Skylar Diggins is a sophomore basketball player at Notre Dame. Leading her team into the NCAA championship game tonight after an upset win over the UConn women on Sunday, Diggins might also be the new face of women’s college basketball. Diggins scored 28 points on 10-14 shooting on Sunday and has a budding online relationship with Lil Wayne who has proclaimed his love for the Notre Dame star multiple times.

Lil Wayne‘s affinity for Diggins is shared by anyone who has caught the sophomore during the tournament. Her Twitter follower count jumped from 6 to 45 thousand in since the tournament began. According to Yahoo!, searches for her name jumped 2700 percent on Sunday. FSV brethren FratHouseSports even gave Skylar the photo gallery treatment.

“I’m like, ‘I didn’t know we were married, but this is huge,’” Diggins said. “Him just watching the game and watching us play, I think that says a lot about how big women’s basketball is becoming.”

It’s all a nice thought, but when I was trying to research this post, I couldn’t find a single place that had Diggins’ game-by-game stats. The reason searches for Diggins can spike 2700 percent is because no one had any clue who she was at this time last week.

Will Diggins be the one to take women’s basketball to the “next level?” Probably not, but for now she’s the new pretty face that casual fans and sports bloggers will look for excuses to post about. There are worst fates. By this time next year, Notre Dame could be headed to another Final Four appearance and we could find ourselves in full-on Skylar Diggins watch. Anything is possible. We learned that on Sunday when Notre Dame finally beat UConn.

[Images via Twitpic and Getty]