{"id":568586,"date":"2026-04-06T21:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T21:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568586\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T21:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T21:36:14","slug":"why-this-womens-final-four-felt-bigger-than-just-a-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568586\/","title":{"rendered":"Why This Women\u2019s Final Four Felt Bigger Than Just a Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Estimated5 min read<\/p>\n

It was about 7 p.m. on Thursday night, and Title 9 Sports Grill<\/a> in Phoenix\u2019s Melrose District was packed with a mix of regulars and new faces in town to take in the conclusion of the women\u2019s NCAA basketball tournament that weekend.<\/p>\n

Though Title 9, which opened a year ago, is well known as the city\u2019s first and only sports bar dedicated to women\u2019s sports\u2014and you could say I\u2019m something of a women\u2019s sports super-fan myself\u2014my mind still went elsewhere when a bartender told me it was their \u201cbusy season.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s early April! The weather is gorgeous! It\u2019s the perfect time to grab a Billie Jean Spritz! (That\u2019s grapefruit tequila, Aperol, orange bitters, and prosecco, by the way.)<\/p>\n

But no. The Unrivaled<\/a> 3-on-3 basketball season just ended, the WNBA season is about to begin, and sandwiched in between is March Madness, which would crown a champion later that weekend about 4 miles away at Mortgage Matchup Center. In this sacred section of the city, where a life-size image of Phoenix Mercury legend Diana Taurasi<\/a> leaping for a layup graces the wall opposite the bar, women\u2019s basketball means business.<\/p>\n

“The city has changed and embraced not only women’s basketball, but women’s sports in general,” Taurasi told me two days later in downtown Phoenix, where she was supporting Lilly\u2019s mobile mammogram screenings<\/a> for women over 35. She was drafted to the Mercury in 2004, and simply never left\u2014her kids<\/a> go to school here, her entire life is here, and now she\u2019s made it her mission to help give back to the place that\u2019s given her so much.<\/p>\n

\"AAmanda Lucci<\/p>\n

The Diana Taurasi wall at Title 9 Sports Grill<\/p>\n

“This city is the gold standard when it comes to fandom,\u201d she said, \u201cand I think the Final Four this weekend is definitely a product of that.”<\/p>\n

As someone who has covered women\u2019s sports from all corners of the globe\u2014Final Fours to All-Star Games, World Cups and the Olympics<\/a>\u2014I sometimes sound like a broken record saying, \u201cThis one feels different.\u201d But it\u2019s kind of like your favorite record, the one where every pop and crackle tells a story, the one you can\u2019t stop playing because even though it\u2019s different than it was, it feels like a warm hug. You\u2019ll never let it go, because it\u2019s the real deal.<\/p>\n

I said it after the 2023 Final Four in Dallas, when the Caitlin Clark<\/a> and Angel Reese<\/a> showdown became water cooler conversation as First Lady Jill Biden<\/a> looked on from Billie Jean King<\/a>\u2019s suite. I said it again last year in Tampa, when Paige Bueckers<\/a> and Azzi Fudd<\/a> carried UConn to a record 12th national championship, setting up a storybook rookie year for Paige in the WNBA and launching another new generation of players into superstardom.<\/p>\n

But what made this Final Four feel different was how ordinary it all suddenly felt\u2014in the best way. Merch lines<\/a> snaked through every building I visited without anyone remarking on them. Every stray conversation I heard in restaurants or out in the street carried the assumption that of course this was where everyone should be this weekend. No one was explaining why it mattered, they just knew it did.<\/p>\n

\"Court<\/p>\n

Like on Saturday night in the lobby of my hotel, when I met a woman from Iowa named Steph who was at that game in Dallas three years ago to cheer on her local team. She and her family fell so in love with the experience that they decided they\u2019d make traveling to the women\u2019s Final Four a yearly tradition.<\/p>\n

Covering plenty of miles in Phoenix in my Brooks<\/a> sneakers, every fan I spoke to along the way said attending the Final Four is not necessarily about having a personal connection to a team\u2014it\u2019s about connecting to the community.<\/p>\n

The Bruin Bond<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s tournament certainly delivered on exciting upsets and busted brackets, like when South Carolina put on a defensive master class to shut down title favorites UConn on Friday night. But when UCLA hoisted the national championship trophy Sunday afternoon, they made it clear that the win was all about heart, manifestation, and the power of friendship.<\/p>\n

At the postgame press conference, UCLA head coach Cori Close explained what that looked like for this UCLA team, a group of mostly veterans\u2014all of their points in the championship game were scored by seniors\u2014who have spent years together forging strong bonds and making sacrifices to win the school\u2019s first-ever national title. For the last 30 days, the Bruins began film sessions by writing down five to seven \u201cI will\u201d statements and choosing some to share with each other. They decided they would become national champions, and they did.<\/p>\n

“I just think about how many of those \u2018I wills\u2019 they actually lived out,\u201d Close said. \u201cThat’s just so rewarding to see something that you really planned for, you really sacrificed for.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCLA senior guard Gabriela Jaquez, who was the game\u2019s leading scorer, said their biggest \u201cwhy\u201d was each other. \u201cThe joy we had and the love we have for each other has really motivated us this whole season, because we just want to do it for each other,\u201d she said. \u201cThat just made it so special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joy we had and the love we have for each other has really motivated us this whole season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaquez and her teammates went viral multiple times this season for simply having a good time, whether they were joining the UCLA dance team<\/a> at halftime of the men\u2019s basketball game or recording funny TikTok dances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did everything to get there, basketball-wise, and we also just enjoyed each other,\u201d said senior center Lauren Betts, voted the tournament\u2019s Most Outstanding Player. A top WNBA draft prospect who has been open about her past struggles<\/a> with mental health, she said the support of Close and her teammates made her see herself in a new light. \u201cWe\u2019re such a close group of girls, and I\u2019m gonna miss them so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Very little of the press conference was spent on box scores and stat lines, but rather on the relationships that powered them through. That\u2019s not to say it hadn\u2019t been on display from prior championship-winning teams, but it feels particularly poignant that in a moment when the sport is exploding outward\u2014with bigger audiences, bigger stakes, and a brighter spotlight\u2014the thing its top team chose to center was something that felt so human.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the highlights or the headlines anymore, but the feeling of being part of something exciting. In Phoenix, it looked like downtown bars packed with lifelong fans alongside first-timers already planning their 2027 trip to Columbus, Ohio. It looked like a team writing down \u201cI will\u201d and seeing it through.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s what\u2019s different now. Not that women\u2019s basketball has arrived\u2014it\u2019s always been here\u2014but that it\u2019s settled in. The kind of thing you plan your spring around without thinking twice. The kind of thing that, once you\u2019re in it, you don\u2019t really want to leave.<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Amanda Lucci is the director of special projects at Women\u2019s Health, where she works on multi-platform brand initiatives and social media strategy. She also leads the sports and athletes vertical, traveling to cover the Paris Olympics, Women\u2019s World Cup, WNBA Finals, and NCAA Final Four for WH. She has nearly 15 years of experience writing, editing, and managing social media for national and international publications and is also a NASM-certified personal trainer. A proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, she is a graduate of Ohio University\u2019s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Follow her on Instagram @alucci. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 min read It was about 7 p.m. on Thursday night, and Title 9 Sports Grill in Phoenix\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[225530,251014,1240,251013,874,982,873,218423,251012,99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-568586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-collection-sports-athletes","9":"tag-collection-wh-on-the-road","10":"tag-content-type-feature","11":"tag-contentid-58355dbd-3730-4b8a-bf40-ab6d632d91af","12":"tag-displaytype-standard-article","13":"tag-hasproduct-true","14":"tag-locale-us","15":"tag-read_time-6","16":"tag-shorttitle-ucla-won-a-championship-with-connection-and-joy","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}