Not just bball- 11 most dominant women's college sports programs
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RockyMTblue2
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Paige's ESPY acceptance speech snuck in there. Whenever I stumble into it I have to watch this remarkable speech about social justice. She speaks for others and is eloquent in her message. She'll never stop. A true agent for change.
After UNC soccer, the second most obvious choice should have been Stanford womens tennis. Their swim and volleyball teams also deserved it, but the tennis team has won 20 of 40 national championships and is really the only other sport team that can be compared historically to UNC soccer (though UNC hasn’t won in awhile and Stanford tennis likely will be adding more in years to come.) A little shocked they’re not on the list!
KnightBridgeAZ
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Like anything else - the list could be longer. And I think I caught that he said it was a list of greats, not that it was all inclusive or ranked.
I was glad to see Arizona Softball included and we are gradually returning to the top from a less successful period; that said, there are many other softball programs that have been worthy over the years and, while more recently to the fold, Oklahoma is simply dominant and has been good for quite some time.
As @HuskyNan says, Penn State volleyball had a great run, actually Nebraska might be a consideration as well. I saw a while back that Russ Rose had retired from Penn State, it will be interesting to see how they do going forward. The B1G is an excellent volleyball conference, certainly better than the PAC. The other major conferences have good programs, but I think lack the depth of these.
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OU softball and OU gymnastics have had a dominant run within the last 10 years.
OU softball has 5 national titles and OU gymnastics has 5 national titles each since 2013. Gymnastics almost had a 6th one but it took a miracle rotation from UCLA including a perfect 10 to knock them off the last routine of the night.
OU softball has 5 national titles and OU gymnastics has 5 national titles each since 2013. Gymnastics almost had a 6th one but it took a miracle rotation from UCLA including a perfect 10 to knock them off the last routine of the night.
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It remains to be seen if Arizona Softball can recapture it’s past glory! I believe this past season’s trip to the Softball World Series was a bit of a fluke. Sure, they performed well, but they had a lot of things go their way. They have lost multiple top players to transfer this off-season which leads to questions about how the transition from Mike Candrea to Caitlin Lowe is going? However, the biggest obstacle is their complete inability to recruit an elite pitcher! They have been completely shut out on that front for a long time and this, more than anything, has led to their decline. I think they are in big trouble and are facing a period of mediocrity for the foreseeable future until they can find a way to convince some true stud pitchers to become Wildcats! You cannot win in today’s game especially, unless you have at least one (preferably two) pitchers who can strike fear in the opposing team’s lineup! I’m a huge fan but realistically, things are not looking good for the Wildcats.
KnightBridgeAZ
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I agree on the pitching. I suppose one could ask how good a (coach) our pitching coach is? Certainly a more than fine player. I thought Hollowell was an outstanding pitching coach, but she left the game. Still, we were attending games when she was coaching and thought that was the best pitching of the last 10 years.
What I actually thought was the great benefit of the WS run was that it was under Lowe and not Candrea. His current office is just across the hall from hers, although I doubt he is in all that often.
The transfer of power when a great coach retires - in basketball, softball or otherwise - is always fascinating. At Arizona, the next interesting coaching change will probably be volleyball - not that Rubio is "great" by any means, but he has provided solid coaching for so long that it will be a major transition. At Rutgers, it is the new WBB coach, who was left with, well, pretty much nothing. In Women's Basketball, there is also the transition at Texas A&M and Arizona State that involve successful coaches retiring. Always interesting.