Appointment viewing

 Maybe you had to be there then, to appreciate the road to now. Maybe you can't fathom how long the journey has been, the leaps and bounds it's made, unless you were in a tiny high school gym almost 50 years ago on the day a couple of girls basketball teams played in front of almost no one.

I was in that gym, see. And leaps and bounds ain't the half of it.

The year was 1977, the high school gym was in Lapel, In., and the two girls basketball teams were playing a sectional game when sectional basketball games for girls were still so new you could hear the crackle of the wrapper they came in. It was just the second year for the IHSAA girls tournament, and there were a gazillion turnovers that day and a bazillion jump balls. It was basketball, but only vaguely.

I 5hought about that last night as I watched Caitlin Clark and Iowa and Angel Reese and LSU race up and down the floor in front of a packed house in Albany, N.Y. I thought about the turnovers and the jump balls and the scattering of fans in that game 47 years ago. I thought about how, in those days, the girl who could dribble up the floor without looking at the basketball was the wonder of the age.

What I saw last night did not resemble that in the slightest.

What I saw last night was solar systems and galaxies and light years beyond 1977, a  game so entirely different the girls of '77 literally could not have imagined it possible. They would have been cavewomen staring at fire, watching what Clark and Reese and the rest were doing. 

To be sure, it is not the men's game, as the misogynists who miss the point insist on reminding us.  But if you couldn't appreciate what it was -- if you couldn't marvel at the spectacle it has become -- you simply didn't know what you were watching.

I know what I was watching. I was watching basketball.

I was watching Caitlin Clark sling threes and Angel Reese command the paint and two teams of whip-smart players play the game at cartoon speed. I was watching two teams penetrate and dish and reverse the ball and find the open look, and burying that look more often than not.

It was a rematch of last year's national championship game, and it lived up to the billing. Reese went for 17 points and 20 rebounds and four assists before fouling out late on a suspect call. Clark dropped 41 points and nine threes and dished a dozen dimes. And Iowa won 94-87 to advance to the Final Four.

Where the Hawkeyes will face UConn and Paige Bueckers, who sidelined top-seed USC and freshman phenom JuJu Watkins. Bueckers, who's been on a positive tear since the tournament began, went for 28 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Huskies. Watkins scored 29 for USC to finish the season as the highest-scoring freshman in the history of the women's game.

Bueckers vs, Clark in the Final Four. Think that's not appointment viewing?

Think it's not as intriguing a matchup as you're going to see on the men's side?

Think, "Yeah, but it's not the same game"?

Then you've missed the point. Again. 

The point being, it's basketball. And not just basketball, but damn glorious basketball.

Marvel at it or miss out.