Although I agree UConn has had a great program for years, i still don't think they should play all their games until the final 4 in their home state. Last night they played the no. 1 seed in their bracket in Conn. I know its all about the $, but that is BS.
UConn Womens B ball
- Thread starter Norm Petersin
- Start date
Women's bball is a sport that only about 100k fans nationally care about.
25k of them are around UConn.
What would you like to do about it instead?
LdN
It’s similar on the men’s side (although not as bad to the final 4). UNC and Duke are pretty much guaranteed home games and home crowds most years to get to the sweet 16. They rotate games between Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, and Winston Salem with both Duke and UNC almost always scheduled there.
Yep. It is all about money. If the UConn - NC State game was played in say Denver, there probably would have been about 15 attendees.
Womens B-Ball is like CFB. There are only about 4 teams who have a realistic shot of winning it all every year. UCONN = Bama, there every year in the mix, don't win it every year but are a legitimate threat to do so. I feel men's college basketball is a little more wide open than these sports but not by much.
at least Bama doesn't have playoff games in Tuscaloosa
This reminds me of the Buick commercials that are currently running. They are trying to make a big deal about no one seeing these great women’s sports events. Personally, the best sports event I ever witnessed was my daughter’s national championship in college club lacrosse. But I have absolutely no interest in watching women’s basketball, pro or college. And now I’m less likely to buy a Buick.
Well, you missed one hell of a game then last night. If I were to generalize, the women (much like Villanova's men) play basketball --- not "showtime". I love watching UConn play.
This year, Duke started out in Greenville, SC, (and then San Francisco) and UNC started in Ft. Worth, TX (and then Philadelphia).
High seeds often are rewarded with games close to home in the first 2 rounds, but there is nothing similar to the treatment UConn women get.
Glad there was a good game, but I just don’t care. I didn’t even know there was a women’s bball game last night. And I don’t need Buick trying to shame me in to caring.
Soon CFB will head in the same direction of apathy as WCBB If this is not rectified.
This year was a fluke- that 1 year in 8 or so that Greenville gets into the rotation (it was previously banned by the ncaa IIRC). Even still, it’s only 3.5 hours from Durham and Chapel Hill. It was mostly filled with Duke fans this year.
This was also a fluke year that UNC was sent out west. That’s rare. (We go to the games in the Carolinas every year and it’s almost always Duke and UNC together there).
Duke and UNC have a racket going on. Pretty much a permanent rotation of North Carolina sites every year (with the very rare exception Greenville year).
No other schools get the deal UNC and Duke do in the men’s tournament. (And, yes- UConn women get even more of gift on the women’s side).
Imagine if Ohio State was guaranteed 2 playoff games every year in either Cleveland, Akron, Cincinnati, or Dayton and once a decade they have to go out of state but just to Pittsburgh.
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I don't know what the TV rating will be but this is about as good as it gets for women's college basketball. Their two biggest stars are in the Final 4.
Hailey Van Lith has over 700K Insta followers and Paige Bueckers has almost 1 mil. Both of these girls are already making good coin before even hitting the WNBA. If this Final 4 doesn't pull a good number then women's basketball is doomed.
It will never drop to the low interest levels of WCBB but good point that as we continue on this path of the same 3-5 schools in the playoff then interest will wane. It already has. I love CFB because I love PSU and watch every game whether we are 1-10 or 11-0 but the current state of affairs in CFB is going to/has started to drive away the casual fan.
And yet there seems to be a concerted effort from ESPNetc to cram women's hoops down our throats this year. I can watch and enjoy many women's sports (volleyball top of the list) but with basketball...they just look so slow and earthbound.
Very true. It would be interesting to see how a decent boy's high school team would do against a top girl's college team. My hunch is the boy's team would win by at least 25 points.
Why can't girl's jump? Years ago I played on a pickup team. One night we played girls from a local college team. The girls moved the ball nicely, shot well, and played good fundamental defense. Yet, my pickup team won easily. We got every defensive rebound and usually got extra shots off the boards on offense. The girl's could not jump. I'm only 5'11" and I was easily getting rebounds over taller girls. Watch the college girls or even WNBA girls. They can't jump.
There are some girls who can really jump but there is also a much higher percentage of knee injuries in female bball players.
Back when I was at PSU, I often played pick up in Rec hall with Rashaan Carlton, Matt Gaudio, Dan Earl, etc and they asked that I get on the scout team. It is such a time commitment that I could not do it but besides the guys having one, Rene had a group of male students who would practice/work out against the womens team. If the guys played straight up against the women, they would win everytime, just too much natural size/strength/speed difference.
Good point. I wonder why women athletes have more knee problems than men. My daughter played on a state championship high school volleyball team. They practiced obsessively. There were 15 girls on the team. Twelve of them, including my daughter, required knee surgery after their volleyball careers.
UCONN was actually #8 going into the Dance. 5 losses for a team that set all kinds of records for consecutive wins. They are not the dominate powerhouse they use to be.
True some other programs have caught up, but they played half the year without two of their top 3 players (Bueckers and Fudd) and probably would be right there with Stanford and SC
Have a friend that was a few years ahead of me an Mansfield and by coincidence we were hired at the same high school to coach (he boys basketball).
Jumped over to coach the women's team at West Point and then went on to great things at Auburn. In fact he happens to be in the Women's basketball Hall of Fame. Anyway, he was in 3 final fours losing all three years in the final.....my youngest son is his God Son so we traveled to Hartford in 2004 to take in the Auburn vs. UConn tournament game. Auburn played them tuff in the first half....but Gino was already a rock star and the arena was packed...at most 3 dozen Auburn Fans.....perhaps seeing the future, my friend retired after that game. Gino is a great, great coach......but Lord does he get the highway plowed for him by the powers that be.
Jumped over to coach the women's team at West Point and then went on to great things at Auburn. In fact he happens to be in the Women's basketball Hall of Fame. Anyway, he was in 3 final fours losing all three years in the final.....my youngest son is his God Son so we traveled to Hartford in 2004 to take in the Auburn vs. UConn tournament game. Auburn played them tuff in the first half....but Gino was already a rock star and the arena was packed...at most 3 dozen Auburn Fans.....perhaps seeing the future, my friend retired after that game. Gino is a great, great coach......but Lord does he get the highway plowed for him by the powers that be.
You make a good point.
I could care less about girls basketball. Probably the only game I ever watched on TV my whole life from beginning to end was when we lost that game in the Final Four. But Rene was the only girls coach at Penn State that could ever coach a lick. We have literally sucked big time since we had to become politically correct and dump her.
The first thing I would do if I was a girls basketball coach ( which I will NEVER be) is get a team of males to practice against like you say Rene did. I can’t see how that wouldn’t help prepare a girls team for tougher girls competition. Maybe the girls basketball coaches since Rene have done that. Does anyone know? If not, why not?
They were rattled by injuries this year.. in fact I think 2022 is probably GA’s best job ever coaching.. they had no reason beating Stanford.. or NC State… girls have heart..
Our other coaches have done it, and top programs everywhere do it.
The frustrating one was when psu was the one seed and had to play there
Every good girls team practices against guys. And yes, the group of guys picked up from the student body who were average to decent high school players murder the best girls teams in the country.
A lot of these sports developed with men playing them and thus they play to the strengths of men. Then women start playing them and women are, gasp, different from men, and so the game often looks very different when played by women.
Women's sports can be more interesting if they're tweaked to take advantage of the skills women naturally have. Women's softball is pretty interesting to watch but I bet women's baseball would not be and that's why they do softball instead. Gymnastics basically has two different sports for men and women and the women's sport is more popular to the public and that's because women's gymnastics is tailored to the kinds of things women are good at.
Women's sports can be more interesting if they're tweaked to take advantage of the skills women naturally have. Women's softball is pretty interesting to watch but I bet women's baseball would not be and that's why they do softball instead. Gymnastics basically has two different sports for men and women and the women's sport is more popular to the public and that's because women's gymnastics is tailored to the kinds of things women are good at.
What is the difference between dawn Staley and Paterno? Staley was at temple when Andrea Constand was assaulted by Cosby.
I don't care about basketball either way , but if I could care less I would care less for women's basketball.
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