This is not a moment in women’s basketball. It’s momentum.

Get ready for the statements.

This will be called a moment in women’s basketball, a turning point in the college game. There will be sweeping conclusions: Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, two of college basketball’s biggest stars, have changed the game.

Yes, women play a really good game, but they’ve been doing that for quite some time. Welcome to the party.

This is not a moment. This is momentum.

“We bring the show,” said Flau’jae Johnson, a Louisiana state security guard, on Sunday while wearing a national championship hat.

Part of an ever-expanding pool of talent, these women are attracting new investment (thanks to name, image and likeness deals) and drawing large audiences to the sport.

The American Airlines Center in Dallas hosted a packed house of more than 19,000 fans for the finals of the women’s NCAA tournament, a game that set a record-breaking ratings for the event with an average of 9.9 million viewers on ESPN.

The performances they witnessed were phenomenal, but not particularly groundbreaking. Clark, Iowa’s star guard and national player of the year, has been called a generational player, even by Louisiana State coach Kim Mulkey, whose team defeated Iowa for the championship on Sunday.

But not so long before her there were exceptional talents: Sheryl Swoopes, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker, Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu. Clark, as her inspiration, points to Maya Moore, who led UConn to a 150-4 record from 2007 to 2011 and has a collection of Olympic, NCAA, and WNBA titles.

Clark spent her season conducting a shooting clinic and dazzling fans with her long range accuracy. In the eighth round, against Louisville, she finished with 41 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists, the first 40-point triple-double in a Division I NCAA tournament game, men’s or women’s. Reese, Louisiana State’s recovering dynamo, set the Division I record for most double-doubles in a single season when she recorded her 34th in the title game on Sunday.

After the game, the discussion in the dressing rooms and on social media turned to trash-talk and dirty calls.

Clark and Reese, two of the (deservedly) most confident players on a course, were expected to trade barbs. But when Reese waved her hand in front of her face – mimicking what Clark had done in that eighth round against Louisville, as if to say, “You can’t see me” – and then pointed to her ring finger, a conversation ensued about sportsmanship.

Would a similar moment have attracted equal attention in the men’s game? Earlier in the men’s tournament Alijah Martin from Florida Atlantic was called “classless”. after dunking in the waning seconds of his team’s victory over No. 16 seeded Fairleigh Dickinson. But the moment passed quickly.

Perhaps this controversy will also soon subside. The unwritten rules about how female athletes — especially black athletes — are allowed to express themselves on the field are once again being challenged by this generation of players.

“I don’t fit into the story,” Reese said. “I don’t fit into a box you want me to be in. I’m too crazy. I’m too ghetto. But when other people do it, you say nothing. So this was for the girls who look like me who will say what they believe in. You are unashamed. That’s what I did tonight. It was bigger than me tonight.

The millions who watched the championship game saw Reese and Clark’s talent on full display. They also saw the breadth and depth of talent at the collegiate level. Neither Iowa nor LSU had won a women’s basketball national title. In years past, only the top schools seemed able to attract the best basketball talent. This year, dynasties were shaken to their foundations.

In the second round, Stanford, a No. 1 seed, was eliminated by No. 8 seed Mississippi. On the Hoosiers’ home court, Indiana, also a No. 1 seed, lost to ninth-seeded Miami. Miami went on to upset No. 4 seed Villanova, led by their star forward, Maddy Siegrist, whose early exit from the tournament resulted in her filing for the WNBA draft. In the round of 16, the dynastic UConn team’s series came to an unceremonious halt against No. 3 seed Ohio State.

Even with the pain of the loss, Stanford player Haley Jones seemed to see what was happening around her. “It’s definitely growth for the women’s game,” she said.

Such is the depth of talent that many of the best players in college basketball have no place on the roster waiting for them in the WNBA, which has long been in talks about expansion.

After falling to LSU, Monika Czinano, a center crucial to Iowa’s promotion to the championship game, discussed playing professionally abroad—not in the United States. She was already planning to set the alarm to watch next season’s tournament. There are only 144 spots in the WNBA and only 36 players are called up each year.

And now that college athletes are allowed to earn money through NIL deals, top colleagues stick around longer and are more visible. Jones and Clark have Nike contracts and Reese has been signed by more than a dozen brands, including Coach.

But as much as the sport grows, the question, or perhaps the responsibility, of that evolution is no longer placed so heavily on the players. Maybe it’s because that growth is obvious. Perhaps it’s because there’s been a shift away from treating women’s basketball as if it were a goal rather than a sport.

“It’s almost laughable to think about when I was playing or, you know, even when I started coaching this game, like nobody cared about women’s basketball,” said Iowa coach Lisa Bluder as members of the news media hung on her every word.

Despite the major focus on women’s basketball this weekend, the battle for recognition and equality is far from over.

The spending gap between the men’s and women’s tournaments persists, even though it has narrowed. Currently, women’s basketball is being broadcast as part of a $34 million bundle that includes other NCAA sports. If the rights to the women’s basketball tournament were sold separately, they would be worth at least $85 million a year, according to a report following an investigation commissioned by the NCAA, the association’s new president, Charlie Baker, presented on Sunday that women’s basketball could get its own deal if the rights are renegotiated; the current contract expires in 2024.

Fans let their wallets do the talking until the NCAA catches up.

“Taylor Swift is in town and we still have this place sold out,” Mulkey said. Thirty minutes before the championship game, the cheapest tickets available were over $500. The 2023 women’s tournament attracted the most fans in its history, with 357,542 fans.

There are no more arguments for women’s basketball. They never were.

And if you haven’t seen this year’s tournament?

“You’re missing out,” said Louisiana State’s Johnson. “The rest of the country does. What are you doing?”

Remy Tumin reporting contributed.