Andraya Carter on the rise of women's basketball and what comes next

Catch up quick: With Elle Duncan and Chiney Ogwumike, Carter hosts College GameDay, which you can watch throughout the women's NCAA Tournament on ESPN.

Flashback: Carter was one of legendary coach Pat Summitt's final recruits, arriving in Knoxville in 2012 — a different culture and era.

• Transfers sat out a year, so there were no portal-fueled rebuilds like this year's TCU team.
• Name, image and likeness (NIL) money wasn't permitted until 2021 and women's basketball was still fighting for prime-time visibility.

By the numbers: In Carter's senior season, 2016, the women's NCAA national championship drew less than three million TV viewers. The WNBA team with the highest attendance averaged around 10,300 fans per game.

• Last year, almost 19 million viewers caught the women's national championship game, which outdrew the men's final for the first time — and six WNBA franchises, or half the league, averaged more than 10,300 fans.

Below is an excerpt from Axios' conversation with Carter, edited for clarity. The interview took place ahead of the 2024 NCAA Tournament.

Is the on-court talent in women's basketball getting better every year, or is that too general?

• "I think what you're saying absolutely makes sense, and that talent we're seeing now is a product of all the players that have paved the way. There are young girls today who get to watch Caitlin Clark face South Carolina on ABC and see their favorite players all the time.
• As a young girl, it's so easy now to look up and see what you want to be and have those lofty dreams that don't seem like they're lofty at all.
• We now have a group of college players that grew up knowing that the WNBA is something they can have an amazing career in. So they're training with these goals in mind and with NIL, these players are hiring coaches and are training at a different level than we've ever seen. It's more purposeful and more explosive. That shows in the product we're seeing on the floor."

How do you describe how different the college game has gotten since you were in Tennessee?

• "There were a lot of really talented college athletes that were trying to figure out how to make ends meet. The visibility and the way that the game is now talked about, it has become so popular and so invested in. These players deserve it.
• But it's really hard to put into words how different everything around the game — the way it's covered, talked about and played. Everything is different, but in a really good way."

What steps must happen over the next 3-5 years to continue the momentum?

• "For the WNBA in particular, the new CBA is huge. Obviously, the new media rights deal and investments, but I think one of the biggest things will be all of the investors and owners creating facilities for the athletes. I think people still forget that these are the best basketball players in the world and some of them are still sharing facilities with the public.
• "There have been owners that have set the standard on what it should look like and a lot of organizations are following suit, but until they have all put in what we have seen in some of these other cities, that will increase the product that we see on the floor. A rising tide lifts all boats, but you still have to lift your anchor to rise."

March is Women's History Month — what does it mean to be not only one of the rising faces at ESPN but a former women's college basketball player who's now analyzing women's basketball?

• "It's incredible. Basketball has done so many amazing things for me, and I was heartbroken to not have the career that I wanted and that my body didn't have what it took, but my mind and my heart are still in it.
• "This is as close as I can get to fulfilling that passion of playing, by talking about it and about how hard what these women are doing is. Hopefully the way I talk about basketball and these incredible athletes inspires more young girls to continue to play basketball, because it's so much fun."