plum as the NCAA women’s Division I career scoring leader.
Clark has 54 games with at least 30 points, the most of any player in men’s or women’s college basketball over the last 25 years. She has six triple-doubles this season and 17 in her career.
“What Caitlin’s done has been amazing. She’s a fantastic player, great for the women’s game and basketball in general,” Maravich’s eldest son, Jaeson, said last week.
When Clark leaves for the pros after this season, the college spotlight will surely fall on JuJu Watkins, USC’s sensational 6-foot-2 freshman shooting guard. She has already been named the PAC-12 freshman of the Year and a first team all PAC-12 selection.
A local kid, she graduated from Sierra Canyon High School and was ranked as the top recruit in the nation. Trojan fans were ecstatic that she chose their school over UCLA and Stanford, and she has delivered on all the praise and promise of her prep career.
Just look at what she did Friday night in USC’s double over-time, 80-70 win over UCLA in the semifinals of the PAC-12 Women’s Tournament. She scored 33 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and handed out 10 assists.
In the process she has led the Trojans to a 25-5 record, the PAC-12 title, and has them ranked fifth in the nation.
“I’m not going to lie,” Watkins said after the Trojans beat the Bruins. “I didn’t think this would happen this soon. I’m just blessed, honestly. This is better than anything I could have hoped for, really.”
The excitement over girls basketball has filtered down to the Beach Cities, where both Mira Costa and Redondo featured great players this past season.
Mira Costa’s Ella Zimmerman and Redondo’s Kylee Yeh (first photo) battle for supremacy in the Bay League’s final game. Photos by Ray Vidal
Ella Zimmerman, Redondo’s all-everything, 6-foot-4 center is going on to play collegiately at the University of Portland.
Zimmerman has been good and getting better every year. But it was Costa’s precocious freshman, Kylee Yeh, who displayed skills so advanced and court awareness so sharp that she someday could develop into a big-name Division 1 player.
The two girls teams, Costa and Redondo, staged the Bay League game of the year – male or female – in the last game of the regular season.
Redondo came into Costa’s gym with a 9-0 Bay League record and a lock on first place — unless the 8-1 Costa team could somehow upset them, giving them both 9-1 records and a share of the league title.
In the biggest game of her career – so far – Yeh scored a game-high 23 points before the Sea Hawks prevailed in overtime to preserve a perfect 10-0 league record and the Bay League title.
But the lasting image of that game was the sight of the 6-foot-4 Zimmerman guarding the 5-foot-7 Yeh every step of the way as she brought the ball up the court.
Girls basketball is having a moment, and these two great players – one a freshman, one a senior — were a big part of that moment.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com