There are other reasons of course, just on being a growing suspicion that Geno is dealing with limited time in his career and his own goals before he leaves. We have seen this shift in legendary coaches in other professions. I hope he is not shading his judgment, even subliminely, with that factor. 
Just sayin’ - the reality of UConn is Paige B will be majoring in basketball with an academic minor. She decided where to study based on basketball. And who would be teaching her basketball.So maybe not Mourtuary Science(name the recruit) or Linquistics(name the recruit) to become a CIA language expert then??? When UConn becomes a factory for sports with cake walk academics alone, then the culture created at UConn dies.
We'll just agree to disagree with this one buddy of mine.
Sorry, I got it slightly wrong. Breanna Stewart’s academic major was “sport in society.”
Same here. I don't understand this concern about basketball overload. The only way to improve your game in the offseason is individual skill workouts supplemented by playing against serious competition. If you don't improve, especially at the D1 level you'll get bypassed. By that I mean your coaches will recruit right over you.
Not buying this very lazy stereotype.
Didn’t say she & others don’t care or value their education. But the reality is they’re coming because of basketball. Is that a bad thing? I can’t count all the, “Please come to UConn - you’ll get the best coaching, best prep for the WNBA” posts on this forum. So I’m cynical? Geez, reading the Boneyard one might think we wanted them to come for that reason. Anyway, cynical or realistic, they’re majoring in basketball.
That is a solid & sustained POV!
Universal agreement with the exception of the part about the players getting a "free education"-a long standing pet peeve of mine. An athletic scholarship is not a free education.The funny thing on this tangential discussion is virtually very few women can make life changing money by going professional and will need their education to earn money past the age of 27. To say they are majoring in basketball is partly true as they get a free education and have to commit 20 hours a week to games and practices. This program in particular demands and offers a lot of peripheral support be it academic advisors, media training, time management, career mentoring etc that not all other top programs can really offer. Add in the ever improving academic reputation and Scholastic Ranking, we are all partially right.
Athletes choose schools mostly due to the coach and the program, then the location and academics, not necessarily in that exact order.
I know are more esteemed visiting posters like to tout ND, Duke, Stanford etc but I have seen plenty of us State School types who are more impressive in their skills than these other credentialed grads. It’s what is inside each person that is the difference maker, which we all know, though some chose to ignore. Don’t sell Paige, Azzi or Kamilla short on their reasoning!
Agree on the year-round basketball, burnout before they get to college. Seems like lots of recruits are already wearing flexible knee braces, already have chronic joint pain by the time they show up. Once they get to college they're done with AAU ball, though most of them do try to fill their summers with some sort of training. Not sure if college is a little bit of a break from the year-round stuff or not. Anyway, back to the year-round grind after college if they want to make a good living at it.
The problem is the labs. If you play on a D1 sports team it’s just about impossible to make it to lab portion of the class. I personally know a I student athlete at a lower D1 program where the Coach only allowed the kids to have certain major.It's really hard to figure out what the team's major's are, but the Lowe's senior class award (in combination with uconnhuskies.com) yielded the following:
Molly Bent - Exploratory major
Kyla Irwin - Speech language and hearing science
Kia Nurse - Indiviualized Sport in Media major
Gabrielle Williams - Urban and community studies
Breanna Stewart - Individualized; sport in society
Moriah Jefferson - Individualized; youth in sport
Kiah Stokes - Individualized major
Stephanie Dolson - Communication Sciences
Maya Moore - Individualized major
Renee Montgomery - Communications
Sue Bird - Communications
As someone super keen on the concept of student-athlete, I had read some exciting stories about Bent's interest in math, Lawlor's studies in engineering, and Pulido's pre-med aspirations, but in all of those cases those student-athlete's later changed course - which, of course, is their perogative. Maya Moore's academic prowess was lauded, so I was a bit disappointed when I read this:
STUDENT-ATHLETE: Moore has one class this semester, news writing for radio and television, and it meets twice a week. The Academic All-American has an individualized major titled "sports, media and promotion."
She's working with a partner on a project about UConn's new football coach Paul Pasqualoni.
But obviously, much credit to Maya too, for completing her course work on an accelerated schedule to be able to be talking only one course in her last semester.
Graduating in all these majors should be celebrated: it is not a 'free-ride', but a lot of hard work. However, it is very rare that a DI women's basketball player, at any university, graduates in an STEM field. Even Elizabeth Williams, famous for wanting to be a doctor, graduated in psychology, as did Pulido (and was reported to have missed road games to do it), and Nneka Ogwumike. Of recent UConn graduates, personally, I am most impressed with Heather Buck having completed the Nursing program. I am hoping that Belibi might be able to buck the trend. Or Nelson-Ododa.
www.courant.com
She's been selected to play with the BIG girls.