No doubt. It's not my thing, but many things that are wonderful are not.
Nan - question remains - why does it seem like, given the traction you'd have expected over the last 15 years of UConn-Tenn national coverage, there is such a huge drop off of talent after the first dozen or so teams?
No matter what kind of "zone" Uconn was in, the other team had 10 points at the half and got beat by 50. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that KSU literally should not be in the same league with UConn. They are equivalent to a DII team.
I don't get it. 150 million females in this country. National television audience. Millions of young girls playing youth sports.
Figure 12 women per team, top 20 teams, so that means that there are only 240 women in the country who can compete at a high level in college? It's bizarre to me given that it's a free ride if you're good.
Of course, I have this silly notion in my head that women don't like sports and physical competition nearly as much as men, that it's biologically based on the evolution precedent that man-as-hunter and fighter created, and that government regulation to force "equal" opportunity for men and women in sports at the college level is a scatological affront to reason.
But that's just me.
Fifteen years ago, girls and women's basketball was just starting to become a sport young girls wanted to play on a major scale. Ironically, it was UConn's undefeated season in 1994-95 that drew the eyes of a national audience towards women's hoops and started an interest in developing good programs. But that takes time so, there just wasn't a lot of talent to be found back then. And the girls that were really, really good went to Tennessee, UConn, Stanford, Texas maybe Duke or North Carolina but never even considered a Seton Hall or Kansas State.
Even in the late 1990's-early 2000's, girls basketball was mostly taught by a gym teacher with free time or whatever parent was willing to do it. There were a handful of high school powerhouses and AAU clubs and you could name them all on two hands. It's much, much better these days as high schools are seeing the advantage of a decent girls teams (or maybe under pressure from parents) and AAU teams are seeing some profit can be made from girls hoops (there are Nike and Adidas sponsored teams) so more kids are being drawn into the sport. It's take a while, but we're starting to see more players that can succeed at Div I hoops. In the mid- to late-1990's, there used to be the top 20 kids were excellent then there was a significant drop off but now there are maybe 75-100 really, really good players. It's still not enough to feed 300+ college teams, though.
Another factor is that too many colleges just don't give a damn about its women's team (cough, Providence) and won't pay for a good coach or support the team with money for recruiting or other resources. Or old coaches that get canned elsewhere are just recycled to another failing program because no one wants to take time to investigate promising young coaches at the top high school and AAU programs. About 10 years ago, the Syracuse women had a God-awful coach. The team went to the AD's office and told them they wanted to get better and have better coaching. The AD told them they had what they had and "it's not like it's the men's program". (yes, the coach is gone, btw)
Although it may not seem like it, there have been more good teams. Some mid-majors are making noise this year (Marist, St. Bonaventure, Green Bay) and no team is guaranteed a league win any more (UConn upset by St. John's, ND upset by WVU, Tenn upset by Arkansas, etc). It doesn't happen enough, but it's getting there.
