MU Women's Basketball Thread

[Marquette Fan]

So we're a 10-seed, playing VaTech on Sunday, with the winner having to play Baylor, right?

Don't know anything about VaTech, but Baylor is never fun.

I originally thought I didn't want them to get an 8/9 to avoid a 1 seed in the 2nd round.  But then I realized that they weren't likely to be able to beat any of the projected 2 seeds either.  Baylor will be very tough should they get past Va Tech.

[Marquette Fan]

Kim Adams gives her thoughts about MUWBB seed:

https://twitter.com/Kim_Adams1/status/1371605923714768896?s=19

They were projected as an 8/9 seed most of the year - the 10 could have been a procedural bump.  It's also not that much different than an 8/9.  I don't think I'd say they were disrespected.  Their best win was at DePaul and then DePaul fell apart making that win not look the greatest.  Also, the Big East wasn't very strong as shown by the fact that only two teams made the NCAA Tournament.

[shoothoops]

They were projected as an 8/9 seed most of the year - the 10 could have been a procedural bump.  It's also not that much different than an 8/9.  I don't think I'd say they were disrespected.  Their best win was at DePaul and then DePaul fell apart making that win not look the greatest.  Also, the Big East wasn't very strong as shown by the fact that only two teams made the NCAA Tournament.

I'm curious about the margin of loss to UConn in Big East Title game. It appears with some of the Men and Women's conference tourneys, margin of victory seemed to be a factor a little bit.

As we discussed prior to today, I wasn't too concerned about 1 v 8 type game because the 2 seeds are very good too. I am a fan of playing new teams when possible in NCAA's compared to teams played in regular season. And yep, DePaul's NCAA streak ends after 17 straight.

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

Marquette was one of the last four teams in. What a joke.

[Marquette Fan]

Marquette was one of the last four teams in. What a joke.

I hadn't seen that before reading your post.  Yeah the Big East wasn't strong but MU had a NET of 34 - how is that last 4 in material???

[Mr. Nielsen]

No DePaul, disappointing.

[Marquette Fan]

I'm curious about the margin of loss to UConn in Big East Title game. It appears with some of the Men and Women's conference tourneys, margin of victory seemed to be a factor a little bit.

As we discussed prior to today, I wasn't too concerned about 1 v 8 type game because the 2 seeds are very good too. I am a fan of playing new teams when possible in NCAA's compared to teams played in regular season. And yep, DePaul's NCAA streak ends after 17 straight.

I looked at the NET rankings and the 7's were 31 (Northwestern), 28 (Va Tech), 33 (Alabama) and 26 (Iowa State).  Marquette was close to that NET at 34 but they were in a mcuh weaker conference than all those other teams and I'd say that's a big factor going against MU.  The 8/9 NET rankings were all over the place - anywhere from 25-49.  Marquette had the best NET of any of the 10's but they were close - UCF was 38 (similar lower level conference to MU), North Carolina was 35 and Michigan State 40.

But hearing that MU was one of the last 4 in which is really surprising to me makes me think the weak Big East hurt MU the most.

[Marquette Fan]

No DePaul, disappointing.

If Marquette with their NET of 34 and the resume they had was one of the last 4 teams in, DePaul didn't stand a chance probably...

[Marquette Fan]

Hope LVK is ok to play this weekend:

https://twitter.com/MarquetteWBB/status/1372214592131174402

https://twitter.com/MarquetteWBB/status/1372299220582027265

And MU has arrived in Texas...

[Marquette Fan]

Coach Duffy back in her WNBA days:

https://twitter.com/NBAalumni/status/1372602154561765376

[Marquette Fan]

The NCAA is getting called out this year on a lot of differences between things in the Men's Basketball bubble and the Women's Basketball bubble:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/19/ncaa-womens-basketball-unequal/

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Coach Staley wrote a letter.

https://twitter.com/dawnstaley/status/1373064039211876358?s=20

Really in this day and age, I can't believe that the NCAA would be this dumb. 

[Marquette Fan]

Coach Staley wrote a letter.

https://twitter.com/dawnstaley/status/1373064039211876358?s=20

Really in this day and age, I can't believe that the NCAA would be this dumb.

I hadn't seen that yet - that was a good letter.

I've been just as upset by the NCAA's lame explanations/apologies as by the actual inequities.  The excuse about lack of space for the weight room discrepancy was a joke.  I saw a video of the women's weight room - it was huge - there was plenty of space in there.

And Staley brought up the NCAA March Madness Twitter account that is for Men's Basketball.  I didn't care for the tweet they had on International Women's Day:

https://twitter.com/marchmadness/status/1369050753072062464

Why not just talk about Women's Sports on International Women's Day - why does men's basketball need to be brought into it?

[Marquette Fan]

Muffet McGraw's thoughts - https://twitter.com/MuffetMcGraw/status/1373321930485473287

[Marquette Fan]

10 Seed Marquette faces 7 Seed Virginia Tech at 11AM Central time today on ESPNU

Go Marquette!!!

[MU82]

This is a hell of a column by the talented Sally Jenkins:

+++

I’m tired. Not from today, or from yesterday, but from forty years of it. Forty years tired of writing the same damn story about the same NCAA shortchangers in suits who would begrudge women athletes so much as an equal amount of air in a tire, if they thought it might come at a man’s expense. Sick and tired of the chiseling administrators with their million-dollar salaries and monstrous heaps of revenue who act like women basketball players should be thankful for a uniform that isn’t funded by a bake sale.

The women’s basketball tournament ought to be an NCAA flagship event, yet it continues to be treated as some kind of cheap subsidized junior varsity by the book-cooking crooks. All these women ever do is raise their arc of performance, command steadily increasing viewership, and graduate at a sky-high rate of 93%. For which they get petty insults and cheap treatment. The ludicrously inferior weight room these women were provided at their bubble site in San Antonio, a single rack of weights and a couple of yoga mats? That’s nothing new, and it’s no surprise.

Nothing changes. Ever. On one occasion in 2004, Tennessee and their coach Pat Summitt arrived at their accommodations for the Sweet 16 to discover that they had been put in a seedy motel – along with a police dog convention. It was one of those joints where the corridors were all outdoors, and the food was a vending machine. Every time a player left her room for a bag of peanuts, German Shepherds would leap at the windows and start baying. In the motor lobby and the parking lot, trainers were walking dogs around on short leashes. The whole place smelled of canine.

Women are 50.8% of the population and they earn 57% of all college degrees, and they make up 44% of all NCAA athletes. You know how many female athletic directors there are among the 65 schools in the Power Five conferences? Four. The women’s Final Four is an annual sellout, and ESPN paid $500 million for a TV contract bundling the tournament with 24 championships. You know how much money a team like UConn, Stanford or Baylor will get for winning in the women’s tournament? Nothing.

The NCAA provides no payouts to women – at all. It refuses to factor the women into any revenue-sharing.

Exactly where does the NCAA, which calls itself a nonprofit and benefits from all manner of preferential subsidies, deductions and tax favors on its billions in TV and licensing revenue, get off pretending the women’s tournament has no value at all? And where does it get off serving the athletes slop? And why are they giving women a combination antigen and PCR tests for COVID-19, while the men undergo only the more expensive – and more reliable – PCR?

The 2019 women’s Final Four in Tampa set attendance records in an arena of 21,000. Fans jammed local hotel rooms. More than 3 million TV viewers watched Baylor’s 82-81 victory over Notre Dame in the championship game, and ratings were up 24% since 2016. This year ESPN has decided to show all 63 games of women’s March Madness – presumably because of demand, and value, and advertising.

But the NCAA, funnily enough, won’t break out the specific numbers on the women’s basketball tournament revenue and operating costs. Their finances on the women are opaque.

Do some math for yourself. A sold-out arena, at $30 for a single face-value ticket, that’s at least $600,000 per game. All told, 274,507 fans attended the 2019 women’s tournament. And that’s not counting concessions and advertising.

“They’ve got tens of millions in value there,” sports economist Andrew Zimbalist said.

Now, certainly the men’s tournament is worth more: Its 22-year TV deal is for $19.6 billion, and it can command 10 million viewers across CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV. That still doesn’t explain why a men’s team that wins a single game will get a payout of $2 million, while a women’s team that wins an entire championship tournament will not get a cent.

“One can make an economic argument that men should get a larger benefit and payout because they have higher ratings and attendance and tickets cost more,” Zimbalist said. “But to say that women should get nothing, when we all know they are on ESPN and in large arenas where they sell out, and are valuable – that is totally unacceptable. It’s a clear case of discrimination.”

Here’s the deal: The NCAA needs to fix this, and fix it now. Otherwise, it’s just one more reason for Congress to legislate it out of existence.

It’s Women’s History Month, so let’s review some history. Women’s basketball built itself. From scratch. In the face of vehement opposition from male administrators and athletic directors. The first women’s championship was played in 1972, in Normal, Ill., and it drew 16 teams, most of whom drove hundreds of miles piled into station wagons, traveling on their own dime. Summitt’s athletic director at UT-Martin, Bettye Giles, walked around town with a piggy bank collecting donations to get the gas money for the seven-hour drive to the tournament, which would be won by Immaculata.

To help pay for uniforms, Summitt raked yards.

Out at Cal State Fullerton, Billie Moore, who was head coach of the first U.S. women’s Olympic team – the Olympic team for God’s sake – washed cars to finance her team.

Marynell Meadors, who served for several years as the general manager of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, can remember driving her Tennessee Tech college teams to games in a dilapidated van with bald tires, because administrators wouldn’t devote any money to fixing it. The door on the van wouldn’t close properly, and Meadors feared it would slide open and one of her players would tumble out onto the highway.

They had to beg for occasional pittances from athletic directors, usually bulldoggish former football stars who viewed them with red-faced hostility. At Austin Peay, a coach named Lin Dunn, who would later win a WNBA championship with Indiana, was told by her AD she could use the gym only “when nobody else wants it.” She had to drive her team to games in her own Impala – which could fit just eight. She would slip into the men’s locker room and steal their extra warm-ups.

This is the backstory to the tournament that will be played in San Antonio, and all of the coaches and players there know it by heart, and feel it burning inside. A’ja Wilson, the former South Carolina star who now plays for the Las Vegas Aces, called the disparities for women’s teams “beyond disrespectful.”

Sue Bird took one look at snapshots of the difference between facilities and food for the men and women and tweeted, “I can’t.”

If they seem to seethe with a special intensity, that’s because they’re not small slights; they’re a lifetime worth of frustrations, of chronic insults and grudging advance, of being told that they’re worth less.

And they’re tired of it.

Forty years worth of tired.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Did the NCAA not see that this was going to be a problem?  How can you run semi-bubbled tournaments at the same exact time and have clear differences in the quality of accommodations and testing?

[shoothoops]

Leading rebounder and 2nd leading scorer junior Imani Lewis has entered the transfer portal:

https://madison.com/wsj/sports/college/basketball/women/forward-imani-lewis-leaves-badgers-womens-basketball-team/article_187cb0ab-fac6-5fb0-a616-3a807fb32b96.html

Wow - I had forgotten how long ago Jane Albright coached at UW - she was there 1994-2003.  They haven't reached the success she had there since then.  Lisa Stone was there for 8 seasons after her and then Bobbi Kelsey and Jonathan Tisipis each were there for 5 seasons.

Lisa Stone's first two WNIT opponents this year were DePaul and UWM.

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

Lisa Stone's first two WNIT opponents this year were DePaul and UWM.

Lisa Stone has actually put together a really nice squad at SLU. Obviously not anything special, but she has gotten a lot of under recruited kids from Illinois to go play for her. They'll probably win the conference next year if I had to guess.

[Marquette Fan]

This is a hell of a column by the talented Sally Jenkins:

+++

I posted a link to this article above in this thread.  But yes I thought it was a great article.  Imagine the outrage there would have been for that hotel situation Tennessee had in 2004 if it happened to a men’s team.  Then again I guess that never would have happened to a men’s team in the first place...

[Marquette Fan]

Lisa Stone's first two WNIT opponents this year were DePaul and UWM.

Yeah and they beat both of them to advance in the WNIT.  I forgot they had a Marquette transfer on that SLU team too.

[muwarrior69]

I guess will let the Mens program hang by a thread at the Al while the Women are playing super basketball here at the bar which I thought is the place to talk about all things not Marquette Basketball.

...but what do I know.

[Marquette Fan]

I guess will let the Mens program hang by a thread at the Al while the Women are playing super basketball here at the bar which I thought is the place to talk about all things not Marquette Basketball.

...but what do I know.

I added a post last night about today's game in Hangin at the Al and it only got derogatory comment towards Women's Basketball so far - I thought that was pretty good .

[Marquette Fan]

And it's the usual starting 5 per an MU tweet - glad to see LVK can still play - was a little concerned after seeing her in a boot on Wednesday.

[Marquette Fan]

Did the NCAA not see that this was going to be a problem?  How can you run semi-bubbled tournaments at the same exact time and have clear differences in the quality of accommodations and testing?

Yeah - someone signed off on all of this stuff beforehand and should have cared that they had some major discrepancies between the two bubble sites.