Fandoms of the Year: 5 best moments from women’s basketball in 2024

From March Madness to the Olympics and a historic WNBA season, women's basketball hit dramatic new heights in 2024 — for viewership, fan interest and on-court excitement. That's why Women's Basketball was chosen as FanSided's 2024 Sports Fandom of the Year. Check out all our 2024 Fandoms of the Year here, and look back on some of the moments that made this year so historic.

New York Liberty vs Minnesota Lynx in the 2024 WNBA Finals

The WNBA provided us with a season full of show-stopping games, twists and turns, buzzer beaters, broken records — and punctuated by one of the most dramatic WNBA Finals in league history.

The New York Liberty and Minnesota Lynx played a full five-game series ending with the Liberty winning the franchise's first championship. This series gave us everything we wanted — close games, overtime and the maximum amount of basketball possible in the confines of a five-game series.

Both teams were so evenly matched and had been fighting back and forth all season long. From Spike Lee injecting New York into Sabrina Ionescu's veins, to Courtney Williams going deep into her "target bag" of tricks, to Jonquel Jones rising up to become the Liberty's Finals MVP. This series is something women's basketball fans will remember forever.

The deciding game was watched by 2.15 million viewers, peaking at 3.3 million, making it the most-watched WNBA Finals game in 25 years, and the largest WNBA audience ever on NFL Sunday. It was a 142 percent increase in viewership from the 2023 Finals.

Team USA wins the Olympic Gold Medal

Team USA winning Olympic Gold is something women's basketball fans have gotten used to over the past three decades. The program won it's eighth consecutive gold at the Paris 2024 Olympics, but it wasn't easy for them.

In another one of the year's most thrilling games, Team France took Team USA all the way to the end. Team USA won by one point, 67-66, with A'ja Wilson leading the way for the Americans with 21 points. On the other side, Gabby Williams had 19 points for France, just missing the buzzer-beating shot that could have won the game for her team. It was an emotional game, and the closest another country has gotten to dethroning Team USA from its perch atop the international basketball landscape.

This was also Diana Taurasi's sixth consecutive gold medal with Team USA women's basketball, becoming the first basketball player to win six gold medals. Despite the game airing at 9:30 a.m. ET, it was still able to draw in 7.8 million viewers, peaking at 10.9 million during the final half hour.

Caitlin Clark breaks the NCAA scoring record

Caitlin Clark — who would go on to become the WNBA's No. 1 overall draft pick and the league's Rookie of the Year for 2024 — started her calendar year off by breaking some NCAA records.

On Feb, 15, she passed Kelsey Plum's total of 3,527 points, breaking the record for most career points by a D1 women's college basketball player. Then, on Feb. 28, Clark surpassed Lynette Wooodard's record of 3,649 points, the most by any women's college basketball player. The reason Woodard's record isn't recognized by the NCAA is because she set it before women's basketball was sanctioned by the NCAA in 1982.

Finally, on March 3, Clark surpassed Pete Maravich's record 3,667 total career points to become the highest-scoring player in NCAA history — men's or women's. Maravich held the record for 54 years before Clark broke it, going back to a time when the 3-point line and the shot clock did not even exist.

Clark would go on to make it to the NCAA Tournament Final with the Iowa Hawkeyes for the second year in a row. Though she was unable to win a National Championship, Clark ended her college career with a total of 3,951 points. Her run of success and record-breaking throughout her junior and senior seasons at Iowa was thrilling and one of the many reasons women's basketball shot into mainstream culture in 2024.

A'ja Wilson scores 1,000 points in WNBA regular season

The first player to score 1,000 points in a single WNBA regular season, Wilson finished her 2024 campaign with a total of 1,021 points. The 2024 MVP won the league's highest honor for the third time since being drafted No. 1 overall in 2018.

Wilson also broke another record this WNBA season, scoring 26.9 points per game — the highest scoring average for a player in WNBA history. She broke Diana Taurasi's record of 25.3 points from the 2006 WNBA season. An interesting layer to this record was that Wilson only scored 5.6 percent of her points in 2024 on 3-point shots, where Taurasi scored 42.2 percent of her points in 2006 on 3-point shots, per Her Hoops Stats.

Wilson also played for Team USA in the Olympics, winning her second Olympic Gold and winning the MVP award for the Olympic Women's basketball tournament. Wilson was simply dominant this year for the Las Vegas Aces and for Team USA. Although the Aces were unable to make it to the Finals, nothing takes away from Wilson's efforts this year. She was the best player in the world in 2024, and she's only getting better. She will also be getting her own Nike signature shoe in 2025, named the A'One.

South Carolina Gamecocks go undefeated and win NCAA Championship

Dawn Staley's South Carolina Gamecocks are among the fiercest competition in women's college basketball. The program is consistently pumping out elite WNBA talent, including players like A'ja Wilson, Aliyah Boston, and Kamila Cardoso.

In the 2023-2024 NCAA women's basketball season, the Gamecocks went 38-0 to complete an undefeated season, beating Iowa and Caitlin Clark for the 2024 National Championship. It was their second NCAA title in three years and contributed to the program's record-breaking 43-game winning streak that ended in November 2024.

In that championship game, Tessa Johnson led the Gamecocks off the bench with 19 points and Cardoso had 15 points and 17 rebounds to lead the team to an 87-75 win over the Hawkeyes. While Clark scored 30 points that day, the Iowa bench was unable to get on the board, allowing South Carolina to put more defensive pressure on the National Player of the Year and win the game.

The season as a whole was one of the most dominant we've ever seen from a team, especially in this new era of NCAA women's basketball, with a deeper talent pool spread across more schools. The championship game itself attracted 18.9 million viewers, peaking at 24.1 million, breaking the record for most viewers in women's college basketball history. It was also the most-watched basketball game (at any level) since 2019. Viewership was up 288 percent from 2022, and 90 percent over 2023, according to Nielsen. It was an incredible game with an incredible atmosphere.

For more great women's basketball coverage, check out our hub pages for the WNBA and Women's College Basketball, as well as The Player's Tribune podcast, Sometimes I Hoop, hosted by Haley Jones.