538: Rise and Fall of wcbb tournament dynasties

[HuskyNan]

A statistical look. Someone over at 538 is a women’s hoops fan.

The Rise And Fall Of Women’s NCAA Tournament Dynasties

 

[hoopsfan22]

Wow that's surprising how far ahead of us the Vols are in the seed points table. I guess they really were something in the '80s and '90s.

 

[Puppy Love]

Not sure I’m buying the ‘seed points’. Instead of looking at a proxy for how teams are expected to perform -and linking the explanation to a story about the men’s game-it might be better to consider actual results. Ball State, anyone?

 

[TheFarmFan]

I also wonder what value there is to comparing teams this far back. They have Duke as a team "on the rise," but I think every Duke fan experientially feels their team has been on the decline for the past decade. And a school like Long Beach State hasn't been relevant since any of today's players were born. So what?

It'd also be helpful to have them mark out coaching changes: UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, Baylor, and Notre Dame have all had their strong eras during a single coach's oversight. So does this say something about these schools, or about Geno, Tara, Pat, Kim, and Muffitt? Or does it suggest that hey, now that there's major money in women's sports, the same schools that are good at other sports will become better at women's basketball, and the third-tier sports schools that cornered the market (Louisiana Tech, Long Beach State, Old Dominion) won't be able to keep up. Without an attempt to explain the correlation or causation, the piece is just a bunch of charts.

More than anything, though, it's a good reminder that every program is one coaching change away from a possible decline into irrelevance, something Lady Vols fans have been experiencing firsthand year after year after year.

 

[IWearShoes]

Might be easily summarized with "When you have a really good coach, you usually have a really good program. When you don't, you don't."

 

[triaddukefan]

 

[meyers7]

Most sports see early champions maintain some sort of strong presence into modern times, like the New York Yankees in baseball and Boston Celtics in basketball. So it’s surprising that this many of the most dominant teams of the early women’s tourney have vanished from the competitive landscape.

Not sure why they would be surprised. Professional teams work in a parity system. Using draft picks and salary caps, free agency, and players can stay more then 4 years. Very different in the college world.

 

[BroadwayVa]

A statistical look. Someone over at 538 is a women’s hoops fan.

The Rise And Fall Of Women’s NCAA Tournament Dynasties

WOW, what a trip down memory lane! Geno regularly played ODU and La Tech and usually had great games, along with LSU.

The kick up the pole for Vol Nation came because U Tenn was the ONLY game in town (USA) During much of Pats dominance Womens basketball was an after thought and sometimes non-existent for many schools, for a number of years. Kudo's to Pat for building that program early. No doubt in MY mind that Pat set the early standard and Geno set the standard for WBB thereafter.
Love her or hate her, or him: Womens basketball for the next 4 decades will be trying to duplicate what those 2 achieved.

 

[BroadwayVa]

Might be easily summarized with "When you have a really good coach, you usually have a really good program. When you don't, you don't."

You of course are correct. MONEY is a big factor. The Uconn program was not so good when Geno took over. With personality, Philly kid stuff, dynamic persuasion he talked the old time Ag school into seeing the vision he and Christine had for the Huskies. Some of that took money and he got it. Thank Geno, Thank Chris, but also the Uconn management for buying into the vision.

 

[huskyd]

I also wonder what value there is to comparing teams this far back. They have Duke as a team "on the rise," but I think every Duke fan experientially feels their team has been on the decline for the past decade. And a school like Long Beach State hasn't been relevant since any of today's players were born. So what?

It'd also be helpful to have them mark out coaching changes: UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, Baylor, and Notre Dame have all had their strong eras during a single coach's oversight. So does this say something about these schools, or about Geno, Tara, Pat, Kim, and Muffitt? Or does it suggest that hey, now that there's major money in women's sports, the same schools that are good at other sports will become better at women's basketball, and the third-tier sports schools that cornered the market (Louisiana Tech, Long Beach State, Old Dominion) won't be able to keep up. Without an attempt to explain the correlation or causation, the piece is just a bunch of charts.

More than anything, though, it's a good reminder that every program is one coaching change away from a possible decline into irrelevance, something Lady Vols fans have been experiencing firsthand year after year after year.

If every program is "one coaching change away from a possible decline," how about a few recruiting disappointments? We often criticize teams for wasting talent. What about not having enough talent (or the right kind)? What Geno does with next year's group will be instructive.

 

[biobioprof]

I also wonder what value there is to comparing teams this far back. They have Duke as a team "on the rise," but I think every Duke fan experientially feels their team has been on the decline for the past decade. And a school like Long Beach State hasn't been relevant since any of today's players were born. So what?

It'd also be helpful to have them mark out coaching changes: UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, Baylor, and Notre Dame have all had their strong eras during a single coach's oversight. So does this say something about these schools, or about Geno, Tara, Pat, Kim, and Muffitt? Or does it suggest that hey, now that there's major money in women's sports, the same schools that are good at other sports will become better at women's basketball, and the third-tier sports schools that cornered the market (Louisiana Tech, Long Beach State, Old Dominion) won't be able to keep up. Without an attempt to explain the correlation or causation, the piece is just a bunch of charts.

More than anything, though, it's a good reminder that every program is one coaching change away from a possible decline into irrelevance, something Lady Vols fans have been experiencing firsthand year after year after year.

Complaining about a "just bunch of charts" makes me wonder if you’re familiar with 538.

They don't have Duke as a team still on the rise. They have Duke as an example of a team where the rise came out of nowhere. The author calls out Duke as the exception to the group of sudden risers from the late 1990s/early 2000s who have remained near the top. And the others they include in that figure (UConn, Baylor, and Notre Dame), all have the same coach who oversaw the rise.

I thought it was an OK read but not written for the kind of hardcore WBB fans who are on the Boneyard. It would have been nice if one could see the year by year seed points for every team; I was a little surprised that wasn't there given that it's 538.

In terms of correlation and causation, I think there are plenty of "just so story" explanations that make intuitive sense in general but don't explain the fine details. I also think the explanations are not the same in different eras, especially the early history vs more recent. Despite the end of the story, La Tech, ODU, and Long Beach are very unlikely to rise from the ashes. In terms of the early champs who fell on hard times, I think Southern Cal is in a different group of explanations than La Tech (and I wonder how much is explained by Cheryl Miller).

 

[hoopsfan22]

If every program is "one coaching change away from a possible decline," how about a few recruiting disappointments? We often criticize teams for wasting talent. What about not having enough talent (or the right kind)? What Geno does with next year's group will be instructive.

What's happening with next year's group?

 

[TheFarmFan]

Complaining about a "just bunch of charts" makes me wonder if you’re familiar with 538.

That was precisely why I found the article so disappointing: normally 538 has great analysis to accompany the charts; either they're revealing something in the data we can't perceive from the human eye alone, and/or they venture a guess as the reasons for the observed correlations. In this case, any casual WBB fan could tell you UConn rose to fame under Geno and has stayed there; same with Kim at Baylor and Muffit at Notre Dame. I don't need charts for that, and especially charts that are based on an invented metric no one in basketball cares about ("seed points"). "But we were seeded number one!" is the sad fan's retort to a season cut short in March.

 

[BroadwayVa]

I also wonder what value there is to comparing teams this far back. They have Duke as a team "on the rise," but I think every Duke fan experientially feels their team has been on the decline for the past decade. And a school like Long Beach State hasn't been relevant since any of today's players were born. So what?

It'd also be helpful to have them mark out coaching changes: UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, Baylor, and Notre Dame have all had their strong eras during a single coach's oversight. So does this say something about these schools, or about Geno, Tara, Pat, Kim, and Muffitt? Or does it suggest that hey, now that there's major money in women's sports, the same schools that are good at other sports will become better at women's basketball, and the third-tier sports schools that cornered the market (Louisiana Tech, Long Beach State, Old Dominion) won't be able to keep up. Without an attempt to explain the correlation or causation, the piece is just a bunch of charts.

More than anything, though, it's a good reminder that every program is one coaching change away from a possible decline into irrelevance, something Lady Vols fans have been experiencing firsthand year after year after year.

You are correct in much of what you say.
The last paragraph----Is a lesson for UConn, Nd, Stanford, and others. Don't use the most available local replacement; do a search. But FIRST know what you and your program expect from the new coach. You may not like this but: Don't let the outgoing coach select the new coach or a former player just because of emotional ties. Experience, education, training and successes are more important than school ties. (I can think of 2 programs that suffered from nepotism, in-breeding).

 

[UcMiami]

The elephant in the ointment of their 'analysis' and 'surprise' is title IX. At the beginning of their window the ramification of title IX was just kicking in and an explosion of resources was going into women's college sports - more money for coaches, facilities, staff, and scholarships. Uconn WBB for example was a glorified intramural sport through Geno's hire.

The other issue was conference alignment and the emergence of the Big6 conferences followed by the current Power 5. Also a huge influx of resources for the schools that are on the inside of that power structure and a great disadvantage for those left behind.

The charts are interesting but the context of WCBB seems to be ignored.