Why Women’s College Basketball is Growing in Chapel Hill

On this episode of the Tar Heels Insider Podcast, beat writer Grant Chachere explains how UNC Women’s Basketball program is gaining popularity in Chapel Hill due to their recent success but also with the way sport is becoming more mainstream in general.

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to the 2025 ACC Tipoff Q&A. I am happy to have UNC on the stage with me. Courtney Banghart going into her seventh year now. 

COURTNEY BANGHART: Crazy. 

THE MODERATOR: Reniya Kelly, as well as Indya Nivar. Welcome. Five NCAA tournaments and two Sweet 16s in the last four years. Courtney, you returned eight players and six newcomers. With the eight returning players, how different might this team look this year, and what are some of the similarities we might see? 

COURTNEY BANGHART: Yeah. You know, we do expect to have a different look. You don’t lose two of the best post players the league has seen in a long time and try to replace them immediately in the same way. 

So we have some posts that need to step into that opportunity. They’ll play the game a little differently. They can extend the floor a little more. They can allow us to play with a little more spacing. 

Then we bring back a lot of experienced guards, talented guard play, as well as what we brought in both through the portal and freshmen in recruiting. We have a good guard group that has a lot of game pressure, whereas our inside game we’ve got to use our nonconference, which you see scheduled, to put them to the test early so we can get as much game pressure on our youth as we can as we prepare for the gauntlet of the ACC.

THE MODERATOR: Speaking of your schedule, nonconference consists of seven NCAA Tournament teams from a year ago, and why not? Let’s just start off with South Carolina.

COURTNEY BANGHART: Yeah. 

THE MODERATOR: From what I looked at, you have three of last year’s — three of the four Final Four teams. 

COURTNEY BANGHART: You bet. All on the road. 

THE MODERATOR: Why make it easy? Was there a strategic plan with this schedule knowing what you had, or it’s just, hey, let’s play anybody and everybody? 

COURTNEY BANGHART: It was pretty strategic. The ACC is so hard every year, and we knew that this was going to be a year where we were losing 60% or more of our productivity. 

And so you would rather find out — instead of finding out late, I want to find out early kind of what the traditional, sort of over the last year, were the best.  UCLA brought back a lot of their players. South Carolina brought back a lot of their players. Texas brought back a lot of their players. 

We kind of are going to go against people that are really experienced and had a great year last year. I think that will bode well as we continue to persistently prepare for what’s going to be the ACC gauntlet.