Watch out for the Panthers

[DobbsRover2]

Prairie View is currently at 1-7 (or 2-7 if you count a win over D2 Schreiner), and is in the Southwestern Conference, whose teams have racked up a combined 7-60 record so far, a cool 11.7% winning percentage. The Panthers have been knocked silly by UNC, Stanford, and Texas A&M and have also lost to schools like Rice, Hawaii, and TCU. Their Sags ranking is over 250, and their lone D1 win came against the AAC's worst team Houston.

So why are they to be feared? Because they are doing a lot better than last year when they started off by losing their first 11 games but rallied to finish 11-7 in conference and become the first team to make the Tourney after such a start by winning the SWCT. If the name sounds familiar, they were UConn's first opponent in the Tourney last year. Though they spotted the Huskies a 50 point lead in the game, they roared back in the final 11:43 to cut the margin to 43, and some experts believe the Huskies could have been strongly challenged if that trend continued. In any case, they have seen the Huskies and will be prepared better if the two teams meet up again in March this year. Might be close(r).

All kidding aside, PV has gone from being one of the worst teams in the country in the early 2000s to being a team that expects to get to the Tourney, having done so 6 times in the last 8 years, and the last 4 consecutive. They are of course 0-6 there, but they play a relentlessly tough OOC and don't care how many games they lose as long as they get to play the tougher teams in November and December. They're a team to be admired, but if you are 11 games in the hole like last year, it must be hard to keep your head up.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

On Prairie View -

- the conference is the SWAC. It is dreadful. Bottom 5, I believe. Right down there with the Southland, MEAC, WAC, etc.

- they were coached a few years back by Cynthia Cooper Dyke. They played RU at RU, after the game as they were leaving the court she approached the RU team (lined up for Alma Mater) and signaled E Prince that she needed to shoot more. Interesting.

- they have always played a relatively tough schedule, you get payouts for doing it. I have no idea what women's teams get, but for instance the Arizona men paid $95,000 for their victim tonight.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Obviously the women's "travel squads" do not get the same money as the guys, but if you can at least cover expenses, get some exposure, develop from playing higher caliber squads, and capture some excitement from occasionally pulling an upset against a higher rated team, that maybe is not so bad, even if the OOC record is really poor.

The trick for the bigger level home squads is to pick teams that aren't quite good enough to ever beat them, and with a Prairie View you get the bonus of saying you scheduled a perennial Tourney team.