2026 NCAA Women's Final Four ESPN commenting team Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
By Brendon Kleen on

PHOENIX — The NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament will have a repeat Final Four when the games tip off Friday afternoon in Phoenix, but there will be a noticeable difference in ESPN’s studio coverage for the game as Christine Williamson works her first championship weekend on the desk since taking over for Elle Duncan earlier this year.

A veteran of SportsCenter and ESPN’s college sports coverage, Williamson was a logical choice as the network quickly pivoted mid-season following Duncan’s departure for Netflix. But the shoes she is filling are sizable, not just in replacing Duncan but in maintaining the rhythm and chemistry of ESPN’s highly acclaimed women’s tournament studio show, which became closely connected to the growth of the sport as millions of new viewers tuned in during the springs of 2023 and 2024 as Caitlin Clark and Iowa vied for a championship.

As Williamson readies herself for the big stage of the Final Four, she revealed to Awful Announcing that the process of joining the women’s tournament desk was actually months in the making, and how she is dealing with the pressure of taking the reins of one of ESPN’s biggest properties.

“(I’m) really close with Elle Duncan. So I kind of knew that she was thinking about leaving for a long time,” Williamson explained. “Obviously, there was nothing confirmed until it was confirmed, but she had talked to us about what her plans were and how she was kind of thinking about what else could be on the docket for her. She has young kids … and [was] just thinking about her future.”

Williamson had gotten to know ESPN women’s college basketball analysts Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike well since joining ESPN in 2019. The three, along with Duncan, all had a home base in Bristol, where the network is headquartered.

Having worked the men’s basketball and football College GameDay shows as a reporter and host, respectively, and having anchored WNBA coverage since 2020, Williamson felt like she would be a good fit for NCAA Women’s Championship Live. She had talked with Carter and Ogwumike before about the fun of potentially contributing to the women’s basketball GameDay as a reporter some day.

So she took the relatively unusual step of reaching out to management directly to put herself into consideration.

“We had already had those conversations before, so I was like, well now there’s this position that’s opened up, I might as well tell people I want to do it,” Williamson said. “And then of course, Andraya and Chiney really wanted me to be a part of it anyway.”

“I just wanted to make sure that if they were like, ‘I wonder if Christine wants to do this,’ they knew the answer to the question.”

Though Duncan became linked with women’s basketball after anchoring college and WNBA coverage in recent years, even she did not expect her career to go down that path. As networks like ESPN put more resources into women’s sports coverage to meet the demand from audiences, broadcasters now can see these properties as a destination rather than a stepping stone.

But as women’s sports have grown, as seen in the fierce discourse around how much to attribute the popularity of women’s hoops to Clark, some longtime fans have put their guard up. They want to see that newcomers are entering the space in good faith and with real passion.

“People thought I had covered women’s hoops before and I hadn’t,” Williamson said. “It was just learning a lot, and I still have a lot to learn.”

Williamson has hosted WNBA coverage since 2020. In fact, it was her first live television experience during the league’s Bubble season, when producers needed her to fill in due to travel restrictions during the pandemic.

And as a SportsCenter anchor, she isn’t exactly a newbie when it comes to the big storylines around women’s college basketball. The learning curve has come in enmeshing herself with the history of the sport and some of the deeper cultural and stylistic trends within it.

“I think that’s always the biggest thing for everyone that works in the space is you want to sound knowledgeable, even if you just got here,” Williamson said. “And I wanted to be respected in the space, and I wanted everyone to know that I really cared about the space. So I think that was the biggest challenge was just feeling the pressure of that. Like … do I look like a fraud? I’ve never been here before.”

Having played Division I volleyball at Miami before starting her broadcasting career, Williamson is familiar with the ecosystem. The studio show, where she sets Carter and Ogwumike up for breakdowns throughout March Madness, breathes easy and packs energy with Williamson at the helm.

At a Final Four launch event in Phoenix last month, ESPN SVP Meg Aronowitz praised the trio for coming together quickly to keep the network on track after Duncan’s departure.

“You see a lot of similarities in what we’re doing, but those three have become fast friends,” she said. “They were to begin with, but the chemistry there is undeniable. We could have probably made a mistake there, but Christine was the right person to hire, and it’s immediately set us in the right direction.”

Williamson also hosted the women’s basketball GameDay a handful of times during the stretch run of the season, and will be the show’s host going forward. She took over for Duncan on the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter alongside Kevin Neghandi as well.

A more difficult adjustment has been for Williamson to ingratiate herself with the audience and the women’s basketball community without disrupting what had already been built. Williamson said she knew the chemistry would work with her old-friends-turned-cohosts, but she also knew she’d bring a different energy than Duncan to the desk.

“I wanted to be respected in the space because I knew what I was talking about, and also because they thought I was a good replacement for Elle,” she said. “And I think there are going to be plenty of people that … miss the old thing, but it doesn’t exist.”

“Me and Elle have completely different personalities, different humor, different ways that we do things.”

The shows this spring have understandably leaned more on the analysts as Williamson gets comfortable. But the desk hasn’t missed a beat as viewers once again tuned into ESPN’s coverage of the women’s tournament in droves, showing the post-Clark floor is much higher than before.

Since arriving at ESPN, Williamson has broken through consistently by infusing natural personality into the hosting assignments she receives. Even as she grows into the new opportunity, punctuated this weekend by Final Four coverage on ABC, she is trying to do the same.

“I know how to do the job. I at least know how to host, and people tell me I do a pretty good job at it,” Williamson said. “So I’m like, as long as I’m doing what my job is and making the two people next to me look the best that they possibly can, then everything else will figure itself out.”

About Brendon Kleen

Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.

View all posts by Brendon Kleen