A Tale of 2 Ball Games

After Monday night' s debacle, Tuesday night's game came as a breath of fresh air.

Monday night: Connecticut 53 Butler 41. The Bulldogs shot a historically terrible 19 percent from the field, and made a mind-boggling 3-for-31 shots from inside the arc. The previous record for futility in an NCAA championship game was 21.5 percent by Washington State in 1941. And, hey, the Huskies shot 34 percent--9 percent from 3-point land--and won going away.

Yahoo! Sports asked, "Was UConn-Butler the modern era's worst national title game?," and answered, no, it was only the 2nd worst title game. They charitably noted that "stifling defense" was responsible for the terrible shooting "until Butler started panicking and rushing routine shots in the second half," and that the game remained close for 30 minutes.

I thought, by the way, that 6-9 sophomore Alex Oriakhi was UConn's MVP with 11 points, 11 boards and, especially, 4 of the Huskies' 10 blocked shots. If you want one stat that tells the tale, forget even 19 percent, it's those 10 blocks. Butler was afraid to shoot a lay-up afterwhile, and that is when and how the game was lost.

Tuesday night: Texas A&M 76 Notre Dame 70. The Aggies shot 55 percent, including 58 percent in the 2nd half. Even the Fighting Irish shot 46 percent and 77 percent on FT in losing. All-America post Danielle Adams posted a classic, hitting 13-of-22 shots for 30 points and adding 9 rebounds. Irish post Deveraux Peters was almost as good, making 8-of-10 shots for 21 points, to go along with 11 boards. Skylar Diggins and Natalie Novosel added 12-of-29 shooting for 37 points. Unfortunately, their supporting cast made just 4-of-13 shots, while Adams' supporting cast made 16-of-31.

And there was some of that back-and-forth that makes for a fun game, if nerve-wracking for fans of the two combatants. A&M led through most of the 1st half including 25-12, 27-14 and 29-16. But the Irish closed the half with a 13-4 run to get within 33-29.

Notre Dame picked up where it left off in the 2nd half, taking a 48-41 lead. But the Aggies responded by making 11-of-their-next-13 shots to take a 60-57 lead with 7:32 left to play. Now it was the Irish's turn to respond, making 4-of-5--the last 5 points coming on a 3 and a 2 by Diggins--to tie things up at 66.

Now it was Adams' turn. She scored a pair of buckets to make it 70-66, then blocked and rebounded a Becca Bruszewski shot at 2:17. The Irish never got closer than 70-68, and then Tyra White hit a 3 and 2 FT sandwiched around a steal. An Adams FT sealed the deal at 76-70.

It's good to know that at least 2 of the 4 NCAA D1 basketball finalists played well with everything on the line.

Note that I missed the Aggies' margin by 2 points, and I called Adams outscoring Diggins, but Novosel and Peters outscoring the Sydneys. It's hard to say that A&M's quickness was the difference, however, as I had predicted. The Irish had 16 turnovers, 25 points off Aggies turnovers, and 6 fastbreak points. A&M had 18 turnovers, 23 points off Irish turnovers, and 2 fastbreak points.

ORIGINAL POST

It's not a Minnesota thing, so I don't have much in the way of insight into the NCAA finals tonight (Butler men vs. Connecticut) and tomorrow night (Texas A&M vs. not Connecticut). My main point is just to say the both tournaments have been in upset mode, and so you've got finalists with the following seeds:

Men--Butler #9 vs. Connecticut #3

Women--Notre Dame #2 vs. Texas A&M #2

And it's my opinion that #2 vs. #2 for the women's title is a vastly larger surprise than #3 vs. #9 for the men.

The point being that there is such parity in men's ball that a Final Four with a #3, #4, #9 and #11 was hardly surprising. The fact that #11 was Virginia Commonwealth and not, say, Virginia or Virginia Tech, makes it a bit more surprising. But it's generally acknowledged that there are at least 10 to 15 teams each year with a legitimate hope of winning the national title, and at least double that with a shot at the Final Four.

Among the women, the teams that were thought to be capable of competing for the national title were thought to be approximately 3 in number--#1 seed Connecticut, #1 seed Stanford and #1 seed Baylor. Even the 4th #1 seed, Tennessee, was thought to be overmatched. And, well, they were. #2 seeds Notre Dame and Texas A&M were given no chance against the remaining #1s.

But what now? Now that we know that there's at least incrementally greater competitiveness in the women's game than we had thought? Well, the real test will be next year. If Connecticut and Tennessee are #1 and #2 all year, and end up playing for the national title, well, then parity was just a short term thing, a mirage.

But tomorrow one of the underdogs will be the NCAA champ. I have no idea which. The 2 have a couple of common opponents. Texas A&M played 1 Big East team, Rutgers, and won 79-50 at Rutgers in December, and beat 'em 70-48 on a neutral site in the NCAA tournament. The Fighting Irish beat Rutgers once, at home, 71-48. Not much to distinguish there. Meanwhile, Notre Dame played 2 Big 12 teams, losing at Baylor 76-65, and beating Oklahoma 78-53 in the NCAAs. A&M won beat Oklahoma 92-71 at home and 81-68 in Norman. A&M lost to Baylor 63-60 at home and 67-58 at Baylor, but then beat the Bears 58-46 in the NCAAs. Edge: A&M.

I was surprised to find that Notre Dame's top scorer during the regular season was Natalie Novesel, a 6-1 senior forward, with 15 .1 ppg on 45 percent shooting. She has averaged 12 ppg in the NCAAs while 5-9 soph guard Skylar Diggins has emerged as the Irish star. She scored 14.8 ppg during the regular season, but has boosted that to 18.8 during the tournament, including 28 in the win over Connecticut yesterday. 6-2 senior F Deveraux Peters has also outscored Novesel if only 60-59 during the tournament.

Meanwhile, A&M's leading scorer both before and during the tournament has been 6-1 senior center-forward Danielle Adams at 22 points on 48 percent shooting before, and 18.8 ppg in the tournament.

The question, therefore, is whether A&M guards, the Sydneys, Carter and Colston, will have more luck stopping Diggins, or whether the Irish insider players Peters and Novesel will have more luck stopping Adams. And whose support crew will come up bigger.

I think A&M will slow down Diggins more than the Irish will slow down Adams, but Novosel and Peters will outscore the Aggies guard group. But in the end, I think A&M's quickness will settle things. Texas A&M 65 Notre Dame 61.

The Men

Connecticut and guard Kemba Walker will be tough to beat, but Butler and strongman Matt Howard will be even tougher. Walker will get his 24 ppg, but is anybody else for the Huskies capable of coming up big under the glare of the national title game? Questionable.

Meanwhile, Butler, of all people, comes in with more experience under this sort of pressure. The Huskies may hold Howard below his 17 ppg average, and they will hold Sheldon Mack below his 16, but the 2 of them will outscore Kemba Walker. And the remainder of Butler's rotation will outscore Walker's supporting cast.

Butler 55 Connecticut 53

UConn's Win Streak

Even the many basketball fans who hate the women's game know that the Connecticut Huskies broke the record 88-game winning streak of the UCLA Bruin men and legendary coach John Wooden the other day--which is in part why you hate them. They broke the men's record. And that's probably why you rejoiced when, a few days later, the streak ended at 90 in a 71-59 loss to the Stanford Cardinal.

OK, I hope you can tell that I have my tongue planted firmly in my cheek on this one. I don't know anybody who hates the Connecticut Huskies. Head coach Geno Auriemma, maybe, but the Huskies? No. Still, there's been a certain amount of whining that the Huskies haven't gotten their due, and that it is because--you guessed it--they are women.

I'm referring to an Op Ed in yesterday's StarTrib written by "digital producer/editorial writer" Susan Hogan, who says that "dismissive reactions to UConn's record say much about continuing gender disparities in sports."

Well, somebody's got to say it. Not that gender disparities are entirely a thing of the past. But that Hogan's commentary is nevertheless at least 90 percent hogwash.

• First, her premise is that UConn's record "received scant attention" in the news media and that, "by comparison...(UCLA's) feat saturated the news." Well, for one thing, I suspect that Hogan has no idea whether "UCLA's feat saturated the news" or not. The fact is that you couldn't watch the men's NCAA tournament on television in those days, of which she is probably unaware. And secondly, sure, UConn's record didn't make the Strib's front page but, hey, it's not a local story. And, again, I seriously doubt that may basketball fans are not aware of what the Huskies did.

• Second, Hogan purports to show "continuing gender disparities in sports" by reference to her own career in high school and college. But she never says exactly when that was other than that it was "decades" after he father coached high school sports in the 1940s and that it was after the adoption of Title IX in 1972. "When I entered...school...only two sports were offered to girls.... Boys, on the other hand, could choose from football, basketball, baseball, track and golf."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," she continues. "Title IX...prohibited sexual discrimination in federally funded educational programs. So while the UCLA men's basketball team was winning its way into the record books, women were fighting for the chance to attend medical schools, law schools and play sports--opportunities routinely denied them."

Well, UCLA set its record 42 years ago, in 1968. Hogan writes as if the opportunity to play sports was "routinely denied" to her and are still "routinely denied" today. Neither of which is true. Hogan herself played sports in high school--though she only had two sports to choose from--and she "played varsity sports in college."

What's more, she goes on to write that "since Title IX...several Minnesota women have soared to wide acclaim," including skier Lindsay Vonn and basketball player Lindsay Whalen. Her own evidence, then, disproves her generalized claim that women's sports receive "scant" and "dismissive" media coverage.

Generally, her presentation of gender discrimination in sports is utterly hyperbolic and completely outdated--pre-dating, in fact, even her own personal experience as an athlete.

• Third, she claims that not only was coverage "scant," but what coverage there was was "dismissive," that journalists and others "belittled" UConn's achievement. She provides but two examples, which she fails to attribute by name--saying only that they were written by "one sportwriter" and "another writer." A Google search shows that the first writer was Samuel Chi of Real Clear Sports (dot com) who said simply that UCLA would continue to hold the men's record while UConn would hold the women's record. The second was by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports who said that "these are two different sports."

Whether either of these comments is "dismissive" of "belittling" or not is surely in the eye of the beholder. But more to the point, do two such comments indicate a general air of dismissal such as Hogan wants to claim exists? What Wetzel, in fact, asks is whether UConn's achievement "should be taken down a peg because it didn't come against the same level of competition" and whether UConn will "be surpassing UCLA's record." The answer to both questions, he says, is No.

She goes on to quote two other journalists, whom she does identify by name. One, Laura Pappano, wrote, "That a women's team may overtake a record held by a men's team merely reflects the fact that athletic dominance doesn't have a gender," which quote contradicts Hogan's two main arguments, above. And finally she quotes Mike Bombach of USA Today, who wrote, "Not to give them credit is just shameful chauvinism." Well, USA Today reaches a vastly larger audience than Real Clear Sports, which contradicts Hogan's argument that the mainstream was "dismissive." In fact the mainstream, represented by USA Today, was supportive and the allegedly "dismissive" comments came from the periphery.

In viewing all of the above and coming to the conclusion that the media coverage was "scant" and "dismissive," Hogan is living in the past and unable to see girls' and women's sports as they exist today except through her own personal filter.

• Finally, Hogan attributes gender "disparities" in sports to a lack of media coverage. And, by the way, the only current disparity she claims is the "scant" and "dismissive" media coverage, though she never quite gets around to acknowledging that the days when girls had but two sports to choose from and boys five is in the past. But the fact is that observers of the sporting scene who are vastly more knowledgeable than Hogan would argue that "scant" media coverage is reflective of the relative level of interest in men's versus women's sports.

Christine Brennan wrote in another USA Today column: "There's no doubt that college men's basketball has more interest than the women's game. TV ratings, attendance figures and revenue bear that out." The media, in other words, follows the fans, not the other way around as Hogan would have it.

My own personal experience is that, indeed, fans of girl's and women's basketball are hungry for news. More visitors to this Web blog read my posts on girl's basketball than read my other posts. Sure, that's because they aren't seeing as much coverage in the mainstream media as they do for the boys and men.

But when I go to a Gopher game, there are 14,000 people there--for the men. For the women, more like 3,000. And when I went to the high school state tournament last year, there were 6,000 at the final and 37,000 across 4 days. For the boys, the numbers were 11,000 and 65,000. Media coverage reflects this reality.

I've probably seen about 3 times more girls and women's basketball games over the past decade than boys and men's. I'm sympathtic, OK? But, shaming fans into following girls and women's basketball, as Hogan tries to do, is simply not going to work.

SDSU Loading Up on Minnesota Forwards

Word is that Megan Stuart (2011) of Roseville has verballed South Dakota State. And, apropos of this story I wrote up in May, Stuart, too, is a 'tweener at the forward spot. She looks on paper a lot like her fellow SDSU 2011 recruit Mariah Clarin of Princeton, as both are forwards. Clarin is only 5-11 but plays notoriously big for her size and so should be competing with Stuart for minutes.

Here's the May article:

Wow, what is it with the South Dakota State University Jackrabbits women's basketball team? I mean, aside from the fact that, under coach Aaron Johnston, they've become the #1 team in the Ninth Federal Reserve District.

What I mean is that, with a verbal from Mariah Clarin of Princeton, SDSU is now officially hoarding all the 4s (big forwards) from Minnesota that it can get its hands on. This coming year they'll have junior Jenna Sunnarborg from Osseo, sophomore Leah Dietel from Jordan, and freshmen Hannah Strop from New Prague and Megan Waytashek from Centennial. All of that on top of Maria Boever of Worthington, a 2010 graduate, and Stacie Oistad of Sartell, a 2009 grad.

Of course, it would be silly to question whether there's a method to the madness. Of course there is. Johnston became the Jackrabbits' interim head coach late in the 1999-2000 season, and in 10-and-a-half years he's won 248 games while losing 76 (.765). Lest you complain that much of that came in D2, well, that's wrong. It's already 6 years since SDSU joined D1, and they've been even better in D1, winning 143 while losing 43 (.768). Against the Big 10, they're 5-3 (.625). I don't know how Johnston hasn't been picked up by a major school.

So if you're on a roll, and the Jackrabbits most assuredly are that, you keep doing what you're doing. And one of the things they've been doing, again, is hoarding those 4s from Minnesota. Oistad was the prototype. As a senior (in 2009), the 6-footer started 10 games, played in 35 for an average of 21 minutes and scored 8 points with 4 rebounds.

Of course, Oistad had some other notable Minnesotans as teammates, specifically guard Megan Vogel from St. Peter, class of 2007, who finished up as the Jacks' #2 all-time scorer with 1,850 points.

But sticking to the forwards, the next Minnesotan was the 6-1 Boever. Her main claim to fame in these parts (Minneapolis-St. Paul) is making the game-winning shot at the buzzer in a 59-58 upset of the Gophers at Williams Arena in 2007. In 2010, she led the Jacks in scoring and rebounding at 14 points and 7 boards.

Next on board was the 6-2 Sunnarborg, who started 13 games and played in 33 this past year as a sophomore. She scored 8 points per game with 4 boards in 16.5 minutes of play. Meanwhile, the 6-1 Dietel started 4 games and played in 23 for a total of 17 minutes, and shot 50 percent to Sunnarborg's 46 but attempted barely one-quarter as many shots as Sunnarborg did. So she scored just 4 points per game with 4 boards. Sunnarborg also blocked 41 shots while Dietel blocked just 1. That would seem to say something about athleticism or aggressiveness or something.

Joining the fun next year will be the incoming freshmen Strop, a 6-f00ter, and the 6-2 Waytashek, both of whom can play further away from the hoop than Dietel or Sunnarborg but who can also mix it up pretty good inside. Waytashek is probably the most highly regarded Minnesotan the Jacks have ever lured down to the briar patch and one would expect her to contribute right away while Strop, like Dietel, might need a year to get her bearings. This might be Brookings, SD, but it's still D1.

Finally, there's the 5-11 Clarin. She's a 4 in high school and her main claim to fame is her leaping ability. She hasn't been asked to show anything away from the hoop, and so she hasn't. So, as a 4, she seems a bit undersized compared to the girls who have come to Brookings ahead of her. We'll see.

And we'll see if Johnston and his Jacks can keep the momentum going without Boever and Ketty Cornemann, 2 of SDSU's 10-point-plus scorers last year. But the Jacks look good at the guard spots with starters Macie Michelson of Marshall, MN, and Kristin Rotert, and sometime starter Jill Young all returning. Michelson was last year's assist leader with 4 per game to go with 9 points, while Rotert was the #2 scorer at 12.6 ppg. Young started 14 games, scored 8 points per game and was the #2 3-point shooter after Rotert.

Then, up front they've got the aforementioned Minnesotans plus 5-11 senior Jennifer Schuttloffel and 6-2 soph Katie Lingle. If the Jacks go with a 3-guard set, as seems likely, then Sunnarborg and Dietel are next in line in terms of experience, Lingle is next in terms of size, but Waytashek may be next in terms of pure talent.

But it will be the guards who make the Jacks go, or not. Michelson will continue to handle the ball, Rotert and Young will step up the scoring and effectively replace all of the points and more of the departed Boever and Cornemann. The question then is who will replace Rotert's own scoring, and that will have to be Sunnarborg or Dietel or Waytashek.

In summary, the prospects are for something less ambitious than 2009's 32-2 record but equal to or better than last year's 23-11. In order to do that and return to the NCAA tournament,the Jacks' Minnesota forward are going to have to be part of the solution. And considering the number and percentage of scholarships that are going to the breed (Minnesota 4s), they're going to have to be a big part of the Jacks' continuing success for at least the next 5 years.