Couldn't some of this be explained by the lack of funding/support/infrastructure for women's basketball in relation to the men's game at the youth level? The top talent is always going to exist no matter what, but with less coaching, less elite camps and overall less support, the talent just beneath the elite level is always going to struggle to standout.I've been following women's basketball since the Diana Taurasi days, and my heuristic / belief over the years has been that there are only about ~8 legit teams in the country in any given year, who get all the top recruits and have legitimate chances at upsetting the big guns / winning it all. Some of those names change year to year, some of them stay the same, but the early tournament games seem to much more typically resemble UConn's 140-52 first-round blowout than the quality we've seen. Whereas, I think the men's field is a lot deeper, and the quality margin between the very top teams and the next tier or two being a lot smaller. So I only really watch the Women's tournament once it gets to the Elite 8, with not much more than a passing interest the first 3 rounds. But once you get down to those 8 teams, man, they can really fuckin play, and they give up nothing to the men in terms of mental toughness or teamwork. And you also don't have the one-and-done NBA dynamic that makes top men's teams more of a franken-team, where you hardly know some of the key players and they feel almost like stand-ins with no personal story attached.
edit: My impression is that in the 80s and 90s, that list of legit contending teams may have been even smaller, so frankly, 8 is pretty good. The effectiveness of Geno's machine has waxed and waned since then, but in the years when UConn isn't a total hegemon, I think the list of schools who are in the mix has grown a bit. Which is good for the game, of course.
I'm not exactly sure what the numbers are, but I assume that the girl's AAU circuit is not nearly as robust as the boy's AAU circuit; I imagine there are fewer AAU teams that tour nationally and Adidas hosts fewer camps. You could probably say the same about Girls HS Basketball; with fewer players being recruited by prep schools and playing all over the country in tournaments. Naturally, that creates less depth in the college game compared to the men. I think it isn't a coincidence that over the last 20 years as the grassroots system has exploded we are seeing more and more upsets in the NCAA Tournament.