Can the outgoing trifecta of women’s college basketball’s most visible stars attract a bigger spotlight for the WNBA?

That’s what both the league and ESPN are banking on as they held a tightly-staged press conference Thursday to announce an extension of their long-standing television partnership.

The six-year deal, which Sports Business Journal reported ahead of time is worth an estimated $12 million a season, was unveiled along with the WNBA’s new branding campaign and logo.

At times during Thursday’s media event, it was hard to tell whether it was about ESPN’s self-proclaimed commitment to women’s sports more than the WNBA. But it is quite clear that Brittney Griner of Baylor, Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame and Elena Delle Donne of Delaware, who figure to be top three players taken in the April 15 draft, have generated the kind of national press that the WNBA has dreamed about.

For as loaded as the pro league has been since its inception with former college All-Americans and Olympians, their visibility drops during a time of year when most fans (this one included) don’t have much basketball in mind.

The question at the top is one that has been posed many times before. Here’s another one: Remember Diana Taurasi? UConn’s iconic guard and three-time national champion has had a stellar WNBA career leading Phoenix to two titles, as well as three Olympic gold medals and European crowns in Russia.

But as she completes her first decade after college, Taurasi’s feats have largely flown under the larger national sports radar. When Griner joins Taurasi in Phoenix — the Mercury won the draft lottery — will that truly generate a closer look at a WNBA that has been around for 16 years? Griner’s potential dominance in the pros could be as unprecedented as her spectacular impact on the college game.

Diggins has become something of a national sports celebrity thanks to her social media acumen, counting the rapper Lil Wayne (reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated) among her many admirers. Whether she goes to Chicago with the No. 2 pick or Tulsa at No. 3, she’s easily the personality player of this trio. But will that interest wane as she takes her game to the dead of summer, and then overseas, where the real money is earned by female pros?

Delle Donne, the one-time UConn signee, is as pure a shooter and scorer as the women’s game has had in years, and there’s no doubt she can gun it in the pros. She’ll have to learn to play some stellar defense in the W and get used to its rather rugged physicality.

The hope is that they’ll do for the WNBA what Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s arrival did for the NBA — broaden its appeal far beyond the purists.

The WNBA is coming off its lowest average attendance for a season since it began in 1997, and Griner is a once-in-a-lifetime-player whose presence has been compared to that of Wilt Chamberlain.

While reading through some Tweets of WNBA players during the press conference, it’s easy to understand why seasoned pros, most of whom are now playing in Europe, Asia and Australia for their real living, might chafe at the hype.

Most revealing were the comments of Erlana Larkins, a former college standout at North Carolina who plays for the WNBA champion Indiana Fever and is currently winding down her Turkish domestic league season. In response to another Tweet she said:

league has superstars that have proven themselves how can u be a superstar & have yet 2 play in a pro game yet

And this:

Griner is huge & everything but unless she gets get weight up she won’t be as prosperous as everyone thinks

While I groused (only once!) on Twitter about ESPN’s relentless promotions of “3 to See” during the NCAA Tournament, from a business and promotional point of view it makes sense.

At the same time, the Phoenix marketing staff isgiving away tickets to men in an attempt to appeal to a segment of the sports-watching public that supposedly doesn’t think much of female athletes.

Not only that, but the Mercury has set up Twitter hashtags #ManUp and #CureTheCooties as part of this campaign.

Yes: “Cure the Cooties.”

Welcome to the fourth grade, fellas.

A franchise with Brittney Griner coming on board is resorting to a gimmick like this?

While they indulge in the hard sell of “enlightening” men about the women’s game, the Mercury and the WNBA still aren’t addressing why more women don’t watch and become fans. They are dealing in a bottom-line reality that NBA commissioner David Stern has laid out for the women’s league to achieve beyond his departure: To become more financially self-sustaining.

Star power is what got the NBA where it is, so expect a further deluge of ESPN’s “3 to See” branding at the next level. Name recognition beyond what appeals to hard-core fans explains the prominence of Bill Laimbeer during Thursday’s presser. He’s back in the league after guiding the former Detroit Shock to multiple WNBA crowns, and now is GM and head coach of a New York Liberty franchise that has been floundering for too many years.

As Shelley DuBois noted at Fortune.com, three of the WNBA’s 12 teams have turned a modest profit, as well as the league overall. The money per team as part of the new ESPN contract is $1 million a season and that’s nothing to dismiss: “In a way, the cold business of it is heartening: This deal wouldn’t have taken place if it wouldn’t work financially.”

Bingo. The business of women’s sports, especially professional team sports, will always be a sliver of what their male counterparts enjoy, but this is a notable development. Increased ticket sales — not patronizing giveaways — and corporate sponsorships remain just as important as branding campaigns and buzzwords.

As for the new logo, I’ll admit it doesn’t do much for me. Instead of a female dribbling, she is now shooting a layup, which is supposed to signify another phase in the development of women’s pro basketball.

But the less gimmicky the WNBA becomes, the better. If we’re going to have cheesy promos, I’m totally old-school, a hopeless nostalgiac for the funky funky 70s that ESPN reprised in the early years of the league. What’s easy to forget now is how effective these ads were, and how much of a sense of fun they evoked. There’s nothing wrong with keeping that going.

DENVER — Ken Starr was thumbing his smartphone as Kim Mulkey speculated about the response to Baylor’s NCAA women’s basketball championship Tuesday night.

“At Baylor they used to not let the Baptists dance,” Mulkey said. “I’ll bet they’re dancing now.”

Kim Mulkey with daughter Makenzie, a Baylor team member, and son Kramer.

Starr, the Baylor president, guffawed with the audience of reporters as Mulkey, perhaps more than anything else, just wanted to take a deep breath and relax.

Baylor had just flattened Notre Dame 80-61 in one of the most dominating defensive performances in NCAA history.

The Lady Bears became the seventh NCAA women’s team to go undefeated and the first to go 40-0. National player of the year Brittney Griner was in devastating form, with 26 points, 13 rebounds and 5 blocked shots.

With Griner and the nucleus of Baylor’s team, including another punishing defender, All-American point guard Odyssey Sims, returning next season, Baylor is occupying the space normally reserved for UConn and Tennessee.

And having to answer a similar battery of questions. Such as:

How do you top perfection?

“You’re making me embrace this now instead of letting me enjoy this,” Mulkey said. “We’re going to embrace it. I don’t think you guys are going to let me hide it.”

She could have been excused for sounding exasperated, but if she did, Mulkey hid it well. All season long she urged her players to get comfortable with being the strong favorite to win the title. Along the way, Lady Bears took down Notre Dame, Connecticut, Tennessee, a rugged Big 12 Conference, Tennessee again in the Elite 8, Stanford in the national semifinals and the Fighting Irish for a second, and convincing, time.

Yet the Irish trailed only 34-28 at halftime. Griner had just nine points as Baylor couldn’t take advantage of foul trouble to center Devereaux Peters and poor shooting from its backcourt trio that keyed Notre Dame’s semifinal win over UConn.

All that changed in the second half as Griner went to work on the Irish, with Peters sitting down with four fouls. She reeled off 11 points in a nearly four-minute span midway in the period as the Lady Bears pulled out to a 69-50 lead.

Amid the flurry was a splendid sky hook shot from right side of the basket, as smooth as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and just as effective. Baylor, which shot a sizzling 63 percent in the second half, got 19 points from Sims and 12 from Destiny Williams.

“When I hit that little hook, it just got me energized,” Griner said. “I was kind of shocked it went in, but it definitely got me going.”

A shell-shocked Notre Dame (35-4), which lost to Texas A & M in last year’s championship game, got 20 points from its All-American guard, Skylar Diggins, but little else. The Irish simply had no answer for the 6-foot-8 Griner, who was named the Most Outstanding Player at the Pepsi Center.

“I think she’s one of a kind,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “I think she’s like a guy playing with women. There are so many things that she can do that I’ve not seen a lot of women [do].”

McGraw’s comments were amplified on ESPN and greeted by some on social media outlets with contempt (the team’s publicist issued a clarified statement by McGraw on Twitter), but not by Griner. “I definitely take it as a compliment,” she said.

While Baylor’s exploits set a new mark in NCAA annals, this team isn’t the first to win 40 games in a season. In 1979-80, Louisiana Tech notched a 40-5 record, getting extra games in a state tournament that was a hallmark of the AIAW era, and winning a third place national consolation game.

That was the season before Mulkey’s arrival as a player. In her first two seasons, the Lady Techsters absolutely dominated, going a combined 69-1 and winning AIAW and NCAA national titles.

As a coach, Mulkey has Baylor poised for similar greatness. She’s not picky about a won-loss record as long as she gets the same result next season.

“If we lose two,  three, four, five or we go 30-10, I don’t care. But that’s what we want, another national championship.”

As for another national championship coach who’s already expressed the desire to aim for perfection, Mulkey offered a brief thought, perhaps in a be-careful-what-you-wish-for vein:

“I saw Calipari wants to go undefeated. Good luck to him.”