WILL WE WATCH JUJU WATKINS OR DAN HURLEY OR COOPER FLAGG — OR ALL THREE?

Almost 19 million saw Caitlin Clark in the NCAA title game, more than the 14.8 scanning Hurley and Connecticut, and a year later, are we eyeballing Watkins or a wild coach and a future NBA superstar?

What we have here is a Title IX romance, a daydream that came true. Where will four million television viewers go when Caitlin Clark is in the WNBA and Dan Hurley, referring to a veteran referee as “a joke,” fell to his knees in Hawaii? Will they watch JuJu Watkins and her esteemed hair bun — “my head band, my thing,” she said — or appraise Cooper Flagg and whether he’s worth a dozen NBA teams tanking seasons?

Last April, Clark drew 18.9 million in her NCAA tournament loss to South Carolina. A night later, Hurley and Connecticut attracted 14.8 million in a repeat championship swirl. That’s no small margin, TV executives. So here’s the first time in a well-consumed sport where women wish to reproduce a ratings masterpiece and stay ahead of the men. Was Caitlin merely a speed-train phenomenon? Will folks return to Hurley’s tantrums and Flagg’s position as basketball’s next great player?

Or both?

Why must we veer back and forth? Hurley is worth psychoanalyzing after he rejected the Los Angeles Lakers, at $70 million, and lost back-to-back games this week at the Maui Invitational. Flagg was in full force Tuesday evening as Duke lost to top-ranked Kansas. Just the same, who isn’t observing Judea Skies Watkins as her magic in Los Angeles is compared to Clark at Iowa? It’s no longer crazy to note that Watkins is the star of an AT&T commercial. The question is whether she can rally a national audience the way she brings celebrities to USC.

And if she does? Why not a new Caitlin?

“For those of us who have really followed this game for a long time, we’ve known there have been great players before, we’ve known the great stories before, but now to see the rest of the world catch on and pay attention is really cool,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “Then you add to it this kind of position I’ve been thrust into, where we’re one of the programs that has one of these star players who is getting a ton of attention. It’s a great responsibility. It’s a great opportunity. None of it is lost on me, that we’re sort of in the apex of this moment.”

Unlike Clark, more Midwestern than the fall leaves, Watkins grew up in Watts. She is followed at Galen Center by Snoop Dogg and Michael B. Jordan, while Michael Jeffrey Jordan is keenly aware. LeBron James calls her “a star.” Her prominence involves her place as a Black icon in a year when the WNBA’s black players had their say on Clark. No one will forget A’ja Wilson, who said, “I think a lot of people may say it's not about Black and white, but to me, it is. It really is because you can be top-notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that's something that people don't want to see. They don't see it as marketable, so it doesn't matter how hard I work. It doesn't matter what we all do as Black women, we're still going to be swept underneath the rug. That's why it boils my blood when people say it's not about race because it is.”

While Clark received her flood of endorsements, Watkins is on her way in Hollywood. The apex, as Gottlieb says, involves perpetuating the women’s game and luring new fans. “I don’t know that there’s been a young African-American superstar in women’s basketball at this age be able to have this platform, and I think that’s gonna do a ton for communities both in L.A. and across the country,” she said. “I wouldn’t bet against her to be able to handle anything. At the same, it’s our job to prep her for what might be coming and make sure she’s able to have joy and be a kid.”

Said South Carolina coach Dawn Staley: “There’s no boundaries on us, and because of that, you’re seeing talent, you’re seeing coaching, you’re seeing fan support, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of those things. This is the biggest movement in our game in its history, and it couldn’t happen at a more perfect time. … There are so many people tuned in. We met the moment.”

The trick for the men’s game is reversing a perception. March Madness might be fun for gamblers, but the players lack prominence of the past. European players have ruled the top of the draft, from Victor Wembanyama last year to Zaccharie Risacher this year, and it leads to a reality that coaches are the stars. Hurley is the face of the game. He is joined by Bill Self, Mark Few, Kelvin Sampson and Nate Oats. John Calipari was dumped at Kentucky and remains a big name at Arkansas. Mark Pope replaced him. Rick Pitino is around at 72. Todd Golden was accused of sexual harassment and remains at Florida. At Auburn, Bruce Pearl watched two of his players fight on a plane and saw the pilot ground the flight.

Why wouldn’t we wince as Hurley, gunning for his third straight title, lost to Memphis before losing Tuesday to Colorado. So much for UConn’s 17-game winning streak. “That was a joke. I just watched it. There was a player on Memphis that made a half-ass effort to rebound that basketball and Liam McNeeley high-pointed that rebound,” he said. “For that call to be made at that point of the game was a complete joke.”

Would he explain why he fell to the floor as he was called for a critical technical foul? “I don't know what happened. I might have lost my balance by the absurdity of the call, or maybe I tripped,” Hurley said. “I would have ignored the fact that I was on my back. If I made that call, I would have ignored that. I would have ignored it. That was a major, obviously, a major ... how you could call that while that game was going on, the way that game was going on is just beyond me.”

And when Samson Johnson was called for a technical? “Samson was getting shoved. His jersey was ripped. He didn't get a foul called for him the entire game," Hurley said. “He ended the game with his jersey ripped down the center, but they get him on every call. He's frustrated. That was crazy, man. Crazy.”

Two championships didn’t faze him. Being wooed by the Lakers didn’t faze him. “He’s way more intense this year,” forward Alex Karaban said. “He’s hungrier than ever.”

“He's probably the funniest person I've ever met,” McNeeley said. “On the court, it's just like a mode flips. And he's just kill, kill, kill everybody, even in practice.”

Hurley hadn’t lost two straight games since January 2023. “Obviously we didn’t expect to find ourselves in this position out here, based on where we’ve been, but this is where we are,” he said. “Some of it is sloppy, undisciplined technique, and some of it I just think in basketball, sometimes you just are not getting a great whistle. I don’t think out here we’ve gotten a great whistle.”

By comparison, Flagg is a model of maturity. He proved it when he practiced with the U.S. Olympic team and, at times, dominated last summer. If he buried a three-pointer, a putback and a turnaround in that session, the NBA is next? “That was the biggest thing for me, just being able to learn and grow, to share a gym with all of these great, great names. Legends,” he said.” So, I’m just truly blessed.”

Where’s he going? Philadelphia? New Orleans? Charlotte? Utah? First, Flagg must help Duke advance with Jon Scheyer in his second season after replacing Mike Krzyzewski. He had 24 points, six rebounds and three assists in a victory at Arizona before a 75-72 loss to Self and Kansas, in which he scored 13 points. Ken Jeong sat beside Krzyzewski in the stands, which suggested he take Coach K to a parking lot and show how he jumped naked from a car trunk in “The Hangover.”

Bring Flagg.

“He’d present problems to anybody that plays him. I mean, he’s terrific,” Self said. “We did recruit him, I guess made it to the final three, but he’s — talent, athleticism, skill. But there’s another element to him that makes him different. He is so competitive and tough. I mean, and that’s been obviously evident with what he’s done to this point, especially in the summer playing with the Olympic team. So, yeah, he’s good.’’

We’ll watch Flagg. We’ll watch Hurley.

We’ll watch JuJu because we watched Clark. “Caitlin set the world on fire,’’ NBA commissioner Adam Silver said.

In the transformation of humankind, we have time for all.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.