I was impressed with the team Lindsey put together from lower end transfers the year before she signed Juju. No top notch players but they played winning basketball in the PAC and were quite competitive with a handful of upsets. Made the tournament after a decade absence under her predecessor.
I think the better question would be “Will UConn be able to keep up?” UConn just doesn’t have the money that the P2 teams have. At some point in the very near future the disparity in revenue will be to great for UConn to overcome. Hopefully Geno and CD can hold on just a few years longer to see if UConn can get out of the purgatory that is the Big East.
Can women’s basketball teams catch up to UConn or South Carolina in a changing era?
Big money deals and unprecedented transfer rates. How are coaches navigating the new era and what's to come?www.nytimes.com
“Coaches are questioning, obviously: Is it even worth it to be in this business? What are we doing? What are we doing if we can’t build a program and you’re starting from scratch every year to build a team without any rules around it?” one power conference coach said. “What are we doing? And why are we doing it?”“I have to change. I have to pivot and plan for 50 percent attrition,” another power conference coach added. “Time will tell if you can build a program (in this era). If I can’t build a program, I’m not going to be doing it very long.”“If I can keep the kid for two years,” one said, “I feel like I’ve won the lottery.”This attrition has had a ripple effect on how college coaches prioritize high school recruiting. Many staff chose not to send multiple (or any) coaches on the road this offseason for the first high school recruiting evaluation period, valuing hosting immediate impact players over seeing talent who wouldn’t be on campus for a few years.That signals a significant shift in the overall recruiting philosophy. Five years ago, the lifeblood of almost every program was high school recruiting. Now, the portal offers another option. Multiple coaches said that their focus on high school recruits has decreased from 95-100 percent of their recruiting efforts to somewhere between 50-70 percent. Nearly 80 power conference freshmen transferred this offseason, so coaches also realize that bringing in a freshman doesn’t necessarily mean stability.
LOL. I'm risking a 30-day time out from Nan, but the difference is one is a scum sucking bottom dweller and the other is a fish.
Well reasoned. I agree. We all have memories of Hadley v. Baxendale, and usually not good ones.
After 29 years practicing law, I am still surprised how some seemingly established organizations rely on bad contracts to do business.
Recruiting the superstar did not distort her team. What distorted the team was her failure to make the superstar play as part of the team. The result was not a team at all but rather JuJu and four acolytes. The question is; was she pressured into playing that way (85-95%) or did she actually believe it was the best way to play? (5-15%) Either way, her standing as a coach diminished greatly in my eyes.
Scum sucking bottom dweller, until you need one, right? My son is an attorney for the state of New York and I am very proud of him. His job is to investigate bad lawyers, and guess what? He has found that they are not all bad. Just sayin.
The state and the university have taken the position that UConn will have a competitive budget. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
It’s easy to be intimidated by the P4 schools. But a lot of that is about college football. When it comes to WBB, UConn is one of the very few D1 programs in the nation that operates in the black. For the record, SC WBB loses money. Obviously, SC’s take of SEC football revenue gives the AD more financial resources to move around if he so chooses. But big time college football is a hungry beast that continues to require more care and feeding every year.
Actually, though I haven't checked for last year, I believe that over the past half dozen years or so, we've been in the red for women's basketball. That's OK so long as the state and the university agreed that it's a cost they're willing to bear.
I’m always dubious of university accounting, having seen it from the inside for decades. Concepts like profit or loss don’t operate there as they do elsewhere. A mix of endowment revenue, annual fundraising, state subsidies and tuition revenue is part of every calculation of whether a school or a program is in the red or the black. It is not simply a question of expenditure given the unpredictability of three of these elements.
100% agree. Inter department transfers create "paper losses" wherever they want them to be. I'm particularly skeptical of "tuition" charges which are often booked at an undiscounted rate that relatively few US citizens actually pay.
While I acknowledge that there’s some creative accounting involved when it comes to college athletics, the one thing that is clear is that UConn is the first WBB program to exceed $3 million in ticket sales, hitting $3.25 million in 2024. Those numbers buy you a lot of credibility.
Well, those numbers will buy you a championship level coach anyways.
Geno’s base salary is only around $600,000 per year. With media, consulting and speaking engagements his total annual compensation is somewhere north of $3 million.
Agreed, and when you add in ratings, which often beat men's basketball games and sometimes beat professional sports it's easy to see an asset there. Unfortunately, it's difficult to overcome the perception of athletic directors in schools where football is either the primary, or only, sport that matters that women's basketball is essentially a club sport, which might not be far from the truth in their institutions where they never invested in it.
It's definitely a new era in college ball. You are correct that contracts, unions and all that goes seems the direction this is going at some point in the not-too-distant future. Change seems inevitable as $ has taken over and have to wonder if that could be behind some of the great, name coaches leaving the game.
I agree 100% Mr. Dog. The books are not exactly GAP. Too much nonsense and moving pieces to say one way or another. For example: 1 state agency (UConn) paying $50K to another state agency (Peoples Bank) for every game played there. Decreed by the state of CT, I suspect to prop Hartford up. Plus, I have no clue how the financials, such as they are, could be broken out by sport.
1). This is supposed to happen with the emphasis on "freedom of movement" this season. Time will tell, however at this point, the physicality hasn't changed much.
Personally, I’m indifferent to personal choices like tattoos. To each her own. But this represents a limiting condition to the breadth of appeal of the league. And it’s unfair that this impinges on women’s freedom more than on men’s. Now I haven’t been tracking this, so it’s possible that the tattoo culture in the W is already receding.
The WNBA's marketing has been perplexing, especially under the current commissioner's run. When you compare what Unrivaled and Athletes Unlimited have done, you'd think they'd take some pages out of their book and leverage it to their advantage.
1a). Maybe from your vantage point. This hasn't been the impression from those I talk to about the WNBA who are casual or new fans.
Not sure in what way So Cal with JuJu could be viewed as a failure.
Interesting. I assumed you meant white collar office jobs. I’m not all that familiar with corporate culture anymore. I was assuming that people in those offices (not working remotely) would not be able to display full sleeves. Perhaps they’re wearing short sleeves? Or it’s on casual fridays?
Short sleeves, yes. Casual Fridays, no. Provided you're in business casual attire, people don't get the side eye for doing so.
Big Ten coach of the year, one of the acolytes is one of the best rookies in the WNBA.
