Adia Barnes has spent over half her life in women’s basketball. Along the way, the Arizona coach has made dozens of connections, so she wasn’t surprised when some of them reached out during the Wildcats’ inconceivable run to April’s national championship game. Yet, it was messages from people she didn’t know that made her appreciate the magnitude of the moment.
“I got DMs from like Doc Rivers,” Barnes says. “He DM’d me about our team and how I'm doing a great job. It was touching for me that they paid attention. They cared.”
Such was a major question during this one-of-a-kind tournament in San Antonio, which televised every game nationally for the first time in women’s NCAA tourney history: How many people cared?