TAMPA, Fla. — Elle Duncan remembers being impressed by Virginia Tech. Again in February of 2024, the ladies’s basketball version of ESPN’s School GameDay — of which Duncan is the host of — went to Blacksburg, Virginia’s Cassell Coliseum to broadcast from an ACC venue for the primary time. Hundreds of Hokies’ followers confirmed up early to get within the door to get a spot within the crowd behind the GameDay set. They have been loud, rowdy and proud, offering a worthy setting for GameDay forward of the nationally-ranked Hokies’ matchup with the North Carolina Tar Heels.
After which, this previous season, Duncan, Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike went to Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State College in Raleigh. Duncan needed to readjust her rankings of her high places she’s performed the present from.
“I feel we select very correctly the place we go. N.C. State was a very nice response,” Duncan instructed SB Nation on the Ultimate 4. “Virginia Tech was, to me, wonderful. It was nuts. Then we went to N.C. State and I used to be like, ‘Oh, they beat (Virginia Tech).’ They lined up even earlier.”
Followers posted up outdoors the historic area the night time earlier than the sport. N.C. State coach Wes Moore greeted these passionate supporters with free donuts on Sunday morning, hours earlier than the Wolfpack upset No. 1 Notre Dame in double-overtime in entrance of a sold-out crowd. Earlier than that epic sport, those self same followers introduced an unimaginable power as a backdrop to School GameDay.
“That was my favourite. Ought to I be saying that? I’m sorry,” Ogwumike says of N.C. State with fun. “However going there was superior.”
School GameDay is one among ESPN’s iconic manufacturers. The soccer model of the present started manner again in 1987 and began taking its set on the highway in 1993 and has reworked into the GameDay that followers are conversant in now, the place Lee Corso dons a mascot head on the finish of each airing. The coach is about to retire this season as GameDay turns the web page with new personalities like Pat McAfee and Nick Saban as its stars.
In 2005, ESPN took the blueprint for its marquee soccer pregame present and utilized it to males’s school basketball. Between that inaugural season of the present and 2021, GameDay took its set to a ladies’s basketball contest simply twice: a Notre Dame at UConn conflict in 2010 and a Vanderbilt at Tennessee matchup in 2011.
Lastly, in 2022, the present got here again to ladies’s school basketball, coinciding with a time by which the game’s fandom started to growth. There was one present in 2022, three in 2023, 5 in 2024 and 4 this previous season. There was alleged to be a fifth present this final 12 months, however the sport was canceled as a result of snow.
Because the present has returned, grown and created its personal loyal and fervent viewers, the staples of it — Duncan, Carter and Ogwumike — have develop into stars in their very own proper and in some ways have developed into the faces of girls’s basketball at ESPN.
“It’s been superior,” Carter stated. “I’m very joyful that they introduced us again collectively. We type of received to maintain the power and carry that momentum. We’re actually good pals, so it’s not like we lose contact after which have to come back collectively and work out this pure chemistry once more. Once we come again collectively, we’ve all this stuff that we’ve already talked about, and we’ve all these inside jokes that we will make, and this power that by no means leaves us.”
After they’re breaking down x’s and o’s or discussing the personalities of gamers and coaches on the air, Duncan, Carter and Ogwumike would possibly disagree on a number of issues. However relating to the way forward for the ladies’s school basketball adaptation of School GameDay, all of them agree on one elementary factor.
They need extra.
“We’re hoping for much more, proper? The hope is that we’re simply going to do extra of them,” Duncan says. “I positively assume that there’s a want. The sponsorship is there. So, it’s actually nearly logistics. However that’s all the time been our hope, to only attempt to do extra, however scale in a manner that is smart.”
Carter provides: “Extra exhibits, larger crowds, extra issues.”
And Ogwumike: “There’s a camaraderie inside ladies’s basketball the place we’re all uplifting one another that I really feel could be very particular and really distinctive. So, the aim is to have extra GameDays.”
Picture by Cindy Ord/Getty Photos
This season, there have been 16 airings of males’s School GameDay with 10 of these coming from on-site places. The boys’s present started on Jan. 11 from ESPN’s studio in Bristol, Connecticut, whereas the primary of 4 ladies’s exhibits didn’t air till Feb. 16 — a two-hour particular earlier than UConn at South Carolina tipped off in Columbia.
Hosts of the ladies’s rendition of School GameDay know that they don’t have a lot management over the schedule, however to assist the game and the present develop, they wish to see it begin a lot earlier within the calendar.
“I’m the fallacious individual to ask,” Carter says with fun. “For those who requested me, we’d be someplace the very first week. That’s not likely the way it works. Even with males’s GameDay, they have an inclination to attend till soccer season begins to wind down, as a result of soccer GameDay clearly dominates these Saturdays, because it ought to. However it might be nice (to begin earlier within the season). We get inventive with our GameDays too. We’ll do ones on Thursdays.”
Carter, a former standout participant at Tennessee, has labored at ESPN in varied roles over the previous a number of years. Along with her duties as studio analyst for ladies’s school basketball and the WNBA, she’s been a sideline reporter for SEC soccer video games and can be a daily on males’s School GameDay.
Along with seeing ladies’s GameDay occur extra usually and begin earlier within the season, she additionally hopes that it turns into extra akin to the model viewers see in males’s basketball and soccer whereas, it’s not a lot a pregame present as it’s a standalone present that occurs to broadcast reside from the most important sport of the week.
“For lots of occasions, our exhibits are like pregame exhibits, the place it goes proper into the sport. Then there’s our conventional GameDay present that’s actually early the place all of the followers simply come for the present and there’s extra fan interplay,” Carter instructed SB Nation. “I feel transferring into that area a little bit bit extra — a present as an alternative of a pregame present — and having followers come… Shifting into that, discovering extra home windows and likewise simply having extra exhibits. Clearly, as somebody that does the lads’s School GameDay, there are extra Saturdays that we do this than there are Sundays that we do ladies.”
Duncan provides: “Is that this a present that’s higher served as a pregame to a sport that’s going to be on ESPN, or higher served as a standalone present, like it’s with the lads? We’re figuring it out, however the response has been unimaginable.”
For instance, all the ladies’s GameDay exhibits this season led right into a sport that was broadcasted by one of many networks within the ESPN household, whether or not that was ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, the SEC Community or the ACC Community. That’s been true 12-of-13 ladies’s School GameDay exhibits since 2022, with the lone exception being made for a ranked matchup between Ohio State and Caitlin Clark’s Iowa on March 3, 2024 that aired on FOX.
In the meantime, soccer’s GameDay went reside final season from the places of 5 video games that didn’t air on ESPN platforms. The soccer present has all the time pursued the large story, irrespective of the convention and irrespective of the place the sport is airing.
That raises a frustration had by Ogwumike, who factors out that GameDay didn’t do a present this season from Los Angeles, house to 2 of the highest packages within the nation and two of one of the best gamers. USC’s JuJu Watkins was the consensus Nationwide Participant of the Yr, whereas Lauren Betts powered UCLA to its first Ultimate 4 look.
“We have been begging to exit to LA,” Carter says. “USC or UCLA are clearly ones that we’d completely like to do.”
However each faculties play within the Large Ten the place their video games are broadcast by NBC and FOX. One other argument is that Large Ten faculties sometimes don’t play on Sundays like SEC and ACC groups do and when ladies’s GameDay often airs. Nevertheless, USC and UCLA performed a mixed seven Large Ten house video games on Sundays this previous season. Alternatives for GameDay to go to the Metropolis of Angels existed.
“Alright, I’m on my agenda, my little excessive horse now,” Ogwumike begins. “I actually want this was the 12 months the place we had Los Angeles basketball (on GameDay). I do know generally it’s laborious to determine the logistics of getting from coast to coast, however like, to me, it’s a non-negotiable when you might have JuJu Watkins, Lauren Betts… I used to be lobbying laborious to get to the west coast, however hopefully there’s extra room to develop, to assist construct the infrastructure so we will make these varieties of journeys. I’m taking pictures my shot. I feel attending to the west coast is essential.”
Since 2022, ladies’s GameDay has gone to seven SEC places, 4 ACC video games and two Large Ten video games. It has but to journey to a venue that’s house to a faculty within the Large East, Large Ten or Large 12, a lot much less a mid-major convention.
“We have now UConn right here on the Ultimate 4 and we didn’t get to go to Storrs. That’s in (ESPN’s) yard,” says Ogwumike, a former two-time Pac-12 Participant of the Yr at Stanford. “And I do know we’ve one of the best execs which can be attempting to make one of the best choices for us, however hopefully we discover methods to inform these tales of athletes. Like, think about going to see Paige in her closing 12 months? Seeing JuJu. That sort of stuff would have been wonderful.”
ESPN has a possibility this fall to fulfill the appeals of the celebrities of GameDay. Whereas the competition will lack Watkins — who could miss all of subsequent season as she recovers from a tragic knee damage — USC is internet hosting South Carolina in what can be a must-watch matchup on Nov. 15. Dubbed “The Actual SC” battle, the sport can be performed on a Saturday and be aired by FOX.
Is ESPN keen to step on the toes of school soccer — and do a west coast sport broadcast by a rival — so it may possibly have a presence on maybe the most-anticipated non-conference ladies’s basketball conflict of the 12 months?
When the sport was introduced, Duncan says the crew emailed their bosses.
“It was like, ‘So, we’re going right here then?’ That’s an earlier season matchup,” Duncan says. “However that may be an absolute dream.”
