In March 1995, with the women’s NCAA tournament approaching, ESPN called Debbie Antonelli and offered her a job as a color analyst for the March Madness regionals. They told her she would be paired with Beth Mowins, who would handle play-by-play duties.
Antonelli’s first reaction was: “Who?”
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“I didn’t know,” she recalls now. “I’ve never heard of her.”
Antonelli turned down the gig because she had just given birth. But in the fall of 1996, she heard Movins’ name again, this time from a local TV station in Pennsylvania, which wanted her to anchor Penn State women’s basketball games. This time, she accepted it.
Antonelli and Movens provided the voices for Penn State’s 76-62 victory over Seton Hall on Tuesday, November 26, 1996. Angie Potthoff scored 21 points to help the Nittany Lions win in what will be the first of countless women’s college basketball games that Antonelli and Mowins call together.
This is the 30th season that the two have told the story of women’s college basketball. In an era when the sport’s ratings and attendance are growing by leaps and bounds, fans know they’re watching an important game when they see Antonelli and Movins.
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“They’ve been trailblazers for broadcasters,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s hard for me to think of a better pairing than Debbie and Beth and what they mean. I just think they’re the gold standard and that gives me a lot of comfort when I watch them play. I don’t know if they have any peers that I know have done what they’ve done.”
Antonelli and Movins went from strangers to close friends. After thirty years traveling the country together, sketching out ideas on bar napkins after games, and spending time on family holidays where they could finish each other’s sentences. They have a habit, it’s second nature to them. Even sitting in the dugout at Colonial Life Arena in South Carolina, Antonelli sat on the left side of the couch and Movins sat on the right — just like they did in the broadcast booth on the sidelines.
“She was part of our family. She watched my kids grow up,” Antonelli said of Mowins. “When I work with Beth, I’m prepared in a way because I don’t have to worry about anything else, and it allows me to do what I’m really good at, which is dig deeper. We’ll tell you how and why.”
The “Wild West” of women’s basketball
Antonelli began his career in television when he was 23 years old. After playing basketball for Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow at North Carolina State University, where her Wolfpack team won the 1986 ACC regular season and tournament championships, Antonelli went to the University of Kentucky to serve as director of athletic department marketing. A local television station approached the Wildcats with the idea of producing and broadcasting some of their games. Antonelli not only convinced them to do women’s basketball, but she convinced them to let her appear on the air as an analyst.
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A few years later, Antonelli accepted a similar job at Ohio State University and again had conversations with local cable companies. Antonelli quickly became the face of Ohio State Buckeyes women’s basketball.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is like what I imagine coaching to be like, except you don’t deal with the players,'” Antonelli told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s got everything else. Watching film, preparing, practicing, you know, all the things I love about this job. It parallels my interest in developing my game.”
ESPN broadcasters Debbie Antonelli (left) and Beth Mowins broadcast the game between the South Carolina Gamecocks and Mississippi Rebels live from Colonial Life Arena.
Mowins’ path was more traditional. Her father was a coach and she played college basketball at Lafayette College, where she set single-season and career assist records. She then attended Syracuse’s Newhouse School, and shortly after graduating with a master’s degree, she became a play-by-play voice for Big East women’s basketball games of the week that aired on six different cable TV stations in the Northeast in the early 1990s.
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ESPN is headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut, in the center of the Big East footprint.
“The Big East Network saw me doing the Syracuse game, and I started doing the Big East games of the week, which were in Connecticut, and ESPN saw me doing the games. And then it just grew from there,” Mowins told USA TODAY Sports. “Back then, it was the Wild West.”
Mowins said when she and Antonelli first started working together, they were hosting several games a week for several different networks in different time zones. They are women’s basketball broadcast mercenaries. They might watch Michigan State on CBS on Saturday, then fly to North Carolina to watch Duke on ESPN on Sunday, then fly to New York to watch the Big East game at St. John’s, then fly to Texas for Fox Sports Southwest.
“My God, I would be gone for three weeks at a time,” Antonelli said. “It’s so busy.”
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“But we’re young, we’re hungry, and we’re trying to develop our craft,” Mowins said. “And probably stayed out too late.”
“We’ll meet the coaches after the game for a drink. We’ll let them buy it,” Antonelli said. “We did all this before the Internet, before cell phone cameras. … When it comes to postgame arrangements, that’s what I do.”
“I was exhausted after holding her for two hours,” Mowins said with a laugh. “I don’t want to make any decisions after that.”
ESPN broadcasters Debbie Antonelli (left) and Beth Mowins broadcast the game between the South Carolina Gamecocks and Mississippi Rebels live from Colonial Life Arena.
Antonelli worked as a freelancer for the first 28 years of her television career. Today, she primarily calls games for ESPN and its partners on the ACC and SEC networks, where she typically calls one men’s game and two women’s games per week. Sometimes her schedule can be jam-packed, such as earlier this season when she played nine games in 14 days.
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With the college sports season winding down, Mowins remains busy. In the fall she covers college football, and in the spring she’s one of the voices for the Women’s College World Series. Since joining ESPN in 1994, Mowins has won NCAA championships in basketball, softball, football and volleyball. In 2017, she hosted the Monday Night Football broadcast between the Chargers and Broncos, becoming the first woman to officiate a nationally televised NFL game.
For many young women in broadcasting, Mowins was more than just a role model, she was a standard.
“She’s always been someone to look up to and learn from, but she’s also given me hope as a female athlete in this incredibly wild world,” said Mia O’Brien, an ESPN radio host in Jacksonville, Fla. “It’s made me admire Beth even more as I’ve worked hard to grow as a play-by-play announcer. Today in the 2020s, I’m having a hard time finding representation, so I can’t even imagine what her path to national recognition will take.”
“I know nothing but basketball”
Antonelli is one of the sharpest minds in basketball. Part of that may be because Antonelli’s entire consumption is basketball, which is why Mowins’ pop culture references stick out in her mind.
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“I didn’t know anything but basketball,” Antonelli said. “I don’t watch any shows. I watch basketball.”
Mowins compared Antonelli’s ability to dissect the X’s and O’s to Tony Romo and Dan Orlovsky in NFL broadcasts because she can predict what’s about to happen on the field.
“There are very few people who have the ability to not only store it in there, but also take it out when the time is right. Debbie is in that group and the way she prepares is outstanding,” Mowins said. “She had relationships with all the coaches. One of the biggest things was if Debbie called someone, they would answer.”
ESPN analyst Debbie Antonelli watches a practice at Intrust Bank Arena on March 19, 2025 in Wichita, Kansas.
In addition to calling thousands of women’s basketball games on television, Antonelli served as a radio analyst for Westwood One’s Final Four broadcasts for 30 years. In 2022, Antonelli will be inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame along with her college coach You.
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No matter where she goes, the person most proud of Antonelli’s accomplishments in growing women’s basketball seems to be at her alma mater, North Carolina State University.
“She’s one of the best broadcasters out there, and I’m telling you, she works harder than anybody I know. She’s got the iron on a lot of fires,” N.C. State head coach Wes Moore said of Antonelli. “She did her homework. She knew going into the game what she wanted to talk about and cover.”
“Like an old couple”
Antonelli and Movins estimate they have officiated about 30 games a year together for three decades. With so many games to choose from, it’s hard to pick out the most memorable ones.
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Antonelli’s first thought was the 2020-21 season affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Antonelli and Movens were the only two people in the building when Stanford beat Pacific on Dec. 15, 2020, and Tara VanDerveer passed Pat Summitt to become the winningest women’s college basketball coach in history.
For Mowins, a trip to North Carolina’s Research Triangle was an unforgettable experience, as No. 2 UConn defeated No. 1 Duke on Feb. 1, 2003, in front of a sold-out Cameron Indoor Stadium.
“We had the heyday of the ACC in the early 2000s. It was a top-20 game every weekend,” Mowins said. “Those Triangle schools have been trying to build a fan base over the years, and when UConn came to Cameron Indoor, it was like a men’s game. The students were in it.”
The next week Sports Illustrated published a photo of that play with Diana Taurasi preparing to throw a pass and Alana Beard defending. If you look closely, you spot a woman in a red sweater, who is Mowins’ mother, sitting next to Antonelli’s parents.
ESPN analyst Beth Mowins watches the Los Angeles Clippers play the Sacramento Kings on February 25, 2024 at Crypto.com Arena.
After three decades of broadcasting women’s college basketball games, Antonelli and Mowins remain passionate about the game, the players and the coaches.
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And they show no signs of slowing down. They will host the ACC Tournament together this weekend in Duluth, Georgia, and will pair up again during March Madness.
The two have lost count of how many games they have played together.
“I would definitely say it feels like I’ve played 1,000 games,” Mowins said.
“I would say one of us deserves a medal,” Antonelli said. “The other one may need treatment.”
“I think that makes our chemistry special,” Mowins said. “When we work together, we’re not afraid to pick on each other, you know, like an old couple.”
This article originally appeared in USA TODAY: The voices behind the rise of women’s college basketball