Tom Krasovic: Women’s basketball has taken off. Could San Diego State benefit?

Wouldn’t it be fun to see someone like Caitlin Clark lead San Diego State’s women’s basketball program to the NCAA national championship game, building on the men’s team’s thrill ride of a year ago?

San Diego County has produced a number of world-class women’s hoopers, from Horizon Christian High School alum DiJonai Carrington to Kelsey Plum and Candice Wiggins of La Jolla Country Day.

Oceanside’s Te-Hina Paopao, another Country Day graduate, scored 14 points in Sunday’s title game for victorious South Carolina against Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes. Iowa made the championship game by beating a UConn team that included Cathedral Catholic grad Ice Brady.

Women’s basketball has taken off. The championship bout between No. 1 seeds drew 18.9 million viewers, topping the men’s title game’s rating and becoming the most-viewed college basketball game (men’s or women’s) on ESPN platforms.

Admittedly, Clark belongs in a league of her own in terms of commanding attention. LeBron James said he tuned into Iowa’s run mostly to see Clark. Steph Curry said the 6-foot senior’s dual threat as both a passer and shooter made her lethal.

South Carolina guard Te-Hina Paopao (0) holds up a piece of the net after defeating Oregon State in the Elite Eight.

(Mary Altaffer / Associated Press)

If San Diego State were to land a transcendent local player or two, as Iowa did when Clark chose to stay in the state for college, who knows what might happen?

Maybe State would eclipse the program’s previous high-water mark, a Sweet 16 appearance 14 years ago.

It wasn’t long ago that talk of SDSU reaching a national final or consecutive Sweet 16 games in men’s basketball was the stuff of an over-active imagination.

Unfortunately for San Diego State’s women, they face longer odds of breaking through nationally than the men did.

Rules matter in all industries. Because the WNBA waits two years longer than the NBA to admit college players into its draft, the women’s collegiate powerhouses that attract pro-caliber players can hold on to them for at least three years.

The WNBA requires players to be 22 years old or older during the year in which each draft takes place. As a result, the college powers stay powerful year after year. No team from a non-power conference has reached the title game in the past two decades. Over the same period, five men’s teams from mid-major leagues crashed the national championship game — Brian Dutcher’s Aztecs in 2023, Gonzaga of the tiny West Coast Conference in 2017 and 2021, and Butler of the little Horizon League in 2010 and 2011.

The NBA Draft aids San Diego State and other mid-major men’s programs. The top players from “blue blood” programs — think Kentucky, UCLA and Duke, among many others — often declare for the draft after just a year or two in college. Enticed by the NBA’s average salary of about $10 million, many men’s stars will leave school once they’re convinced they’ll be taken in the first round.

The WNBA’s average salary runs about $100,000. Land a player like Clark or 6-foot-7 center like Kamilla Cardoso, the senior who led coach Dawn Staley’s deep South Carolina program this year, and success can follow for years.

Iowa guard Caitlin Clark (22) celebrates during Senior Day ceremonies.

(Cliff Jette / Associated Press)

Clark played 139 games at Iowa. The top college player taken in last year’s NBA draft, Brandon Miller, played just 37 games at Alabama.

“I was saying, ‘Come on Caitlin, it’s time — it’s time for you to go pro,’ ” USC associate head coach Beth Burns quipped last week after the Trojans lost to Connecticut, denying them a Final Four matchup against Clark and Co.

The Trojans needn’t worry about losing All-American guard JuJu Watkins to the WNBA Draft next week. She’s coming off a year in which she broke the NCAA record for points by a freshman — a mark set four decades ago by San Diego State’s Tina Hutchinson.

Watkins and USC also stand to benefit financially from a move to the Big Ten, which will swell to 18 teams this year with the addition of the Trojans, cross-town rival UCLA, Oregon and Washington.

It comes down to eyeballs, Burns said. While she worked at Louisville, Burns struggled to find Pac-12 games on TV. In the season ahead, the expanded Big 10 could command national audiences for many of its conference games.

The rich will get richer.

“You can speak to the demise of the Pac-12,” said Burns, under whom SDSU won 61.3 percent of its games in 17 years and reached seven NCAA tournaments. “It’s about TV. There’s eighteen of us.”

The ACC will swell to 18 schools, too, by adding longtime national power Stanford and rival Cal.

San Diego State women’s basketball coach Stacie Terry-Hutson looks on against UNLV during the Mountain West Conference Championship game.

(K.C. Alfred/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

San Diego State, meanwhile, will be coming off its second consecutive winning season under coach Stacie Terry-Hutson, a former basketball standout herself at El Capitan High School in Lakeside. The Aztecs advanced to last month’s Mountain West Tournament’s championship game before falling to UNLV.

It’s fair to expect SDSU to contend for conference titles in women’s basketball. Securing one of the 68 spots in NCAA tournament can be done, too, although it’s been 12 years since the Aztecs earned a berth.

Building a perennial powerhouse in line with Iowa, UConn and South Carolina is a tougher task. Do it, and a statue of Hutson would be put up on campus right away.