On the latest episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Missy Heidrick is joined by SB Nation’s Mitchell Northam to discuss UConn’s 2025 NCAA Tournament victory. The two discuss how UConn was able to pull off the victory, reflect on the legends and legacies that have been cemented for the program, and explore what could come next for these players and this team.
Heidrick and Northam start the show by revisiting the Final Four matches that led up to the championship game. Heidrick asks Northam specifically why he thinks Texas is unable to beat South Carolina. “I don’t know exactly what the deal is, why they can’t get over the hump,” Northam says about Texas. “I think we’ve seen that … when [South Carolina] is playing at 100% and clicking on all cylinders, Texas is not an obstacle for them.”
Heidrick then asks Northam, who was at Sunday’s championship game, what it looked and felt like, just being there. “The first half, I thought it was pretty clear that UConn was the better team,” Northam says. “I thought going into it that they would win, but I thought it would be much closer.”
To close out the show, Heidrick asks Northam for his impressions of legendary UConn head coach Geno Auriemma. Northam describes how the era of UConn success ushered in by Auriemma likely led to more money and investment across the board for women’s basketball, so other programs could be like UConn. “I think, you know, that’s an underrated thing,” Northam says. “He dragged women’s college basketball to an extent to make all the rest of the programs in the country care about it.”
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“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
