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North Carolina Ends St. Peter’s Dream Season

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North Carolina Ends St. Peter’s Dream Season

PHILADELPHIA — The insurrection of St. Peter’s — the sudden March rebellion by a hardcourt underdog that felled a few of faculty basketball’s most fabled powers — resulted in Philadelphia on Sunday.

No staff this yr had shocked the N.C.A.A. males’s match extra. No staff ever, actually, had come so removed from such a dismissive begin. However North Carolina, dented by an uneven common season that gave option to the sort of play that has lengthy positioned it among the many sport’s elite, made brief work of St. Peter’s within the East regional ultimate and vanquished its aspirations, 69-49.

North Carolina, which had scored no less than 93 factors in two of its video games on this match, didn’t absolutely erupt towards a protection that had powered the Peacocks to a 10-game successful streak, the longest lively run within the nation coming into Sunday’s matchup. St. Peter’s, although, had few solutions for a supersized North Carolina staff that stormed up and down the court docket, discovering open lanes and clear pictures amid a cascade of Peacocks miscues.

The ultimate buzzer in Philadelphia on Sunday night time secured the Last 4 matchups, which shall be contested on Saturday in New Orleans: Villanova will play Kansas, and North Carolina will meet Duke, the primary N.C.A.A. match showdown between the 2 Tobacco Highway rivals. The title recreation shall be held subsequent Monday.

The ladies’s Last 4 shall be set by Monday night time, with the nationwide semifinals performed on Friday and the ultimate on Sunday in Minneapolis.

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The boys’s video games shall be performed beneath a highlight that, till Sunday night, had so typically belonged to the Peacocks and their coach, Shaheen Holloway.

“We simply needed to play North Carolina basketball,” Leaky Black, a senior ahead for North Carolina, mentioned afterward, a internet draped round his neck. “They cling their hat on punching groups within the mouth, being the underdog, that sort of factor. We simply needed to allow them to understand it wasn’t going to occur tonight.”

That St. Peter’s, a Jesuit college of two,637 college students in Jersey Metropolis, N.J., would even be within the match at this stage was fantastical simply two weeks in the past, when it was a decide of the religious or the delusional, a favourite of the inattentive or the idealistic. The Peacocks weren’t within the subject as a staff that had steamrollered blue-blood opponents, had assembled an ideal season or had sufficient cachet to make the choice committee assume twice about excluding them.

No, the Peacocks certified robotically as a result of that they had received the Metro Atlantic Athletic Convention match, beating Monmouth. They had been promptly relegated to one thing solely barely extra prestigious than a play-in recreation: a Fifteenth seed and a first-round date with Kentucky, a No. 2 seed with a coach whose annual wage exceeded the bills of your complete St. Peter’s athletic division.

“Rightly or wrongly, they’re in that group within the fourth quadrant, the thirteenth by way of sixteenth seed traces,” Tom Burnett, the choice committee chairman, mentioned in a courtside interview earlier than Sunday’s recreation. “They’re simply one other a kind of conferences, and we’re sort of simply ready for the champion, , to be designated. After that, it’s sort of out of our fingers.”

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No MAAC staff had received an N.C.A.A. match recreation since 2009. However on a Thursday in Indianapolis, St. Peter’s turned an evening of skillful taking pictures right into a victory over Kentucky. Then got here a second-round win over Murray State.

Then, on Friday in Philadelphia, the place St. Peter’s beat mighty Purdue, the Peacocks grew to become the primary Fifteenth-seeded staff to achieve the lads’s match’s spherical of 8. (The competitors, which started with eight groups in 1939, first started a seeding system in 1979, when the sphere featured 40 groups.)

St. Peter’s, which had thrived with menacing protection, a sterling duo of free-throw shooters and a knack for rebounding, knew it will subsequent face some of the prestigious applications in faculty basketball, both North Carolina or U.C.L.A. Between them, that they had amassed 17 N.C.A.A. championships; St. Peter’s, in its historical past, had not received an N.C.A.A. match recreation till this month.

The North Carolina staff that beat U.C.L.A. had, as not too long ago as mid-February, hardly appeared like one of many most interesting to rise out of Chapel Hill. There had been humiliating regular-season losses to Kentucky, Miami and Wake Forest. Duke swaggered onto the Tar Heels’ dwelling court docket in February and received by 20, after which North Carolina misplaced to Pittsburgh.

A staff that had typically appeared adrift, although, by no means misplaced once more within the common season and capped it by making the drive over to Duke and upending Coach Mike Krzyzewski in his ultimate recreation at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Tar Heels stumbled within the Atlantic Coast Convention match, however arrived at Wells Fargo Middle on Sunday night having misplaced simply as soon as since Feb. 19. They beat Baylor, the reigning males’s champion, in time beyond regulation within the N.C.A.A. match’s second spherical after which hounded U.C.L.A. out of Philadelphia.

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And their first-year coach, Hubert Davis, knew one thing about going through a double-digit seed deep within the N.C.A.A. match: As a participant for North Carolina in a regional ultimate in 1991, he scored 19 factors to assist the Tar Heels escape Temple.

However in an area saturated with white and shades of blue — the colours of St. Peter’s and U.N.C. (and the N.C.A.A.’s March Insanity branding) — and thunderous earlier than tip off, North Carolina galloped from the beginning and opened with a 9-point run that blended free throws and three layups. By the point St. Peter’s scored its first basket, a 3-pointer by Fousseyni Drame, greater than 4 minutes had handed, and the Peacocks had missed six pictures.

“I didn’t actually acknowledge my staff the primary 10 minutes of the sport,” Holloway mentioned.

Each groups struggled with simple pictures within the early going, with one ball after one other making the web wiggle however no extra. And because the Carolina protection swarmed to protect a first-half lead that swelled to as many as 21 factors thrice, the St. Peter’s males appeared to dribble all of the extra emphatically, the ball thudding from the ground just a bit louder.

Dribbling, although, doesn’t remedy taking pictures. Even a dunk try by Daryl Banks III, the main scorer for St. Peter’s this season, missed.

As if to claim that Carolina was performing extra of a smothering than a mere victory, Armando Bacot, who completed with 20 factors and 22 rebounds, powered into the paint on the court docket’s different finish, lifted off and crashed a dunk by way of, a part of a displaying that Holloway mentioned could have been the most effective by anyone participant towards St. Peter’s.

By halftime, when North Carolina led by 19 factors, the Peacocks had not made even 1 / 4 of their subject purpose tries. That they had sunk a lone 3-pointer, whereas North Carolina had hit 4, and St. Peter’s 19 rebounds had been practically exceeded, alone, by Bacot’s 15.

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The balm for St. Peter’s, if there was one, had been the periodic journeys to the free-throw line, the strip that helped give rise to a few of this month’s inconceivable feats. However the Peacocks had not had a participant attain the road till greater than 14 minutes into the sport.

The St. Peter’s offense, which finally made a season-low 30 % of its field-goal makes an attempt, began to discover a measure of rhythm within the second, when Drame, whose 12 factors led the Peacocks on Sunday, hit three baskets in 55 seconds. North Carolina, which was taking part in to achieve its first Last 4 since 2017, noticed its personal taking pictures and scoring paces sluggish. The Tar Heels, although, may afford that: St. Peter’s didn’t match North Carolina’s first-half factors, 38, till Banks’s two free throws with 6 minutes 3 seconds left.

Lengthy earlier than, some Peacocks followers close to the court docket had seized the sporting spirit of Philadelphia and begun to heckle North Carolina, which had led outright for all however 18 seconds and as soon as had a 27-point benefit. The Tar Heels, one man shouted, would by no means make it previous Duke.

They are going to get an opportunity, although. That they had downed the insurrection.

In New Orleans on Saturday, 4 groups which have received nationwide titles will struggle towards one other. Again in Jersey Metropolis, St. Peter’s will nonetheless be looking out, sometime, for its fourth N.C.A.A. match win.

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Patrick Mahomes’ turnover woes, Derrick Henry’s dominance, more from Week 4: Quick Outs

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Patrick Mahomes’ turnover woes, Derrick Henry’s dominance, more from Week 4: Quick Outs

Week 4 is in the books — and it still feels weird to say that’s technically not the quarter mark of the season anymore. Whatever. September football is over now, so, spiritually, we’re moving into a new section of the NFL season.

In this installment of Quick Outs, we’ve got a couple of star AFC quarterbacks who aren’t playing quite like themselves, a worthy adversary for Brian Flores, and a little appreciation of one of the rarest runners the sport has ever seen.

Time to dive in.

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Let’s talk about it: Patrick Mahomes’ turnover issues

There is too much Texas Tech in Patrick Mahomes’ game right now.

Mahomes has thrown five picks to start the season — at least one in each game, two in a near-loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. That total — currently the third-most in the NFL — is the most Mahomes has ever thrown through the first four games of a season.

Now, we’ve done this song and dance with Mahomes before. I know that. He (and the Chiefs at large) could not stop turning the ball over early in the 2021 season either. A majority of the interceptions that season felt fluky, though. Drops, tipped passes, miscommunications — everything that could go wrong outside of the quarterback’s control went wrong.

That’s not really the case right now. The funky interception Mahomes threw to Roquan Smith in the opener can go down as a fluke, but I’m willing to put the others on Kansas City’s QB.

Against the Bengals, Mahomes threw his first interception by trying to squeeze a deep sit route past a zone defender in Cover 2. The zone linebacker had nobody to cover on his side of the field and melted right back to the middle to pick off Mahomes.

Later in the game, Mahomes tossed up a 50-50 ball to 165-pound Xavier Worthy vs. CB Cam Taylor-Britt. Taylor-Britt made an insane one-handed catch, no doubt, but there’s just no world in which throwing a contested go ball to Worthy against a much bigger cornerback makes any sense.

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Mahomes’ end-zone interception against the Atlanta Falcons was a classic case of not seeing a safety flying back across the field to find the ball. Against the Los Angeles Chargers this past weekend, Mahomes simply overthrew his man on a heavily contested corner route. (I don’t knock him as harshly for that one because it’s a throw I know he’s capable of making, but you still have to hit it at the end of the day.)

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Mahomes is probably going to be fine by the end of the season. He’s the best quarterback in the league and a back-to-back defending Super Bowl champion, so there’s no reason to doubt that this is just a blip on the radar.

The turnovers are a legitimate issue right now, though, and they have played a sizable role in all of the Chiefs’ games being so close.

Stat check: Trevor Lawrence’s off-target rate

One month into the season, Trevor Lawrence’s 16.4 percent off-target rate is the third-worst in the NFL, according to PFF. Only Bryce Young and Anthony Richardson have been worse. The former was benched for Andy Dalton; the latter is seen as the league’s biggest scattershot, even by his most optimistic supporters.

Lawrence is an eminently frustrating player. For most of the past three years, the film has painted Lawrence in a positive light, despite misfortune all around him. A couple misfires here and there would draw out his biggest detractors, but Lawrence was by and large a stud at the position. The team-wide results just weren’t there.

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That’s just not the case right now. Lawrence is less accurate than ever, plain and simple. Those two or three misfires per game have turned into five or six. He’s not much different or worse when it comes to decision-making or creation ability or aggressiveness — the throws just aren’t connecting.

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Lawrence always had some weird misses, like I said, but it’s never been this bad. He’s typically hovered around an 11 percent off-target rate in other seasons, with a previous high of 12.4 percent. Those are mediocre marks, but not debilitating by any means.

The cope angle if you’re a Jaguars fan is that Lawrence’s average depth of target is much higher this year, so naturally he should be missing more throws. That’s true. Lawrence’s 10.3-yard average depth of target is nearly two yards above his previous career high. Even with degree of difficulty in mind, though, Lawrence is missing way more than he should. Lawrence currently holds a -8.5 completion percentage over expected, according to Next Gen Stats; his previous career low was -5.3 percent during that cursed rookie season under Urban Meyer.

I’m mildly concerned that Lawrence is in need of a little career rehabilitation. He is not the same player we saw peak at the end of 2022 or battle through irritating circumstances in 2023. He’s also not broken beyond repair, but there’s a level of uncertainty and shakiness to the way he plays now that was not there in years past.

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Hopefully things normalize as the season goes on. Still, it’s hard to imagine the vibes around the NFL’s only winless team are going to get much better.

Can we just appreciate how ridiculous Derrick Henry is?

He is a 6-foot-4, 247-pound home-run hitter — an optical illusion at running back. Every other runner with anything close to that style of build is a bruiser, but Henry has always done his best work on the perimeter and with a runway.

Moreover, it’s a marvel Henry remains that kind of player at 30 years old with more than 2,000 NFL carries under his belt, never mind the beating he took at Alabama. The dreaded running back “cliff” should have come for Henry, but he just continues to outrun Father Time and run through opposing defenses. He looks as good as ever in Baltimore’s purple and black.

Henry does give the Ravens the beef between the tackles they needed in the absence of Gus Edwards, but what he offers them out in space is the real catalyst for success. Henry is currently second in explosive rushes (12-plus yards) this season with nine, per TruMedia. The only player ahead of Henry is Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor (10 explosive runs).

Some of that explosive ability is tied to what Lamar Jackson affords a rushing offense in terms of space. The same is true of Taylor playing alongside Richardson, but Henry really is uniquely gifted in the open field for a big man. In 2024 alone, Henry has six runs on which he’s hit at least 18 MPH, per Next Gen Stats. All the players ahead of him on that list are quarterbacks (like Jayden Daniels, Kyler Murray and, of course, Jackson). It does not compute that a man as large as Henry can run with those guys.

Henry has long been doing this, too. Since entering the league in 2016, Henry has hit at least 18 MPH on 85 runs. No other player who weighs at least 240 pounds has more than 35 over that span — and it’s quarterback Cam Newton at that number. The only other running back with double digit 18-plus MPH runs over that span is Najee Harris (12).

There just isn’t another dude like Henry. He has the size and violence to ruin someone’s day with the meanest stiff arm you’ve ever seen before hitting the gas and tearing away from every other defender on the field. Henry is truly one of one, and we should appreciate how insanely cool it is that he is playing next to Jackson in Baltimore’s backfield.

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Scramble drill: Jordan Love vs. Brian Flores

Jordan Love threw three picks in a loss, but I swear he had the right idea for how to attack Brian Flores’ defense.

In theory, Love is the perfect quarterback to deal with Flores’ blitz-laden defense. He is both tough and creative in the pocket. Moreover, he throws with unwavering confidence — the kind of confidence that gets you burned as much as it does you any good. That’s the kind of mindset you need to beat a Flores defense that will send bodies, forcing you to make throws down the field and into traffic.

The problem for the Packers is that the volatility that style of defense invites got them in the first half.

Love’s first interception was on a square-in to Christian Watson. The Vikings put ‘backers in the right A and B gaps, only to pop both off and drop them in coverage. Love tried to beat them with the throw coming in from the left side, but linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill made an unreal pick in traffic.

Later in the half, Love threw another interception on another pressure. Flores put five defenders on the line, baiting Green Bay to play a man-style protection scheme. The defensive linemen over the left guard knifed inside while the edge defender took it wide, opening a huge lane for a blitzing off-ball linebacker to pop Love as he tried throwing a high-low concept. The ball tipped off his tight end’s hands right to a Vikings defender.

Love did what he had to do from then on, though. He kept throwing from tight pockets and driving the ball into contested windows, continued to bounce in and around the pocket to buy time when needed, and most of all, did not stop ripping it into all the downfield voids left open by Flores’ blitzes. He did not back down or spiral out of control the way most guys do versus Flores.

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Love finished the day 7 of 17 for 188 yards, one touchdown and one pick on throws of at least 15 yards. The completions, attempts and yards were more than any other quarterback on the week. It wasn’t perfect, by any means, but Love did the right thing by continuing to fight fire with fire, ultimately bringing the Packers close enough to put the game to an onside kick.

Teams and quarterbacks around the league should take notice of the damage Love did by playing like a psychopath in the second half. If Flores is going to call an unhinged style of defense, the quarterback has to play equally unhinged to beat it.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Top photo of Patrick Mahomes: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

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Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka meet at a tennis coaching crossroads in Beijing

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Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka meet at a tennis coaching crossroads in Beijing

The ‘other guy’ theory of coaches is a sporting truism.

A team that loses more than it wins with a so-called ‘players’ coach’, someone who specializes in relating to athletes and creating an easygoing atmosphere, will often replace them with a disciplinarian. Reserved coaches who don’t find success get replaced by high-energy, emotional types big on motivation. The bookish sort who focusses on the X’s and O’s comes back when that act wears thin.

Tennis players are no different, the latest cases being Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka, who dueled on Tuesday in Beijing at the penultimate WTA 1000 tournament of the year.

Both players entered the year with high hopes but did not meet them. After early eliminations from the U.S. Open — Gauff lost in the fourth round, Osaka in the second — they both announced coaching changes. 

Gauff jettisoned Brad Gilbert, one of the biggest personalities in the sport. He is an ESPN commentator and the former coach of Andy Roddick and Andre Agassi, with a grand unified theory of tennis, otherwise known as Winning Ugly. Gauff then brought in Matt Daly, a little-known grip specialist, to work alongside Jean-Christophe Faurel, the low-profile French coach who has worked with Gauff on and off since she was 14.

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Faurel most recently rejoined Gauff’s entourage last spring, to work alongside Gilbert. Gilbert and Gauff barely knew each other when she hired him in the summer of 2023. Weeks later, she was U.S. Open champion.

Osaka, meanwhile, pivoted from Wim Fissette, the quiet, cerebral Belgian who helped her win two Grand Slam titles in 2020 and 2021. Fissette would be fine if he never appeared on television. Osaka’s new coach is Patrick Mouratoglou, the former coach of Serena Williams. He has a gift for motivation and self-promotion, with a brand empire that includes an academy in the south of France, plus the freewheeling Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) tennis exhibition events and coaching camps at luxury resorts.


Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka have made coaching changes, but from different tennis perspectives. (Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

He was almost too recognizable for Osaka. Mouratoglou’s history with Williams and his presence in the game made her want to avoid him. 

“His persona is so big,” Osaka said in a press conference in Beijing. So big that she was skeptical of his coaching abilities: anyone coaching the greatest female player of the modern era might have enjoyed their part in the success of Williams.

Then I met him, talked to him, worked with him on the court,” she said.

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“He absolutely is a really good coach.”

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John Kerry, the longtime senator, U.S. secretary of state and American climate czar, once reduced his philosophy of governing, war and diplomacy to, essentially, ‘getting things right as quickly as you can when you are wrong’.

Sporting aphorists often cite the first law of holes: when you are in one, stop digging. 

Both basically sum up Osaka’s and Gauff’s coaching pivots. Players usually make these moves once the season ends, rather than with another two months to go. Gauff and Osaka are on the Asian swing, which is especially important for Osaka, Japan’s torchbearer at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago. Then come the WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which Gauff may qualify for, and the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga, Spain, which Osaka plans to play.

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But by mid-September, they already had all the data they needed to conclude that they were either heading in the wrong direction (Gauff) or stalling (Osaka). 

While Gauff’s results were off target — with a fourth-round exit at Wimbledon to Emma Navarro before Donna Vekic defeated her in the third-round of the Paris Olympics — the bigger issue was of technique. Gilbert’s ability to cover up her weaknesses, one of his greatest strengths as a coach, had faded.

Quality opponents had figured out how to counter the looping forehand that he introduced to cover up her shakiness on that side. They would step in and take the ball on the rise, before it bounced high enough to trap them at the back of the court. 

Against Navarro at Wimbledon, she pleaded with Gilbert to tell her something, realizing in the moment that she did not have the tools she needed to escape Navarro.

Then there is her serve. At the U.S. Open, her fourth-round defeat to Navarro included 19 double faults.

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“I don’t want to lose matches like this anymore,” she told reporters afterwards.

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Gilbert, who has forgotten more about tennis than most people know, would never peddle himself as a serve specialist, or even the kind of coach that someone as mired in technical limitations as Gauff is right now would need. Even during Gilbert’s tenure, Gauff had worked with Roddick on some minor serve adjustments. 

In an interview last week, Gilbert declined to get specific about his work with Gauff, but said it was a positive experience overall.

He believes that the ultimate parameters of tennis have not changed. Players have to figure out their strengths, then they have to figure out what their opponent does well. Then they plan to impose their own strengths on the match, while nullifying those of their opponent. But at 63, after more than four decades around the pro game, Gilbert knows the drill. Once a player wins one of the Grand Slams, expectations rise, even though the competition remains fierce. Everyone wants to win and there are only four majors each year.

The women’s game has a little more unpredictability, Gilbert said, but still, “there isn’t a lot of opportunity”.  

“Each coaching experience is a unique experience and you move on,” he added. “That is a beautiful thing.”

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Gauff, still only 20 years old, is impatient for success but she is taking the long view. She is approaching the fall tournaments in Asia as an extended pre-season, prioritizing improvement over wins and a top-eight finish for the season, which would qualify her for those season-ending tour Finals.


Coco Gauff’s forehand has long been a vulnerability against top-level opponents. (Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

Her team prefers that her coaches speak little about her; she is finding that the subtle changes Daly has made have already begun to pay dividends. 

Daly, 45, played at Notre Dame and briefly coached Denis Shapovalov. He is the founder of a company that sells a gadget called GripMD, which wraps around the handle of a racket to help players use a traditional continental grip. 

Gauff hits her forehand with a heavy western grip, essentially holding the racket underneath the handle. Don’t look for her to switch to a continental grip on her forehand anytime soon — it just doesn’t cut it. Her immediate focus is her serve, but it might take some time before the dividends show up on the stats sheets. She had six double faults and 27 unforced errors across the two sets Tuesday, which she and Osaka split before Osaka retired with a back injury.


If Gauff is taking the long view, Osaka wants results now. It wasn’t always this way.

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She has been handed tough draws all season, most notably when she came within a point of knocking Iga Swiatek out of the French Open. At the time, she was introspective, coining a little aphorism of her own: the results weren’t resulting, she told reporters. Fissette and Osaka were focussing her comeback in the long lens — for this season and the next five years. Wait for summer and fall, when tennis moves to the hard courts on which Osaka built her reputation, was the mantra.

That waiting steadily chipped away at Osaka’s confidence. After Karolina Muchova defeated her in New York, she told reporters that a part of her dies when she loses. That Osaka was not the wry, magnanimous Osaka of Paris. The French Open was a lifetime ago in her world, and she had believed that she would have more success on her favorite surface. Muchova, who floated to the U.S. Open semifinals and was likely one stuck volley away from the final, is pretty much doing what Osaka wants to be doing.

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Osaka and the rest of the locker room know she needs to return better, improve her second serve and regain the confidence that, in her best moments, made her an absolute banker in crunch time. More than anything, that had been her superpower, and it’s been mostly missing this year.

This is why she switched to Mouratoglou with two months to go in the 2024 season. She is world No. 73, and desperately wants to get into the top 32, so she can be seeded at the Australian Open in January. 

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Fissette, her former coach, is known as a master strategist and tennis technician. Confidence comes from results in his world. He shares with Mouratoglou a belief in playing aggressively, and building that intensity up when it brings results, but he is no one’s definition of a hype man. Mouratoglou could get a letter carrier fired up about delivering the mail.


The China Open is Naomi Osaka and Patrick Mouratoglou’s first official tournament together. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

Osaka had considered hiring Mouratoglou before she linked back up with Fissette, when she was plotting her comeback from maternity leave. She went with the Belgian then because of their history of success. When it didn’t return, she and Mouratoglou worked together in California after the U.S. Open, then decided to take on the women’s tour together. 

I don’t want to have regrets,” Osaka added last week in Beijing. 

“I really need to learn as much as possible in this stage of my career. Patrick seemed like the guy with the information.” 

They were off to a good start, with three consecutive wins, including Osaka’s first comeback from a set down in over two years, against Yulia Putintseva. But even the best coach can’t have much success with an injured player. 

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After shaking hands with Gauff at one set all, before the American carried her bag off court, Osaka said that her back had stiffened to the point of locking in practice. She was able to start but her condition worsened as the match wore on.

“Totally worth it though lol,” she wrote on Threads.

Sounds like something Mouratoglou would say.

(Top photo: Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images)

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WNBA players say the troubling side of its rise is racism and threats

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WNBA players say the troubling side of its rise is racism and threats

As the WNBA has reached wildly successful highs this season in viewership and attendance, players say the boom long coveted throughout women’s basketball has come with unfortunate consequences. During these playoffs, athletes who would normally be focused on winning have instead shared a swell of complaints of being targeted with racist, misogynistic, homophobic and threatening attacks.

The rise in harassment, players say, has taken a mental toll. Some question how the league has considered their well-being as it has managed an influx of attention that followed the college stardom of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese into the pros.

A few players have made more drastic moves, deactivating some of their social media accounts or heavily limiting their engagement, despite the clear and often critical income potential that comes from marketing directly to fans.

Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner said fans have voiced racist taunts at her and others. Reese said AI-generated nude images of her have circulated online.

Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington shared on Instagram a graphic email sent to her with threats of violence and a racist slur, following a moment during the first game of the playoffs in which Carrington inadvertently poked one of Clark’s eyes. Carrington’s partner, NaLyssa Smith, who plays with Clark on the Indiana Fever, wrote on X that Carrington has even been followed.

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Alyssa Thomas said she and her Sun teammates had faced the most intense racist bullying she has encountered in 11 WNBA seasons as they faced the Fever and ended Clark’s rookie season.

“With more exposure, we’re seeing more of those people come out and say their words online,” Sky forward Brianna Turner said. “They talk their talk, but I highly doubt they’re watching any games or any content. They’re just there to spread hate and be messy online when they couldn’t care less about what happens in the WNBA or about any players, either.”

The troubling messages have been at odds with the welcoming environment the league and its players — the majority of whom are Black and many in the LGBTQ+ community — sought to create over the past three decades. As it fought for financial stability and credibility with media and fans since its 1996 inception, the WNBA has increasingly considered itself a haven for inclusivity.

Some players say that environment has been stained by new factions of fans bringing toxicity to the sport, treating the WNBA and its players as fodder for culture-war arguments during a polarizing period in American society.

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“I appreciate the new eyes,” Sky forward Isabelle Harrison said. “But if this comes with hate and bigotry and racism and even people who look like me bashing me, keep it offline because it’s so hurtful, and you don’t know how that affects people.”

That dimension has added a complexity to the developing play and rivalry of Clark, who is White, and Reese, who is Black. Clark won Rookie of the Year honors and guided the Fever to the playoffs. Reese’s season ended in early September with a wrist injury, but not until she had already set WNBA records for consecutive double-doubles and rebounds in a season.

Fever forward Aliyah Boston said some people are simply being opportunistic. “It’s easy to attach yourself to the Fever because we have a lot of attention around us right now, and it’s so easy to say, ‘Well, I’m a Fever fan, I’m an A.B. fan, I’m a Caitlin fan and just (spew) hate off of that — and that’s never OK,” she said.

Tension bubbled early this season as some fans and sports commentators accused veteran WNBA players of feeling jealous of Clark’s stardom and claimed she was being targeted in games. Even though that notion was widely dismissed by players, fouls on Clark quickly became hot topics to debate — with conversations devolving into personal insults or worse.

A Chicago Tribune op-ed likened a hard foul on Clark by Sky guard Chennedy Carter to “assault,” and an Indiana congressman wrote an open letter to the WNBA commissioner airing his grievances about the foul. Charles Barkley lambasted WNBA players for being “petty” and “jealous” of Clark’s popularity, while Sheryl Swoopes, on multiple occasions, seemed to downplay Clark’s accolades. ESPN personality Pat McAfee apologized for calling Clark a “White b—-” on his show during a segment in which he mused about her stardom and her race.

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“It is discouraging that we’re losing the conversation around the skill of these players and it’s being overshadowed by the politicized nature of their presence,” said Ajhanai Keaton, an assistant professor of sports management at UMass Amherst.

The scrutiny of Clark throughout the season frequently went beyond her play and her comments about games.

Her social media presence is mostly limited to retweets of Iowa and Fever posts, with some sharing of content from her commercial sponsors. She recently created a buzz by liking a Taylor Swift Instagram post that endorsed Kamala Harris for president, although Clark did not formally endorse Harris herself and simply encouraged voting in the November presidential election when asked to explain her action.

She denounced the use of her name to push divisive agendas online, calling it “disappointing” and “unacceptable.” “Those aren’t fans,” she said Friday. “Those are trolls, and it’s a real disservice to the people in our league, the organization, the WNBA.”

Still, much of the conversation carries on regardless of her participation.

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“She’s trying to get her bearings and develop her game and take her game to the next level and be on this bigger stage,” New York Liberty forward Jonquel Jones said earlier this season. “And she’s really handling it well. It’s the fan base that’s going crazy and making it a race war and all this other stuff.”

The league released a statement last week condemning online harassment of players. But commissioner Cathy Engelbert previously faced criticism, including from the players association, for lauding the league’s rivalries when asked in a CNBC interview about “menacing” comments players receive.

“The league should have taken a stance a long time ago, and not waited for it to get this kind of deep, and this far on what’s tolerated and what’s not,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said.

 


Sun guard DiJonai Carrington said she’s been targeted with threatening messages this season. (Elsa / Getty)

Las Vegas Aces guard Chelsea Gray, when asked how the league could have protected players throughout the season, said: “Probably make a statement earlier than what they did.”

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The WNBA’s recent statement mentioned involving law enforcement when necessary to protect players. The league monitors online threats and works with teams and arenas on safety issues, and with local law enforcement, when necessary. It employs security in each market to help players. All 12 teams also have dedicated security who travel with them to games.

The Chicago Sky introduced a partnership this season with an app company that uses AI to shield players from directly seeing negative posts about them on their phones. Before the start of the season, the WNBA provided information and resources to players about mental health as part of a routine annual meeting.

Liberty forward Breanna Stewart, who said she has reported some messages to team officials, wants the league to host more sessions focused on dealing with internet harassment. “There could be probably more training,” she said. “What should you do if you get those messages?”


Some players said they have removed social media apps — especially X — to avoid attacks, but that can come at a cost. Endorsement deals often hinge on engagement with fans online. A robust following on social media can become a key source of income. That’s especially important in a league with a mean player salary of about $110,000 this season, according to HerHoopStats — a figure well below what most male professional athletes make in top North American leagues.

Sparks guard Zia Cooke said she deactivated her X account earlier this season to avoid negative comments but remained on TikTok and Instagram because of potential additional earnings. “If it were really up to me, I would deactivate all of my accounts just because I’m trying to stay mentally locked in as far as basketball and finding my way in this game,” she said.

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Boston said she deleted some of her social media accounts to avoid vitriolic criticism as the Fever got off to a 1-8 start this season.

The spread of legalized sports betting in the United States has also become a prompt for fans sending angry messages to WNBA players. Dream wing Rhyne Howard said she has received threatening messages about her “messing up random parlays” after poor performances, a complaint similarly heard in men’s leagues.

But often, WNBA players said, attacks against them feel much more personal, focused on their racial and sexual identities rather than their basketball abilities.

“Our world is so polarized based on race,” said professor Ketra Armstrong, the University of Michigan’s director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport. “When people talk about race, oftentimes it privileges whiteness, and when they talk about gender, it privileges maleness. This is not unique to sport, this is not unique to Caitlin Clark. It’s the way of the world and it’s been that way in every domain, be it in politics, be it in business, be it in social movements and civil rights.”

Reese, who has more than 4 million followers on Instagram and more than 600,000 on X, has kept a steady stream of engagement even as she has been frequently criticized. She said she occasionally needs to take breaks from social media to avoid vitriol and that she leans on robust support from people around her.

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“We’re still human,” Reese said, adding: “Sometimes we do have to take some time away.”

The Athletic’s Grace Raynor and Sabreena Merchant contributed to this report.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo: iStock)

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