I think Geno said it best. The men were having a middling year and the women were in the middle of a successful run and someone asked him what was the score but if the women played against the men. His answer was it would be whatever the men’s team wanted it to be. If they wanted it to be 75 to 65, that would be the score if they wanted it to be 100 to nothing, that would be the score. That’s what I was making a vague reference to above.
Keep in mind that the men’s practice players, who certainly aren’t high major Division I athletes, are given limitations in the women’s practices. Most notably they can’t jump to block shots. On average men are going to be faster, stronger, and quicker so everything from fast breaks to making passes becomes more difficult.
Note that isn’t to say that an individual woman can’t beat an individual man. My daughter played in high school and she and her friends routinely beat guys and pick up games, but playing against male basketball players is a whole different thing. (For what it’s worth, she said that games against guys always seem to follow the same pattern, at first the guys would kind of half try. After getting beat they would try harder but try not to look like they were trying harder. Eventually they would be obviously trying hard but still could not compete against the female players. Then they would go off and sulk and say we don’t want to play anymore, and we weren’t even trying anyway.)
