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COLUMBIA, Mo. — For three quarters, the Missouri women’s basketball team played Iowa close.

That was on March 24, 2019, when the seventh-seeded Tigers lost 68-52 to the second-seeded Hawkeyes in a second-round NCAA Tournament battle. Iowa held Mizzou star Sophie Cunningham to just eight points in her last college game.

It’s been five years since that matchup, and those programs’ trajectories diverged drastically from that afternoon in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Missouri’s loss marked the end of the Cunningham era — a run of four consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. The Tigers haven’t been back since and look likely to slink through a defining offseason that aligns with women’s college basketball’s shining moment.

On the other hand, the Hawkeyes are at the core of that moment.

Some 233 days after beating MU in the tournament, Iowa picked up a commitment from a West Des Moines point guard named Caitlin Clark.

The same court on which Jordan Roundtree nailed to give Mizzou a first-quarter lead in 2019 has been the site of Clark routinely bagging plenty of shots from that range. It’s now adorned by a No. 22 decal on the spot where she became the highest-scoring women’s college basketball player ever.

Want more signs of the contrast between where Iowa and Missouri ended up? Just look at Monday morning’s news cycle.

The Hawkeyes were the top topic on “First Take,� ESPN’s flagship midmorning talk show.

“How important is tonight’s game for Caitlin Clark’s legacy?� asked the network’s lower-third graphic, setting up the most hotly anticipated college basketball game in nearly a year: Iowa vs. Louisiana State in the women’s Elite Eight. Clark vs. Angel Reese, a national championship rematch from last season, a spot in the Final Four on the line.

The morning also saw plenty of hype for the other star-powered women’s basketball clash of Monday night’s doubleheader, the battle between Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and Southern California freshman JuJu Watkins.

Media analysts for women’s college basketball TV viewership or at least end up playing out in front of 7 million or 8 million viewers. Graphics for the doubleheader encouraged fans to clear their Monday night schedules. Rapper Travis Scott posted his excitement to his 11.9 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, including seven Y’s at the end of “.�

Meanwhile, in Columbia, the future of Missouri women’s basketball program plodded on quietly.

Mizzou has decided to retain coach Robin Pingeton for the last year of her contract, PowerMizzou’s Gabe DeArmond Monday morning. There hasn’t been any announcement from the athletics department or team, and a program spokesperson was unable to confirm the report.

No fanfare, no hype.

This had been a distinct possibility for the MU women’s program, given the timing of athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois’ departure. She had set the clear-cut bar for Pingeton’s employment at making it back to the NCAA Tournament this season. When the Tigers instead finished last in the Southeastern Conference, with 12 consecutive losses to close the campaign, it looked like the right mix for Pingeton’s dismissal.

Except there was no AD to fire her. And there still isn’t one.

So almost by default, Pingeton will coach into the last year of her contract. How the continued lack of clarity regarding her employment status will impact Mizzou is — no pun intended — unclear.

Hayley Frank, the multitime all-SEC player who arrived on campus not long after that 2019 loss to Iowa, is done after exhausting her eligibility. Point guard Mama Dembele decided to use her final year of eligibility after all — but decided to do so at South Florida.

The Tigers have a young core to build around. In her second season, Ashton Judd finished second on the team in scoring with 13.4 points per game and tied for the team lead with 6.4 rebounds per game. In her first season, Grace Slaughter added 11.5 points per game and shot 37% from 3-point range.

As the current, exploding women’s basketball moment shows, stars carry teams to new heights — in the NCAA Tournament, in TV ratings and in fan interest. Getting those stars means being in the recruiting mix for them.

Bueckers was the top recruit in the 2020 class, followed by Reese, Stanford star Cameron Brink and Clark — a top four that panned out with exceptional results.

Mizzou secured commitments from Aijha Blackwell and Frank in the 2019 class, the Nos. 9 and 26 recruits. Since then, the Tigers haven’t had a prospect ranked higher than 47th in a given class and don’t have an incoming freshman in the top 100 for next season.

There’s contrast elsewhere in the conference, too.

In other Monday coaching news, Tennessee alumna and women’s basketball coach Kellie Harper. She played for the Lady Vols in the Pat Summit era and posted a 108-52 record as their coach.

Tennessee consistently finished close to — but not quite at — the top of the SEC and never advanced past the Sweet 16 under Harper. This year, the Lady Vols were eliminated by an unexpected South Carolina 3-pointer in the SEC tournament semifinals and lost to Final Four-bound North Carolina State in the NCAA Tournament’s second round.

That’s evidently not up to the standard in Knoxville, where Tennessee would seemingly prefer to cash in on the flash of the current women’s basketball moment by, well, being part of it.

The question that Monday’s events ask, then, is how Mizzou will approach the sport when it’s at its brightest: Will the Tigers embrace or duck beneath its spotlight?