Downloadable Women’s College Basketball Photos

Top Plays, Moments, Venues & More, along with Top Metered Markets & espnW Highlights

ESPN’s women’s college basketball coverage – a record 218 exclusive games across ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3 – saw another season of on-court memories by play-by-play veterans Beth Mowins and Pam Ward, analysts Kara Lawson, Rebecca Lobo, Carolyn Peck and LaChina Robinson, and espnW.com writer Mechelle Voepel. This seasoned veterans discussed their top games, teams and players, as well as some of their favorite stops and biggest surprises along the way.

Most memorable game
Lawson: The Baylor-Kentucky four-overtime game had a great venue, star power and unpredictability.
Robinson: The four-overtime game between Baylor and Kentucky was the best college basketball game I have ever watched – a final score of 133-130!
Ward: Washington upsetting then-No. 3 Stanford – unranked teams rarely take down top-5 teams in women’s basketball.

Biggest surprise team
Lawson: UConn’s Breanna Stewart has become a dominant force on the nation’s most dominant team.
Lobo: South Carolina and Notre Dame. The Gamecocks emerged on the national scene and the Irish outperformed everyone’s expectations.
Mowins: NC State tops the list by starting the season unranked and now they are 16^th in the nation.
Robinson: Dawn Staley has put South Carolina on the map this season.

Player that lived up to “Need to Know” billing
Lobo: They all lived up to the billing, but Baylor’s Odyssey Sims changed her game the most and probably opened a lot of fans’ eyes as to what kind of player she is.
Robinson: Stanford’s Chiney Ogqumike has been dominant this season – double and triple teams are nothing for her.
Ward: They were all great, but Baylor’s Odyssey Sims is the nation’s leading scorer and has shouldered so much of the load, not only with Brittney Griner gone, but also three other starters from a year ago.

Breakout player that you saw this season
Robinson: North Carolina’s Diamond DeShields is a rising star. She is a fearless player.
Ward: Notre Dame’s Jewell Loyd as a sophomore had an eye-opening season, and I can’t wait to see her for the next two years.
Voepel: South Carolina sophomore Tiffany Mitchell played herself onto the mid-season Wooden Award ballot.

Most memorable moment
Peck: I was lucky to see two – Baylor’s McKenzie Robertson’s 3-point shot to take the Bears vs. Oklahoma State game to overtime and Duke’s Richa Jackson’s half-court shot at halftime of the Duke-Notre Dame game.
Robinson: Watching Baylor’s Odyssey Sims and Kentucky’s Jen O’Neill combine to score 90 points in one game.
Voepel: Steal and subsequent free throws from Kentucky’s Kastine Evans with three seconds left to give the Wildcats their first victory in Knoxville, Tenn., since 1985.

Game with the best crowd you witnessed
Lobo: Louisville at Connecticut was a sold-out Gampel Pavilion with a great atmosphere.
Peck: The Duke vs. Notre Dame crowd in South Bend was deafening.
Robinson: Calling the Duke at Cal game – my first time calling a Pac-12 game and the fans were alive in Haas Pavilion.

Favorite or most memorable halftime show
Robinson: Seeing Kentucky head coach Matthew Mitchell’s cooking show on the big screen at Memorial Coliseum!
Voepel: The BMX bike riders at Penn State at Nebraska.

Best venue you called a game
Mowins: The Yum Center – Louisville’s home arena is a first-class building with a passionate fan base.
Robinson: The 2003 and 2004 Connecticut National Championship teams were honored during the Huskies game vs. Cincinnati at Gampel Pavilion.
Voepel: Baylor’s Ferrell Center in Waco, Texas annually is a fun place to watch a game.
Ward: The refurbished Madison Square Garden now has comfort to go along with its history. But while visiting campuses, Vanderbilt, with its raised floor to the benches on the baselines has a unique quirkiness we’ll never see at newer venues.

Top-Rated Women’s Basketball Markets: Hartford-New Haven; Knoxville & Louisville
Hartford-New Haven was the highest-rated metered market for ESPN and ESPN2’s women’s college basketball telecasts this season. The home market of the top-ranked Connecticut Huskies, which finished first on ESPN2 and third on ESPN last season, averaged a 2.9 rating on ESPN and a 2.5 rating on ESPN2.

Knoxville concluded the season as the second highest-rated market, averaging a 1.9 rating on ESPN and 1.4 rating on ESPN2. Louisville posted the biggest jump among markets from last season, finishing third on ESPN (1.2 rating) and ESPN2 (0.7 rating), up from 24th and 12th, respectively.

With the addition of the five-game ESPN Sunday series, the network televised nine games this season, compared to just one game in 2012-13. The series posted a 0.4 HH US rating and averaged 245,000 viewers.

espnW.com Season-In-Review
In-depth and complete coverage of the 2013-14 women’s college basketball season:

• For the third consecutive season, Total Access returned to feature in-depth, behind-the-scenes reporting – this season focusing on the “Triangle” schools Duke, North Carolina and NC State.
• espnW national player of the week for the second straight season.
• Regular video segments from Voepel and Michelle Smith covered all the latest storylines around the country.
• Charlie Creme’s Bracketology forecasted the women’s field of 64 throughout the season.
• Hays’ presented a bi-weekly mid-major power rankings and a weekly weekend wrap that summed up all the action from around the country each Sunday night.
• ESPN analysts Mowins and Debbie Antonelli continued Shootaround, transitioning from a podcast to a video segment, discussing all the latest news and trends.
• espnW introduced Big Monday Smack Talk, in which alumni went head-to-head on Twitter as their teams battled on Big Monday. Guests included Swin Cash (UConn), Lindsey Harding (Duke), Angel McCoughtry (Louisville) and Michelle Snow (Tennessee); several of the WNBA players participated from overseas, often getting up in the middle of the night to tweet and watch their former team.
• As part of ESPN’s Need to Know initiative, espnW tracked the seasons of Kayla McBride (Notre Dame), Chiney Ogwumike (Stanford), Odyssey Sims (Baylor), Breanna Stewart (UConn) and Alyssa Thomas (Maryland).
• Player blogs included Ogwumike and Maggie Lucas (Penn State).

ESPN Front Row Coverage

• “Need to Know” players in women’s hoops featured throughout season
• Highest-scoring women’s basketball game part of endurance test for ESPN crew
• Women’s basketball coaches talk about impact of new ESPN Sunday afternoon package
• ESPN College basketball stars Bria Hartley, Katie Rutan featured in ESPN’s latest “I Play4 Kay” vignettes
• InfROWgraphic: Championship Week begins Friday; ESPN’s coverage by the numbers
• Creme ready to rise to the top with his women’s Bracketology projections

Continuing NCAA Championship Coverage
The Selection Monday specials – airing March 17 at 7 p.m. on ESPN and 8 p.m. on ESPNU – will tip off ESPN’s comprehensive coverage of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship March 22-April 8, on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3, WatchESPN and ESPN FULL COURT. ESPN will also provide additional NCAA Championship content across multiple platforms, including espnW.com, SportsCenter, ESPNEWS and ESPN International.

All 63 games of the Women’s Basketball Championship will air on ESPN networks for the ninth consecutive year. ESPN and ESPN2 will present regionalized telecasts with home market protection through the first two rounds. ESPN3 and ESPN FULL COURT, the pay-per-view package, will offer first- and second-round games in their entirety as a supplement to ESPN and ESPN2’s coverage. The final 15 games, beginning with the Regional Semifinals, will have national telecast windows on ESPN or ESPN2. The complete schedule will be announced at a later date.

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