RebKell's Junkie Boards

[readyAIMfire53]

I'm just being honest here. BIG wbb fan. That was just boring. I actually turned the channel. I'm sure it was fun and exciting for Husky fans in attendance. But it was just pure zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz for me. PLEASE can SOMEBODY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put together a team? I'm not making any statements about this being bad for women's bball. Really I'm not. I'm just saying it was boring as HELL for me. Time to clean lint off my sweaters or something. I really don't understand what the draw is for all these great young players to be the latest cog in the machine. It just creates one giant snoozefest for non-UConn fans. For me, it was hard to imagine becoming so disinterested in a Championship game. And yet, there it was. The biggest drama by a VERY LONG SHOT was "will they just shake hands?" It went straight to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz from there.

So hurray for all wbb fans in one tiny little state. Have another grand parade. The entire rest of the country is just zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

_________________
Follow your passion and your life will be true down to your core.

~rAf

[uncommonclay]

i thought stewart was typically excellent ...

jon i mean ...

[FS02]

That's three years in a row I haven't watched the whole championship game. I really enjoyed the A&M vs. ND game, that was the last one I really got into.

I guess it's not that unusual for me to lose interest when I don't really care who wins... For example, I like the NFL, but I've tuned out of some super bowls when they became ridiculous blow outs. That doesn't change the fact that I'll be back next fall.

So it's not the end of the world, but you can't deny it would be better for WBB to have more competitive, compelling games when lots of people are watching, because that's the lasting image muggles get of the sport.

_________________
@dtmears2

[lvf08]

I doubt next year will be much different either.

[blaase22]

[sammieee]

As long as the top HS talent continues to go to UConn (I don't blame them), they will continue dominating.

Had EDD not transferred out, this probably would have been their 6th straight title.

Maybe them being in the AAC will hurt recruiting...

[ridor]

Hadn't watched the game at all. I'm tired of UConn, suffice to say. Since they're stuck in the AAC, top 25 teams need to realize that they can terminate the series with UConn because it does not give them any benefits to play UConn and be blown away. It is time that many top 25 teams need to phase UConn out, forcing them to play weaker non-conference schedule eventually. It will hinder their recruiting efforts. C'mon, folks, stop playing them.

[HistoryWomensBasketball]

I'm a UConn fan. yet even more so I am a Women's basketball fan. I wanted to see a great game. only benefit was that I got a little more sleep than I planned.

I agree. If top teams stopped playing them, over time it might hurt recruiting but I think I would be retired by then.

UConn is freakin awesome as a team but as far as watching a competitve game this was a snoozer

_________________
Author of: "Barnstorming America, Stories from the Pioneers of Women's Basketball"

www.barnstormingamerica.net

[Stephen Shirley]

The changing landscape of the AAC will certainly hurt UConn in the next few years. Losing BCS money from football and dramatically increased travel expenses will take a sizeable bite out the athletic budget. Fan enthusiasm will suffer further when confronted with matchups against teams like Tulane and Tulsa. And if top programs decline to schedule UConn in OOC play, even the ESPN connection will dry up because no one will care about matchups between #1 and #170 and #230.

But UConn will remain relevant as long as Geno is there. If he can channel the Tiger Woods mentality of chasing championships only and gloss over everything in between, top players will continue to go to UConn for the title chase. But the day Geno leaves... UConn could very easily drop back to the likes of LaTech, ODU and W. Ky. -- once dominant programs who now toil away in relative obscurity in a one bid mid-major conference.

[grrlagent]

I hate to say this, but I am really losing my spark for the sport. I respect everything Geno has done, but I'm telling you this predictable championships the next few years are going to destroy my passion. We can play around with who the contenders are but we know.....we know. And that makes me want to check out. And people who say it isn't bad for the sport are wrong. Just wrong.

_________________
“Never mistake activity for achievement.”
John Wooden

[petrel]

Also didn't watch the championship for the first time in many years. I guess I'm not as weird as I thought I was, and I feel better that others came to the same conclusion that I did. Blowouts just don't make compelling sport.

[pilight]

[purduefanatic]

[pilight]

[HistoryWomensBasketball]

I certainly agree you have to spend money to make money. yet with my taxes going thru the roof I would not be in favor of big increases to get better coaches etc to possibly make some money.

As much as I Love women's basketball I feel it is a niche sport. even with UConn winning 9 championships they do not pack gample every game like they did 10 to 15 years ago.

I would rather see schools have a limit of 1 recruited player ranked.. Say in top 35 each year 1 in top 75. spread it out some. maybe it would create more parity at some point and the cost to taxpayers a lot less

_________________
Author of: "Barnstorming America, Stories from the Pioneers of Women's Basketball"

www.barnstormingamerica.net

[purduefanatic]

[petrel]

pilight's comment about teams spending money got me to thinking. Adjusting for the amount of money being spent, where is the "spread" of money being spent bigger - in women's basketball or in men's basketball?

(Stats below from bbstate.com and wbbstate.com.)

The team that spends the most in men's basketball is Louisville. They are 6.02 standard deviations above the mean. To get down two standard deviations, you would drop from #1 in spending (Louisville) to #8 (Oklahoma State at 4.09).

The team that spends the most in women's basketball is Baylor, just a few thousand dollars above Connecticut. Baylor is 4.05 standard deviations above the mean. To get down two standard deviations, you would drop from #1 in spending (Baylor) to #19 (Iowa at 2.05). There are a lot more teams within range of Baylor than there are within range of Louisville, relatively speaking, when it comes to money spent on the program.

Someone could argue that there are all kinds of distorting factors. First, coach's salaries would eat up a bigger amount of men's BB expenses than women's. Second, the "sunk cost" of setting up a basketball program - scholarships, office space, travel, uniforms, paperwork, etc. - would have to be removed from all amounts. Even so, the overall spread is less in women's basketball than it is in men's basketball. Vanderbilt, Ohio State and Oklahoma in women's BB spend comparable amounts to Baylor and Connecticut; how come those programs can't win championships?

I really hate it when commentators rest on the old cliche that Connecticut just wants it more, as if Connecticut somehow discovered the value of hard work whereas the players on other teams treat what they do lightly or that those other teams somehow don't have the character of the Huskies. I don't believe that somehow Connecticut's players are more passionate that Tennessee's or South Carolina's.

My theory is that it's just a knowledge gap. Auriemma knows how to run a program - how to recruit, train, motivate and coach his players - and what he doesn't do, he delegates to others that he had either the knowledge or good luck to hire. Calling Auriemma or Warlick or McCallie or Mulkey a "coach" is a misnomer - it would be better to call them CEOs, since coaching is just one part of building a successful program.

That knowledge seems to be missing in women's basketball. So why is it missing? Is Auriemma a one-of-a-kind genius? (If he is, then you just have to wait until he retires.) But how come only he seems to know how to run a program that can win consistently?

[ClayK]

[norwester]

Even with the numbers of soccer and volleyball rising and basketball falling, I don't buy that it's necessarily affecting the talent pool. I think it's just separating those who are committed from those who like basketball as a hobby. The game is changing, and as it becomes more serious or professional (?) I can see that discouraging some, even if they have great natural talent. But then, those young women probably would not experience long-term success anyway.

And it seems contradictory to complain about UConn always getting the best players, but then describe their incoming class as solid, but not spectacular. Why do the schools with the best recruiting classes not experience more success?

I really feel like you hit the nail on the head with Geno just knowing how to run a program. I think there are those with similar xs and os knowledge, but there's more that goes into it, and it's not all on court stuff. I really think Chris Dailey probably deserves a lot of the credit as well. It's like it's not just the coach that needs to learn, but the athletic departments. And it's not about more money, but about using it properly.

But I do think that there are some up and coming programs. Those that were mentioned, and also Ohio State, once the coach gets a couple seasons in.

It's frustrating to me too that no one has stepped up to actually compete with UConn. But Baylor got close with Griner. And ND hasn't been doing horribly, despite a couple of sound defeats in the title game. I don't know why Stanford can't take that last step forward. It's all very puzzling.

_________________
Don't you know the plural of "anecdote" is "data"?

[GlennMacGrady]

Solve the boring imbalance in WCBB by having more schools throw a lot more money into it to catch UConn?

UConn throws a lot lot of money into the sport and loses money. (I think we had a thread on this quoting financial data.) Increasing deficits in athletic budgets to try to catch UConn in one minor sport is unlikely to be a strategy that will have much appeal.

And it wouldn't work. Suppose 200 schools spent a billion dollars a year on WCBB. Nothing much would change. There are probably less than 10 game-changing players coming out of GHSBB each year -- at least an order of magnitude less than BHSBB -- and those few players will keep going to a small handful of schools. At best, a couple of fingers on the hand will change.

[summertime blues]

I think things are cyclical. UConn is not going to be on top forever, just as Tennessee wasn't, just as a lot of other places weren't. It's not always about the money. Coaches change, players follow each other (not always to the same places), and there are probably plenty of other variables too. Where was Louisville 10 years ago? By the same token, where is USC today, or LA Tech? (Coming back, we hope). There are more good programs than there used to be, even though there's one that's currently dominant, and any one of those *good* programs, with the right combination of coaching, players, promotion, and a little money, could turn into the next UConn. People have been whining about the "dominant" program forever, or at least as long as I've been following WBB (that would be, oh, around 1973 when a kid named Pat Head started coaching a ragtag bunch at UT). Back then I think it was maybe Immaculata, or Delta State, or somebody……and the more things change, the more they remain the same!

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[beknighted]

I'm going to wait and see on the question of whether the state of the AAC will have an impact on UConn. It took a while, but LaTech and ODU both dropped off the radar, in large part because of their conferences and the combination of the difficulty of getting good seeds and the difficulty in maintaining quality when you face bad opponents. (This is not something you really can solve in practice, I suspect.) My assumption is that Geno is going to address this as best he can, through a very tough OOC schedule and scheduling a couple of late OOC games. That may be enough or it may not, but either way we won't know for a while.

And, of course, at some point he'll stop coaching, although who knows when that will be.

In the meantime, I remember similar predictions about UConn in the 2002-2004 period, and then they missed the Final Four for three years in a row.

[linkster]

It's impossible to know the net worth of a sport to a school. There's a lot of fuzzy money that is difficult to quantify. UConn's women's team is very popular in the state and legislators who vote for UConn building projects are very aware of that. No elected official in the state wants to be seen as anti-UConn. When I went to Storrs the athletics stunk and the school got little support from the legislature. Now they pass billion dollar + bonding packages. In this way UConn's academic programs have benefited greatly from the success of their athletic teams. But it's difficult to measure. There is also all the alumni gifting. Alumni maintain their connection with their school in large part through their sports programs. At least part of those revenues would slow significantly without the publicity that athletics gives the school.

Concluding that UConn's wbb program is a loser financially based on ticket and TV money is a bit simplistic.

[HistoryWomensBasketball]

That is true. I also agree legislators do not want to look bad in voting on UConn.

Yet you also mention bonding. my 7 letter swear word.

While CT has a so called surplus this year if there is much change downward in the stock market and with future obligations unfunded as of yet in the coming few years.. CT is going to tank financially

While I really would love to see more done at the state schools until CT is clearly on its feet I hope they become more cautious in spening money (oxymoron statement in CT )

_________________
Author of: "Barnstorming America, Stories from the Pioneers of Women's Basketball"

www.barnstormingamerica.net

[readyAIMfire53]

I must also confess that this was the last year I will attend Duke wbb games after 32 straight years. If I thought the NC game was a snoozer (and I did), then Duke wbb games are downright coma-inducing - even in person. Really the only thing that had me come back for this past season was Chelsea Gray as she is the #1 most exciting player I've ever had the opportunity to see in person multiple times. When she went down, I attended a couple more games, including Notre Dame, but that finished me off for good with the current coach.

When a team puts you to sleep while you're AT THE GAME, you know it's really, truly over. For those of you who have questioned displeasure with Coach McCallie at Duke, all I have to say is she just killed my pleasure in watching this team play. It has nothing to do with whether I like her as a person or any debate of her relative success as a coach. Bottom line is I no longer enjoy being at the games and I'd rather spend that time doing virtually anything else.

I will be here waiting to return when they finally bring back a coach who creates a team that is fun and/or exciting to watch. So, this just makes my experience of getting bored watching the NC game all the sadder for me. There really is nothing left as far as wcbb goes. I sure as heck hope the WNBA season is fun to follow. At least the closest team to me geographically - the Mystics - have a good coach at the helm again. Last year was fun to see a really great coach turn a team around as fast as he has and especially finding a gem of a player (Tierra Ruffin-Pratt) who didn't get drafted plus a euro player (Meesseman) who didn't play wcbb.

I like coaches who are not only knowledgeable and smart, I like the coaches who seem to see themselves as artists - taking fairly "normal" looking things and turning them into things of beauty. Anybody who can turn me into a person who actually likes watching Ivory Latta play is an ultimate genius. I never saw that coming. And that's part of what I like as a fan. With Chelsea Gray, you have a player who can do that all by herself. I will become an instant fan of whateve team drafts her, at least when she's playing.

Please note that nowhere in this description of me as a fan do I mention National Championship. I'm sure that would be astronomically fun to experience, but that's not the essence of what draws me. I just don't like being bored. I'll go find something else to do. Right now, watching seeds sprouting is way more exciting than what I experienced at wcbb this season.

_________________
Follow your passion and your life will be true down to your core.

~rAf