Women's college basketball is red hot — and can anyone stop UConn from winning?
Sports Media with Richard Deitsch
Audacy
4.5 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 604 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features Talia Goodman, a national women's college basketball and recruiting reporter for On3 and Rivals, and Sabreena Merchant, a women's basketball writer for The Athletic and one of the co-hosts of "No Offseason: The Athletic Women's Basketball Show." In this podcast, Goodman and Merchant discuss women's basketball viewership and ESPN networks airing 20 women's college basketball games that delivered more than 500,000 viewers; what people in the sport are talking about on the ground; where the two reporters are assigned during the women's tournament; why the winner this year will come from UConn, UCLA, Texas or South Carolina; why UConn has been so dominant; the most dangerous teams on the No. 2 seed line; whether UCLA deserved to be the No. 1 overall seed; whether we would take Sarah Strong over Paige Beckers in all-class Draft; who the Toronto Tempo should be focused on with their first-ever WNBA Draft pick; our temperature on the WNBA's collective bargaining and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the sports media podcast. |
| 0:08.9 | I'm your host, Richard Deich. |
| 0:09.7 | My producer is Patrick Antonetti. |
| 0:11.1 | Two guests on this episode. |
| 0:12.3 | This will be our women's basketball tournament preview. |
| 0:16.6 | And two fantastic reporters on this podcast, Talia Goodman is a national women's college basketball and recruiting reporter for On Three and Rivals. |
| 0:25.9 | Sabrina Merchant, my former colleague of Athletic, is a senior writer there. |
| 0:30.6 | And one of the co-hosts of the fantastic no offseason, the Athletic Women's Basketball show. |
| 0:37.4 | Now expanding Sabrina to three shows a week. |
| 0:40.8 | It's good to see. Welcome to you both. |
| 0:44.6 | Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us on. All right. Let me, I'm going to start |
| 0:50.3 | with you, Sabrina. And then you can, and by the way, I don't think you guys, have you guys ever met before or no? |
| 0:55.9 | I think we sat next to each other at Women's College All-Star Game last year, |
| 1:01.0 | year before, yeah. |
| 1:03.0 | All right, this podcast bringing people together. |
| 1:05.2 | Lovely. |
| 1:06.3 | All right, Sabrina, let me start with you. |
| 1:09.2 | Women's basketball, women's college basketball this year had a very, very good year when it comes to the broadcast networks. |
| 1:15.6 | Cross the SPN, more than 20 games average more than 500,000 viewers. |
| 1:20.6 | That's the most on record. |
| 1:22.2 | When you include all the games, so it's roughly like in terms of national windows, |
| 1:26.9 | games average 33,000 across all of the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Audacy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Audacy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.