Here's How NCAA Women's Tourney Title Game Slam Dunked Men's Championship In TV Ratings

They got the 3-point line wrong in Portland, Oregon, and officials did not even notice through four games.

ESPN announcers got the suspension rule for ejections wrong during the South Carolina-LSU Southeastern Conference Tournament final that featured a fight.

And many media members continued to treat women's college basketball with kid gloves better suited for a junior high tournament.

But the NCAA women's national championship game on a ridiculously placed mid-afternoon last Sunday still eclipsed the men's title game Monday night in prime time in most of the country for the first time in history.

And the women did not need a wild outfit or controversy from LSU coach Kim Mulkey or more needless drama from Tigers' forward Angel Reese to do so.

Iowa's Caitlin Clark scored 30 points, but South Carolina was more powerful as a unit and defeated the Hawkeyes, 87-75, to win the national championship Monday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. (Getty Images)

The iconic star impact of Iowa's Caitlin Clark and the precision, power and efficiency of South Carolina were more than enough.

South Carolina-Iowa Drew Record 18.9 Million Viewers

No. 1 seed South Carolina's 87-75 win over No. 1 seed Iowa on Sunday in Cleveland to complete a 37-0 season drew an average of 18.9 million viewers on ABC and ESPN with a peak of 24.1 million over the final 15 minutes as SC pulled away, according to Nielsen ratings. No. 1 seed Connecticut's 75-60 victory over No. 1 seed Purdue on Monday night in Glendale, Arizona, brought in an average of 14.82 million viewers on TBS and TNT and a peak of 19 million.

It was the most watched college women's basketball game ever and the No. 2 most viewed non-Olympic women's sporting event behind just the United States soccer team's win over Japan in the 2015 World Cup. That drew an average of 25.4 million on FOX, which was in prime time on the East Coast. 

The South Carolina-Iowa game dwarfed by 90 percent the national title game won by LSU over Iowa last year in Dallas that drew 9.9 million viewers. The game's TV audience was 289 percent larger than the number who watched South Carolina beat UConn for the national title in 2022 on ESPN. 

Pistol Pete Maravich's scoring record of 3,667 points through three seasons was surpassed this season by Caitlin Clark in her fourth. (Getty Images)

Clark, who broke the NCAA all-time career scoring record for men or women this season set by LSU's Pistol Pete Maravich in 1970, and Iowa now have the three largest TV audiences in women's college basketball history. Iowa's win over UConn in a Final Four semifinal late Friday night on ABC and ESPN drew 14.2 million, and its win over LSU to reach the Final Four on April 1 in Albany, New York, on ABC and ESPN drew 12.3 million. Iowa's six NCAA Tournament games on ESPN and ABC averaged 10.07 million.

Did the referees protect Clark so she would continue to advance for more viewers? Watch the UConn game again. At least three times, she was fouled on the way to the basket, and nothing was called. 

The top women's basketball games this season drew higher TV ratings than all the NBA playoff games last year, too.

"I don't think you can attribute it just to Iowa, though," UCLA women's coach Cori Close told the Associated Press. "The product is really good, and the increase of exposure is getting rewarded."

OPINION: Caitlin Clark Effect Not Because She's White

FOX carried 14 women's games this season with three in prime time. ABC/ESPN covered nine during the NCAA Tournament.

"This year, it was appointment television," former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson told the A.P. "That's what happened when you see those numbers. I wouldn't call it a blip. The womens' game is going to definitely improve from ratings and exposure here on out. It has become faster and more competitive. They have learned from the NBA and NFL on how to promote the stars."

OPINION: Dan Zaksheske's Adventures At The NCAA Women's Tournament

Or was it the Zaksheske Effect?

OutKick.com's Dan Zaksheske's unique, real-journalist coverage of the NCAA Regional in Albany, New York, and the Final Four in Cleveland was a drastic improvement over the homer, public relations type coverage women's basketball has grown too accustomed to receiving over the years at times.

OPINION: Women's Basketball Has Come Far - Its Media Needs To Catch Up

There are too many booster writers with a cause trying to build up the sport. Writers who cover soccer have tried the same thing because of that sport's fledgling popularity in this country. So do some of the younger writers covering the TV-struggling NBA, which college women's basketball continues to blow away.

After the LSU-South Carolina SEC Tournament final that featured a fight late in the game, this was how one reporter broached the subject with Mulkey.

"Forgive me, I have to ask," she began. And I was wondering if she also genuflected.

"What was your vantage point of what shook out in the last couple of minutes of the game?"

Not even Nick Saban or Bill Belichick have been treated with such reverence.

RELATED: Caitlin Clark Has Been A Tsunami

Maybe, now, women's basketball media will put the kid gloves away. This is no longer just a cute sport like the little engine that could. It's here. Now, treat it as such. That means more coverage, and more critical coverage. So, get used to that, too, Kim Mulkey. 

And now, with the  seemingly overnight explosion of women's basketball, chiefly because of Clark, will the WNBA finally escape its embarrassingly low TV audience? Clark will be in the WNBA next season as she is a slam dunk to be the first pick of the WNBA Draft by Indiana on Monday with South Carolina's Kamilla Cardoso likely the No. 2 pick by Los Angeles.

"The WNBA is a lot smaller - 12 teams. The foot print needs to keep growing," ESPN writer Michael Voepel, who covers college basketball and the WNBA without kid gloves, told OutKick. "You have these swaths of the country that don't have a team within reasonable driving distance. That's part of it. It's in the summer, too. Different audience than winter when more people are indoors and watching TV. You will start to see more viewers in the WNBA because of Caitlin, because she and other top players will be in the WNBA after already building their brands more now than ever in college because of NIL."