The future is bright

[XU-PA]

For xavier yes, but more than that.

I see this game as a sign that things are changing in the womens game. perhaps it's wishful thinking but I think that a lot of people not normally fans of the womens game could walk away from the two games tonight and be able to see what it's all about.
it's not the mens game, its different, but what I saw in 2 games tonight was 4 teams of very talented athletes performing at their peak, leaving everything they had on the court, and doing it for not much more than the right to say "we won". That's what the game is all about, I hope that many more people can see that in these musketeers, and continue to follow them for the years to come.

[cinskyline]

I agree, pa, however, I think some changes need to be made to women's basketball to make it more competitive. There's simply too much talent stockpiled at places like UCONN and Tennessee. Top talent goes there and then never gets off the bench. It's ridiculous. I'd cut the number of scholarships from 15 to 12 because of that. It will make all of women's basketball more competitive.

[Titanxman04]

I agree, pa, however, I think some changes need to be made to women's basketball to make it more competitive. There's simply too much talent stockpiled at places like UCONN and Tennessee. Top talent goes there and then never gets off the bench. It's ridiculous. I'd cut the number of scholarships from 15 to 12 because of that. It will make all of women's basketball more competitive.

While at schools with only basketball, that wouldn't be too much of an issue. But Title IX is really going to kick in with schools with football teams. Can't cut scholarships out of women's programs when there's a football team bringing in 70 some odd scholarship athletes. Just no way.

Unless you cut down men's scholarships too, but still, it's not going to happen. You have a +/-5% ratio of men/female student athletes given scholarships to the men/women students at a school (hope that makes sense there). You can't deduct scholarships from women's programs without taking away elsewhere on the men's side.

Again, with non-football schools like X, that wouldn't hurt so much. But most football schools are probably in violation right now anyways, and to further do that, would bring up penalties from the NCAA. Plus, why would UT and UConn do that to themselves? They make money nad actually have women's basketball as a REVENUE sport. They are probably one of two programs that can claim that, Stanford possibly being another.

It'd be nice if there was more parody in women's hoops, but that won't happen until we have more tournaments that have more games like this. In 15 years (conservatively), I can absolutely see a lot more parody that resembles more of the men's game. But that's all based on the growth of the sport, publicity it receives, and the product they put out. If more games lake last night occur, then it's well on it's way. If not? Well, we could be waiting longer.

[XU-PA]

I agree that the talent stockpile is frustrating. Watching UConn play in this tourney has been mind boggling. Not only are their starters whipping the crap out of every opponent, those starters have gone to the bench very very early for a tourney game, the subs are also whipping the crap out of opponents. The Huskie starters average LESS than 19 minutes in the 54 point win over Temple, Moore 16 minutes, Charles only 17!

BUT,,, us old folks can remember the UCLA run, they were the same as UConn now, stacked, getting all the attention, but once they lost the game really took off, a new competitive fire developed quickly and teams started bursting onto the scene.
Right now every girl picking up a basketball dreams of being Turasi, or Moore, or Lobo, or Charles, the women's game is just behind in time. This season has shown that some of those other schools are starting to emerge, and emerge big not just on a cinderella name tag. Like Xavier, the Zags, the big 12 teams (not just Oklahoma and the Paris twins), I'm excited about it. As more and more girls dive into higher competiton levels of AAU in high school, they will improve and start to compete for scholarship slots at the "other" schools. So many less high profile schools are recruiting on a regional basis, where the players all come in from a 100 mile or so radiu around the campus. I'ts a matter of time before schools start to see a boost in the womens sport as a potential boost to admissions like I think XU is. Did you know Xavier has something like 9000 applications for 1000 freshman spots for next year? It's not all boys flooding in!

I also saw more womens college hoop this year on TV than I ever imagined I would, bug schools like Duke and UConn got the ESPN and big network berths, but the rest of the teams even way down the line to WCC and WAC even MAC teams got the smaller regional sat channels like Fox Sports, STO and many many others. It's really exciting to see growth like this and I hope for bigger and better things to come. How about Fox Ohio catching the bug and putting up a third or a half of XU's games next year????

[Titanxman04]

I agree that the talent stockpile is frustrating. Watching UConn play in this tourney has been mind boggling. Not only are their starters whipping the crap out of every opponent, those starters have gone to the bench very very early for a tourney game, the subs are also whipping the crap out of opponents. The Huskie starters average LESS than 19 minutes in the 54 point win over Temple, Moore 16 minutes, Charles only 17!

BUT,,, us old folks can remember the UCLA run, they were the same as UConn now, stacked, getting all the attention, but once they lost the game really took off, a new competitive fire developed quickly and teams started bursting onto the scene.
Right now every girl picking up a basketball dreams of being Turasi, or Moore, or Lobo, or Charles, the women's game is just behind in time. This season has shown that some of those other schools are starting to emerge, and emerge big not just on a cinderella name tag. Like Xavier, the Zags, the big 12 teams (not just Oklahoma and the Paris twins), I'm excited about it. As more and more girls dive into higher competiton levels of AAU in high school, they will improve and start to compete for scholarship slots at the "other" schools. So many less high profile schools are recruiting on a regional basis, where the players all come in from a 100 mile or so radiu around the campus. I'ts a matter of time before schools start to see a boost in the womens sport as a potential boost to admissions like I think XU is. Did you know Xavier has something like 9000 applications for 1000 freshman spots for next year? It's not all boys flooding in!

I also saw more womens college hoop this year on TV than I ever imagined I would, bug schools like Duke and UConn got the ESPN and big network berths, but the rest of the teams even way down the line to WCC and WAC even MAC teams got the smaller regional sat channels like Fox Sports, STO and many many others. It's really exciting to see growth like this and I hope for bigger and better things to come. How about Fox Ohio catching the bug and putting up a third or a half of XU's games next year????

I agree here, but I also think a lot of that has to do with ESPN trying to hype up the sport (NOTHING wrong with that). They invested in the women's tournament, so naturally, they are putting further investments into it to make sure that there is as much interest as possible. I think it's hard to place interest in a sport thats so heavily dominated by one team right now, but ESPN is working their tails off to do so.

It's a step in the right direction, and keep in mind, the NCAA didn't adopt women's championships until 81 or 82, meaning that the men's tournament has a 25+ year head start on it. I think it's really about 15 years before we start seeing a women's tournament that just takes off and that while not challenging the men's tourny for ratings, certainly holds its own overall.

[X-band '01]

If gals want to spend their college career on scholarship riding the bench, that's up to them as far as I'm concerned. It's not UConn's fault that their competition hasn't been able to put up a fight against them so far.

If anything, it makes you appreciate the X-Stanford effort even more. I'd be very surprised if two teams not named UConn and Stanford meet for the championship.

[SixFig]

As someone else said earlier...the 3 best teams in womens hoops were Xavier, Stanford and UConn. Too bad two of them had to eliminate one.

[xu_fan]

As someone else said earlier...the 3 best teams in womens hoops were Xavier, Stanford and UConn. Too bad two of them had to eliminate one.


Couldn't agree more. Xavier was def the 3rd best team in the country at worst. Possibly #2 stupid layups.