Can WBB teams catch up to UConn or S Carolina in a changing era?

[RockyMTblue2]

This was a fascinating and generally well sourced and written article. However…
it did not address the recruiting practices, at least up to the present, of the two teams at the top of the mountain.

Both So. Car. and UConn have used the portal sparingly and effectively. Both have lost transfers they mostly didn't mind losing. Both have had a habit of keeping and developing students who stay for four years, or more in the Covid era. And, no surprise, both have been consistently at the Final Four or higher level in the NCAA Tournaments.

Will they continue to operate as described above? Will judicial and NCAA monetary opportunism, a.k.a., The Mulkey Style, enable other schools to mount effective challenges to the Auriemma-Staley axis?

Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned for the next exciting adventures of …

View attachment 110037

Where did you get that picture of me! Mulkey and her school make no bones about flouting the bucks.

 

[PacoSwede]

Why would a player in the SEC want to join a union with players from 300 schools who have no money? Why would a Juju want to join a union?

some people -- obviously not the favored ones; and oddly, some of the underdogs too -- are concerned about everybody around them in the hope the greater good prevails.

some folks seem to despise the concept. ... but it seems to me most spiritual leaders --- starting but not ending with JC --embrace it.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Teams catching up question? I think the current candidate is USC - you know, the real one on the West Coast. I don't know if we would have survived the Elite 8 game had JuJu been there. I'd like to think our defense would contain her. Going forward Lindsay may build a broader base of talent, which isn't so bad now. Tennessee? They pulled it off against us, but the recruiting is anemic and the platooning thing is a patch and a patch only. Oklahoma is emerging once again. And they do grow um big out that way. Their coach, super intense, but no four letter words.

 

[Bone Dog]

Teams catching up question? I think the current candidate is USC - you know, the real one on the West Coast. I don't know if we would have survived the Elite 8 game had JuJu been there. I'd like to think our defense would contain her. Going forward Lindsay may build a broader base of talent, which isn't so bad now. Tennessee? They pulled it off against us, but the recruiting is anemic and the platooning thing is a patch and a patch only. Oklahoma is emerging once again. And they do grow um big out that way. Their coach, super intense, but no four letter words.

I agree with most of this, but I disagree about Tennessee on two counts.

1) their recruiting class is one of the best in D1 -- hardly "anemic."

2) they didn't "pull it off," in the sense of this thread topic. They did not "catch up" to us. They won one game. Their program is not really competitive with UConn or SC... yet.

 

[oldude]

It has happened in football - seven figures. WBB has not been as transparent as fb ( as forced by thousands of “journalists.”

That’s under the former system. The NCAA settlement imposes a “salary cap” on payments to athletes by a University. While there is still potential for separate “”market based” NIL deals from advertisers, schools are going to have to figure out how to dole out $20.5 million to football, basketball and whatever other sports they decide are worthy of compensation.

That may mean giving a star QB $1 million. But you still have to pay all those linemen and linebackers something, and you only have $20.5 million to go around next year. Schools will take whatever steps they have to in order to protect the interests of the University.

 

[Zonepress]

The men’s game has been free agency for the last few years and generally the coaches have learn to adapt, or they’ve quit
Women’s basketball is a bit different as the players can stay for four years it seems that the really good players stay at the top schools and then transfers can make them even better
in the men’s game it’s lead to team is becoming very good very quickly through transfers
Which I think is generally a good thing
Waiting for two or three recruiting classes and hoping you get better was never a great day
uConn is generally the outlier because of the brand, the history and I suppose coach Auriemma
It’s pretty obvious that going forward the southeast conference scores with an abundance of booster
Name, image, and likeness money will likely dominate women’s basketball as they’ve come to dominate football and men’s basketball
change invariably leads to the sky is falling scenario but
Factually women’s basketball has never been more popular and the money and the portal is someways responsible for that
uconn
Will continue to be at the top as long as coach Auriemma is still here

 

[visitingcock]

The men’s game has been free agency for the last few years and generally the coaches have learn to adapt, or they’ve quit
Women’s basketball is a bit different as the players can stay for four years it seems that the really good players stay at the top schools and then transfers can make them even better
in the men’s game it’s lead to team is becoming very good very quickly through transfers
Which I think is generally a good thing
Waiting for two or three recruiting classes and hoping you get better was never a great day
uConn is generally the outlier because of the brand, the history and I suppose coach Auriemma
It’s pretty obvious that going forward the southeast conference scores with an abundance of booster
Name, image, and likeness money will likely dominate women’s basketball as they’ve come to dominate football and men’s basketball
change invariably leads to the sky is falling scenario but
Factually women’s basketball has never been more popular and the money and the portal is someways responsible for that
uconn
Will continue to be at the top as long as coach Auriemma is still here

I remember rags to riches Gamecocks when the recruiting was so exciting even though we had nothing for wbb history. Tiffany from Charlotte created the first Gamecock buzz but when A'ja was ranked number one as a prospect it even caught the attention of our football fans when Marcus Lattimore hosted her official visit. It helped that Asia Dozier (a mere 4 star), daughter of a former MBB twin player, joined the team around that time. Watching the program build through recruiting was joyous. But even then, a transfer played a huge role in building a champion. So many of the gals were from Carolina that state pride got involved. Oh, a Carolina gall transfer helped during that first run.

Recruiting freshman is still the lifeblood. but yeah the portal is the big story for now.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

I agree with most of this, but I disagree about Tennessee on two counts.

1) their recruiting class is one of the best in D1 -- hardly "anemic."

2) they didn't "pull it off," in the sense of this thread topic. They did not "catch up" to us. They won one game. Their program is not really competitive with UConn or SC... yet.

Must confess to not paying attention to Tenn recruiting this year. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Must also say about Tenn I was absolutely shocked they beat us, even by a whisker.

 

[Bone Dog]

Recruiting freshman is still the lifeblood. but yeah the portal is the big story for now.

As long as you can recruit players and keep them for 4 years, you can play "pretty basketball." If your team is a 'portal patchwork,' with players only staying for a season or two, you can't do that. Geno recruits for the long term, and I suspect Dawn does too. It's a tough commitment to get a teenager (or her parents) to make. Only special kids are even interested in that, and they aren't always the flashiest talents.

I was watching the UConn-Arkansas game from Nov 2021 this morning just to remind myself what November games tend to look like and the difference between the two teams was quite striking. Geno would lose several of the players on the bench over the next couple of years, and he'd picked up Dorka and Evina from the portal. But Mike Neighbors was much more dependent on the portal. The difference you could see on the court was the Razorbacks dependence on one-on-one playmaking. They ran a few screens and back cuts, but the vast majority of their game action was simply driving into a defender, hoping either to score or get free throws. And they were quite good at this.

I think two things can be seen to follow from this. First, you tend to attract playmakers, and Mike had certainly gotten plenty of them over the years, but you don't tend to get fierce defenders. Second, you can't have a very structured offense because you don't have players long enough to develop one, but also because the playmakers you're getting don't have the patience for it. Saylor confirmed this when she said in an interview that she didn't like UConn because the offense was too structured.

I believe the programs that are able to run complex structured offense and defense will always dominate, as long as they continue to exist. And those programs depend on being able to recruit a freshman core that stays 4 years. This is what all the dominant programs have done and you can see it in the type of basketball they play, whether it be UConn, SC, ND, Stanford or even the old Tennessee. Geno may have developed his system even more than the others. But all of them played sophisticated sets on defense and offense. If the portal and NIL make this impossible, those types of programs will no longer dominate, and WCBB will become less interesting to watch, at least for me.

Watch the Arkansas game I mentioned above with an eye to the style of play and let me know if you see what I think I see. Here's a link to it courtesy of @MJL243.

 

[Cuango]

Two things really leapt out at me in this story: 1) tampering and 2) consequences for the W.

In a thread on Cori Close’s interview a few weeks ago, she mentioned that players and their parents are constantly being urged to consider transferring by agents, not so much by rival coaches — though this may be a distinction without a difference. Coaches could be sanctioned for this behavior, but can agents? Contracts may be coming soon, and maybe they’ll change this dynamic. And with them we may also see strikes. Unions and contracts may eliminate the need for a portal. The union and its attorneys would probably manage all such things on an ad hoc basis.

As for the W, it’s a business, which means it has to respond to situations like this or perish. It is by no means clear that the economics of the league can afford to match the economics of what college has become. One aspect of the game that may change is a growing focus on marketability of its product. We may not like the idea of regulating it, but the league may have to consider adjusting how refs control the game so as to make it less of a brawlers league. It also can’t afford to allow its most marketable players be unavailable do to hard fouls that produce injuries. It may also start tinkering with limiting tattoos and similar aesthetic elements. It has a product to sell and whether we like it or not, to expand its market it has to appeal to broader tastes. We can complain that the MNBA doesn’t think about regulating how players look. But the economics of that league is expansive enough not to require it.

As a college professor I can’t help but see unionization of students as a threat to the classroom.

While the W is ostensibly a business it certainly is not a self sustaining business as it needs a massive influx of cash every year from the NBA in order to exist. Which begs the question; are they really a business or merely a subsidiary of the NBA? Among other things, I am constantly amazed that the NBA does not (at the very least) step in and do something about the refereeing in the W which is truly abysmal (and dangerous) and/or demand that they hire some sort of image consultant/public relations company to help them market their product more effectively. I think if I were pouring millions of dollars down a hole with no sign of a return, I would at least want to see some evidence of trying something different! Look at the new expansion team, The Valkyrie's, they are selling out an 18,000 seat arena! Clearly, it could be a success if the right decisions are made but to date, those seem to be in short supply.
This is one of the things that worries me about this new “commercialization” of college sports. Will the individual voices of those coahes/ADs/programs that have built generationally successful programs now get drowned out in some sort of corporate business model? Hopefully, there are serious people out there who realize that there is a real danger here of killing the goose that laid the golden egg!

 

[Blue Huskie]

Short answer is YES - other schools can complete. TCU has put forth one possible blueprint. Others will adjust as well.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

While the W is ostensibly a business it certainly is not a self sustaining business as it needs a massive influx of cash every year from the NBA in order to exist. Which begs the question; are they really a business or merely a subsidiary of the NBA? Among other things, I am constantly amazed that the NBA does not (at the very least) step in and do something about the refereeing in the W which is truly abysmal (and dangerous) and/or demand that they hire some sort of image consultant/public relations company to help them market their product more effectively. I think if I were pouring millions of dollars down a hole with no sign of a return, I would at least want to see some evidence of trying something different! Look at the new expansion team, The Valkyrie's, they are selling out an 18,000 seat arena! Clearly, it could be a success if the right decisions are made but to date, those seem to be in short supply.
This is one of the things that worries me about this new “commercialization” of college sports. Will the individual voices of those coahes/ADs/programs that have built generationally successful programs now get drowned out in some sort of corporate business model? Hopefully, there are serious people out there who realize that there is a real danger here of killing the goose that laid the golden egg!

Gotta say I am totally puzzled by the behavior or lack of it by the WNBA infrastructure, most of all their Commissioner.

 

[Zonepress]

As long as you can recruit players and keep them for 4 years, you can play "pretty basketball." If your team is a 'portal patchwork,' with players only staying for a season or two, you can't do that. Geno recruits for the long term, and I suspect Dawn does too. It's a tough commitment to get a teenager (or her parents) to make. Only special kids are even interested in that, and they aren't always the flashiest talents.

I was watching the UConn-Arkansas game from Nov 2021 this morning just to remind myself what November games tend to look like and the difference between the two teams was quite striking. Geno would lose several of the players on the bench over the next couple of years, and he'd picked up Dorka and Evina from the portal. But Mike Neighbors was much more dependent on the portal. The difference you could see on the court was the Razorbacks dependence on one-on-one playmaking. They ran a few screens and back cuts, but the vast majority of their game action was simply driving into a defender, hoping either to score or get free throws. And they were quite good at this.

I think two things can be seen to follow from this. First, you tend to attract playmakers, and Mike had certainly gotten plenty of them over the years, but you don't tend to get fierce defenders. Second, you can't have a very structured offense because you don't have players long enough to develop one, but also because the playmakers you're getting don't have the patience for it. Saylor confirmed this when she said in an interview that she didn't like UConn because the offense was too structured.

I believe the programs that are able to run complex structured offense and defense will always dominate, as long as they continue to exist. And those programs depend on being able to recruit a freshman core that stays 4 years. This is what all the dominant programs have done and you can see it in the type of basketball they play, whether it be UConn, SC, ND, Stanford or even the old Tennessee. Geno may have developed his system even more than the others. But all of them played sophisticated sets on defense and offense. If the portal and NIL make this impossible, those types of programs will no longer dominate, and WCBB will become less interesting to watch, at least for me.

Watch the Arkansas game I mentioned above with an eye to the style of play and let me know if you see what I think I see. Here's a link to it courtesy of @MJL243.

i never saw tennessee or south carolina play sophisticated offense
imho tenn demise was mainly due to the inability
to run any structured offense
Coach Summitt wine with superior athletes
good defense and great rebounding
Generally South Carolina wins by playing the same
way
notre dame under MM ran great offense
under coach ivey that has disappeared
Stanford was generally well coached offensively
honestly your premise is very flawed

 

[Bone Dog]

i never saw tennessee or south carolina play sophisticated offense
imho tenn demise was mainly due to the inability
to run any structured offense
Coach Summitt wine with superior athletes
good defense and great rebounding
Generally South Carolina wins by playing the same
way
notre dame under MM ran great offense
under coach ivey that has disappeared
Stanford was generally well coached offensively
honestly your premise is very flawed

It’s not just about offense. It’s also about playing sophisticated defense, and SC absolutely had one of the best defenses over more than a decade. Geno has said on more than one occasion that he looks for kids who are willing to play team defense. This is an indicator for him of their willingness to sacrifice personal glory for team success. These are also the kinds of kids who will make a long term commitment. There’s a famous interview where Geno says something like, “It’s easy to find kids who can score. The hard part is finding kids who’ll commit to team defense.” Dawn didn’t bring SC as far as she did without getting the same sort of commitment from kids. You don’t tend to find those kids in the portal very often. Dorka was an exception. So was Evina.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

i never saw tennessee or south carolina play sophisticated offense
imho tenn demise was mainly due to the inability
to run any structured offense
Coach Summitt wine with superior athletes
good defense and great rebounding
Generally South Carolina wins by playing the same
way
notre dame under MM ran great offense
under coach ivey that has disappeared
Stanford was generally well coached offensively
honestly your premise is very flawed

It is maybe ironic, or maybe just funny, but among Notre Dame fans something almost akin to dogma was that Ivey was the power behind Muffet's throne.

 

[Zonepress]

It’s not just about offense. It’s also about playing sophisticated defense, and SC absolutely had one of the best defenses over more than a decade. Geno has said on more than one occasion that he looks for kids who are willing to play team defense. This is an indicator for him of their willingness to sacrifice personal glory for team success. These are also the kinds of kids who will make a long term commitment. There’s a famous interview where Geno says something like, “It’s easy to find kids who can score. The hard part is finding kids who’ll commit to team defense.” Dawn didn’t bring SC as far as she did without getting the same sort of commitment from kids. You don’t tend to find those kids in the portal very often. Dorka was an exception. So was Evina.

I think I was clear and what I posted that South Carolina plays. Excellent defense
I was responding to the post that they play sophisticated offense and i think it’s clear
that they don’t

 

[Bone Dog]

I think I was clear and what I posted that South Carolina plays. Excellent defense
I was responding to the post that they play sophisticated offense and i think it’s clear
that they don’t

You were clear. I thought you were responding to me and may not have noticed that I was talking about offense and defense. But it sounds like we agree.

 

[NycUcWbbFan]

What we have here is a classic case of Arbitrage, in this case with student-athletes seeking immediate payoff opportunities with another program.

Large Arbitrage come into being either as a result of a glitch or a paradigm shift, which NIL and the portal are. The severity of the Arbitrage, above what is popularly deemed reasonable/ permissible, persists longer in not-so-nimbly-regulated markets, which WCBB is.

That said… there are reasons to believe the large arbitrage is only temporary and …

For a Cori Close, there is a Mark Campbell or Kim Caldwell. The new paradigm has given bright young coaches (Kara Lawson and Shea Ralph) a faster ramp than Dawn Staley at Temple. It has also given great coaches who are not so great high school recruiters another way to fill rosters with quality players.

The WNBA only has limited open slots &0 per year. I don’t begrudge players who have less than even chance of making it into the WNBA to benefit handsomely from this current — and presumably closing as induced by articles such as above over and above the recent House settlement — window of large arbitrage.

As I opined in another thread, Geno has been a passive beneficiary of the paradigm shift with access to and interest from UConn-type quality players who fill the needs of his roster. The new paradigm has enabled his oldish-newish MO of a full top-down quality roster with all its attendant benefits.

I understand that the interviewed self-selected coaches are just bamboo-bending-and-belly-aching at this point to the paradigm jolt and that to them any soon course-corrective action to the large arbitrage is small comfort. But maybe they can emulate some of the aspects of Geno’s and Dawn’s programs so that the hand that giveth, giveth more than taketh away.

The key question here (at least to me) is: are student athletes better off now than before? Thinking specifically of Evina, Brittany Hunter and Shabazz Napier, highly arguably the answer is yes.

&0 Curiously, the new paradigm provides powerful incentives for a player to exhaust all their years of eligibility, rather than leave early to enter the WNBA or to leave WCBB for the start of their, most-likely non-basketball, career.

• Thinking of Azura Stevens, Megan Walker and Azzi Fudd, the new paradigm helps UConn in this regard;
• The Superteam Era and quality/ experienced players staying only boosts overall WCBB play — as opposed to MCBB where most of the best players jump to the NBA at first chance.

 

[Skeets]

Are you suggesting that a group of 19-20 year old kids are going to hire lawyers to take on the buyout clauses of the contracts that they and their parents signed willingly with major universities? That should be a lot of fun……

Kids and their parents will not have to seek out lawyers, lawyers will seek out them. Lawyers are good that way.

 

[Bone Dog]

The key question here (at least to me) is: are student athletes better off now than before? Thinking specifically of Evina, Brittany Hunter and Shabazz Napier, highly arguably the answer is yes.

Excellent ‘big picture’ analysis. And, by the way, big picture thinking is a sort of conceptual arbitrage because it can expose imbalances in our usual habits of thought. If you’ll permit me another analogy, and maybe @cferraro04 will appreciate this one, it’s similar to those martial arts (like bagua zhang) based on Taoism rather than Buddhism that take advantage of our habitual reliance on social norms of behavior. They teach practitioners to rely on ‘nature’ (more precisely, the Tao) and violate mere conventions when it gives them an advantage.

But I digress. You’ve put your finger on the key question: Are students better off? Schools and fans may not like it because it threatens a status quo they’ve gotten used to. We will hear complaints about how the new dispensation is “bad for the game.” But these are empty words compared to the concrete reality of what’s good or bad for students.

I’d say every aspect of the rise of NIL and the Portal has represented an improvement in conditions for students, whether considered financially, or in terms of legal rights, or in terms of justice. And the improvement has been genuine even though at first the benefits were hardly distributed evenly across all students. On the flip side, schools and related organizations and coaches haven’t always benefited but that pales in comparison to the interests of the students which all those institutions are supposed to serve in principle. Should I care if the NCAA suffers or even goes bankrupt? I care not.

 

[Steelerone]

Two things really leapt out at me in this story: 1) tampering and 2) consequences for the W.

In a thread on Cori Close’s interview a few weeks ago, she mentioned that players and their parents are constantly being urged to consider transferring by agents, not so much by rival coaches — though this may be a distinction without a difference. Coaches could be sanctioned for this behavior, but can agents? Contracts may be coming soon, and maybe they’ll change this dynamic. And with them we may also see strikes. Unions and contracts may eliminate the need for a portal. The union and its attorneys would probably manage all such things on an ad hoc basis.

As for the W, it’s a business, which means it has to respond to situations like this or perish. It is by no means clear that the economics of the league can afford to match the economics of what college has become. One aspect of the game that may change is a growing focus on marketability of its product. We may not like the idea of regulating it, but the league may have to consider adjusting how refs control the game so as to make it less of a brawlers league. It also can’t afford to allow its most marketable players be unavailable do to hard fouls that produce injuries. It may also start tinkering with limiting tattoos and similar aesthetic elements. It has a product to sell and whether we like it or not, to expand its market it has to appeal to broader tastes. We can complain that the MNBA doesn’t think about regulating how players look. But the economics of that league is expansive enough not to require it.

As a college professor I can’t help but see unionization of students as a threat to the classroom.

Really? Question - Are you unionized?

 

[RockyMTblue2]

“Penalties” are not allowed in contracts.

Penalty clauses are crucial tools in contract management, enforcing compliance and delineating consequences for breaches. They must adhere to a legal framework that differentiates between punitive and compensatory measures. Types include liquidated damages and default penalties, and each must be carefully drafted for enforceability. Common misconceptions can undermine contract effectiveness. By understanding best practices and enforcing strategies, parties can minimize risk and foster clearer relationships. Further exploration reveals deeper insights into the nuances of penalty clauses.

I suspect the spectre of a school actually enforcing a damages clause might be too much for an admission office to bear. However the most enforceable damages clauses tend to be when it is inherently difficult to accurately measure the extent of damage done to the wronged part; in this case that's the school or university.

 

[Bone Dog]

Really? Question - Are you unionized?

Lacking context this is a really aggressive response. Care to explain yourself?

 

[RockyMTblue2]

One that can transfer and get a million dollars rather than the 100k she presently gets? Uh , yeah.

Speaking of groups . . . Union lawyers are ver picking on contract clauses.

You mistakenly believe the amount the athlete would have been paid caps the damages. That would only apply if the university expressly agreed to it in a liquidated damages provision. A reasonably awake university lawyer could craft a contract dealing with the various elements of the university's special damages were the athlete to leave recited the inherent difficulty is ascertaining those sums and establish a liquidated damages clause. Going back a ways in jolly old England there was this case called Hadley v. Baxendale 1854 .... I have to stop, the horrror of it all is coming back!