Among Geno Auriemma’s greatest cautionary tales to his players over the years is reinforcing the Shakespearean maxim that your greatest strength is your greatest weakness.

How coincidental, if not ironic, that most of women’s basketball, the industry Auriemma has served for almost four decades now, could use the reminder.

Women’s basketball’s greatest strength: the game’s burgeoning popularity.

Women’s basketball’s greatest weakness: how the game’s dramatis personae are handling it.

Straight up: With increased attention comes increased scrutiny. Good scrutiny. Bad scrutiny. You just need the bandwidth to process that deeper scrutiny is the best evidence yet of equality.

Ah, there’s that word again. Equality. Often referenced over the years from advocates of the women’s game. Treat us as you do the men. And now - huzzah, huzzah - it’s finally happening. There is more media coverage than ever, begetting more opinions, controversies and profiles of the game’s complicated illuminati.

Equality, apparently, is overrated to some of the game’s keepers of the gate, whose reactions to the perceived slights has triggered the occasional persecution complex.

“Maybe, just maybe, those sharp takes are just treating women like their male counterparts, who know that there’s a dark underbelly to this visibility,” Kirsten Fleming wrote earlier this week in the New York Post. “Tom Brady, LeBron James, the list goes on. They’re no stranger to ad hominem attacks as much as valid criticism.

“The spotlight women’s sports are in now is thrilling, but inherently brings more heat, more drama, more hate. And yes, more love and after NIL, more cashola. But nothing is free. More visibility and a bigger stage means no more kid gloves because that’s equality too.”

Fleming shoots, Fleming scores.

Didn’t these people pay attention to Auriemma all the years he absorbed darts from the media, knowing that the attention was good for business? I saw Geno lash out maybe a handful of times, mostly over L’Affaire de Nykesha Sales many years ago now.

Otherwise? All the dustups with Pat Summitt and Muffet McGraw - sound bites that led “SportsCenter” more than once, by the way - were his way of growing the game. He responded with humor, took little personally and provided the best foundation yet for more media coverage of the women’s game.

Yet look what’s happening. LSU coach Kim Mulkey threatened to sue the Washington Post for a “hit piece” that hadn’t even been published. The “hit piece” was a deep dive into Mulkey’s fascinating life. Excellent and thorough, though not always complimentary. It’s called journalism.

Then there’s this gem from the USA Today’s Nancy Armour: “There are plenty of male coaches with documented records of doing terrible things or being unlikable people who have not been put under the microscope like Mulkey has.” Um, Nancy. Remember Jerry Tarkanian? Bobby Knight?

A recent column in the Los Angeles Times portrayed last week’s UCLA/LSU game as another good vs. evil allegory. The writer, Ben Bolch, referred to LSU as “dirty debutantes.” Clearly, Mr. Bolch snoozed his way through alliteration class. The quick fix would have been to simply eliminate the line upon further review from his editors and tell Bolch the next time a bout with alliteration flies at him: duck diligently.

Instead, the gutless hierarchy at the Times made Bolch apologize for a column whose premise - that LSU is villainous - is spot on. And not in a bad way, either. Except that there are too many agenda-driven grandstanders in the media industry so obsessed with the politically correct hot take that they’re forfeiting their obligation to think critically.

No good story has ever been told without a villain. None. And to watch LSU this season was to see the villain: a fight between the Tigers and South Carolina; Angel Reese waving goodbye to a player from Middle Tennessee when she fouled out; Reese jawing with UCLA coach Cori Close; Mulkey going Vesuvius occasionally. It was all great theater.

And yet the mere mention of this was called “sexist.” This is the game we’re going to play, apparently. Demand that you get treated equally, but then weaponize “sexism” when it suits your purpose. Makes you wonder how the women’s basketball intelligentsia would have reacted to the old “Catholics vs. Convicts” thing from Miami/Notre Dame football in 1988. Firing squad at dawn?

This has been a wonderful women’s tournament. We’re finally seeing the players as personalities, too. But with that comes the very elemental idea that not everyone’s going to like you. And now that those everyones all have pulpits known as X, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and heaven knows what else, the attention comes with the requirement of thicker skin.

“Underneath the outcry is a certain segment of the world of women’s sports that believes female athletes should only be presented as Cleopatras on a golden chaise,” Fleming wrote. “Women’s hoops is at an exciting point and a crossroads. But we have to decide how the sport and the athletes will be treated: as gladiators on the court giving us an unforgettable show or meek females in need of bubble wrap.”

I vote for gladiators. But the only way that happens is for the gladiators, their coaches and the pundits to understand that equality begets negativity sometimes. You want equality? It’s closer than ever. Now try to figure out what comes with it.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.