116-55, 119-30: The Women's NCAA Hoop Thread

Lose Remerswaal

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Those are the first two 1/16 games of the women's tournament. I watched a bit of the UConn game because history, and a family member went to Albany, otherwise I rarely watch women's hoops.

But I can't figure out if it's a good thing that we have games like this (Auriemma left his starters in for well over half the game, the Baylor coach didn't). Are the teams on the down side of these blowouts "happy to be there"? Or should they dial back the number of teams in the women's tourney (or do something else?) to avoid outcomes like this?
 

dbn

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Feb 10, 2007
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I'm looking at the bracket right now.
Here are the scores of the 1v16 games:

UConn 116, Albany 55
Notre Dame 79, Robert Morris 49
Baylor 119, Texas Southern 30
South Carolina 90, UNC Asheville 40

All massive blowouts. Here are the 2v15 games:

Duke 94, Hampton 31
Mississippi St. 110, Troy 69
Stanford 72, New Mexico St. 64
Oregon St. 56, Long Beach St. 55

Two blowouts, a seemingly competitive game, and a nail-biter. Here are the 3v14s:

Maryland 103, Bucknell 61
Washington 91, Montana St. 63
Texas 78, Central Ark. 50
Florida St. 87, Western Illinois 66

Three blowouts and a seemingly solid win. 4v13s:

UCLA 83, Boise St. 56
Louisville 82, Chattanooga 62
Kentucky 73, Belmont 70
Miami 62, FGCU 60

Two blowouts, two close games. 5v12s:

Texas A&M 63, Penn 61
Tennessee 66, Dayton 57
Ohio St. 70, Western Ky. 63
Marquette 65, Quinnipiac 68

All close games with one upset.

All 6 seeds won.

One 7 seed lost (by 1 point).

It seems they could go as drastic as cutting the field in half with the price of a few great early games/upsets being perhaps worth being spared the awful blowouts. Probably a better solution would be to have a 52-team field and give the 1-3 seeds (12 teams total) a bye. The 20 first-round winners plus the 12 bye teams give you 32 second-round teams.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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IIRC it wasn't that long ago in the mens game that it was common to see those kind of blowouts in the first round. Obviously the development and depth of talent is different in the women's game; but I think as the game continues to grow globally the amount of talent may become better distributed and level things off a bit.
 

DJnVa

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Dec 16, 2010
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IIRC it wasn't that long ago in the mens game that it was common to see those kind of blowouts in the first round. Obviously the development and depth of talent is different in the women's game; but I think as the game continues to grow globally the amount of talent may become better distributed and level things off a bit.
I mean, maybe--but doesn't UCONN seem even more removed from the other teams now than in years past?
 

jon abbey

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The best women usually stay in school three or four years, not one, right? That is probably a good chunk of the difference right there.

UConn amazingly had the top three picks in the WNBA this year, and still are undefeated and number 1 again.
 

Ale Xander

Hamilton
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Oct 31, 2013
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Make it a 24 team tourney with byes for top 8.

Or take away scholarships and suspend the best Uconn player for being too good like the team 70 miles away

Or both
 

Kliq

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I mean, maybe--but doesn't UCONN seem even more removed from the other teams now than in years past?
Certainly, but I don't know if that is indicative of a growing depth of talent. I'll preface this by saying that I don't know/pay attention very much to the women's game, but it seems to me that while UCONN manages to assemble the deepest team every year, but that seems more circumstantial to me. Often times the best player in the country plays for another school, and while UCONN has had players like Dianna Tarausi, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart, over the years there have been some top players playing at all different schools (Brittany Griner at Baylor, Kelsey Plum at Washington, Seimone Augustas at LSU, Lindsay Harding at Duke, Skyler Diggins at Notre Dame, Ellena Della Donne at Delaware, Candace Parker at Tennessee, etc.) Eventually, maybe when Geno retires you would see that UCONN system broken up and the players that make up that great depth will be more evenly dispersed.

However, that is a micro issue. The larger problem is that there seems to be an enormous gap between the top 20 or so teams and everyone else. Part of the reason I think is that the NCAA has way too many teams in D-1. With over 350 teams and two dozen conferences, you are going to have big gaps in quality, even if you are pinning the conference champion of one small conference against the seventh best team in a Power 5 conference. There is always going to be a gap because there is never going to be that much talent available, but the men's game has closed the gap between the mid-majors and the power conferences for a couple different reasons.

1. The three pointer has become a great equalizer. A less-talented team can stay close with a giant if they have a couple players get hot and make up for a gap in size and athleticism. This I suppose could take place in the women's game, although I don't know if they shoot three pointers at the right percentages to make as much of a difference as it does in the men's game.

2. International players, at all schools, has increased the amount of talent available. Guys like Ben Simmons, Domantis Sabonis and Lauri Markakenn have come over to play college ball and been top players. Even the small schools in the tournament sometimes have international players, and programs like Gonzaga and St. Mary's have become national power teams because of their commitment to recruiting outside the US. The women's game is still developing overseas, and while Title IX and everything has been great at developing female athletes in the US, only a handful of other countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, etc.) have really matched their commitment to female athletes. For instance, the Baltic countries love basketball, but to my knowledge women's college basketball isn't being flooded with Serbian and Croatian players.

3. Perhaps the biggest reason is that to my knowledge, there are not many if any at all, one-and-done women's players. Part of the reason the Men's tournament has been so competitive is that the traditional powerful programs rely on one-and-done players so much that they can struggle in the tournament against less-heralded programs because they often have veteran players (see Duke vs SC last night). I suppose if you look at the recruiting quality of UCONN's women and compared it to Kentucky's men, they probably look kind of similar, but Kentucky hasn't dominated college basketball because they are almost always starting 3-4 freshmen while UCONN has all those great players for the duration of their college careers.
 

canderson

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Jul 16, 2005
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A few things.

Over the past 11 years, 15 iirc different teams have been in the Final Four. UConn has appeared in nine of them, Stanford six, Notre Dame five.

Women get two more scholarships than men (13 v 15).

I went to SFA, which was one of the most dominant women's program for decades (until the rise of modern day Tennessee/UConn). SFA, La Tech, Old Dominion and James Madison sorta ruled, then Tennessee, Texas and Stanford really came along, then the others.

The issue is imo player development. More scholarships for far fewer players allows hoarding at the top. The high school game isn't producing enough talent to stock all the scholarships so you get a lot of teams with zero depth.
 

jon abbey

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#10 seed Oregon is up big on #2 seed Duke right now, 59-44 with 8 minutes left.
 

DJnVa

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I went to SFA, which was one of the most dominant women's program for decades (until the rise of modern day Tennessee/UConn). SFA, La Tech, Old Dominion and James Madison sorta ruled, then Tennessee, Texas and Stanford really came along, then the others.
I went to Old Dominion and after the teams of Lieberman and Donovan, we were again dominant in the lates 90s, early 2000s, but we were led by foreign players--Ticha Penicheiro, Clarisse Machanguana, Mery Andrade, etc. I've seen us defeat Tennessee, UConn, and Stanford and win something like 50+ straight conference games, many by scores similar to what you see now 95-37, etc.

But now, with the foreign recruiting dried up, we finish 19-12 in CUSA and hope for an NIT bid. We sign supposed 3 and even a 4 star recruits, who get on campus and clearly were given 2 or 3 too many stars. Many women's programs can't recruit like the men, then money isn't there. They trust ranking systems which are unreliable (to a point) in the men's game--there's no way that the women's high school rankings survive much past the top 20 or so players.
 

mattquinley

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Feb 23, 2004
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...it seems to me that while UCONN manages to assemble the deepest team every year, but that seems more circumstantial to me. Often times the best player in the country plays for another school, and while UCONN has had players like Dianna Tarausi, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart, over the years there have been some top players playing at all different schools (Brittany Griner at Baylor, Kelsey Plum at Washington, Seimone Augustas at LSU, Lindsay Harding at Duke, Skyler Diggins at Notre Dame, Ellena Della Donne at Delaware, Candace Parker at Tennessee, etc.) Eventually, maybe when Geno retires you would see that UCONN system broken up and the players that make up that great depth will be more evenly dispersed.
UConn over the last few years has been able to assemble the BEST team in the country, but certainly not the deepest. That's their biggest weakness this year, they only play 6-7 players for meaningful minutes and if the wrong 1-2 kids get in foul trouble early, they're vulnerable. Several teams this year were/are better on paper - South Carolina, Baylor & Notre Dame in particular - but somehow CT managed to beat all 3 of them in the regular season.

However, that is a micro issue. The larger problem is that there seems to be an enormous gap between the top 20 or so teams and everyone else. Part of the reason I think is that the NCAA has way too many teams in D-1. With over 350 teams and two dozen conferences, you are going to have big gaps in quality, even if you are pinning the conference champion of one small conference against the seventh best team in a Power 5 conference. There is always going to be a gap because there is never going to be that much talent available, but the men's game has closed the gap between the mid-majors and the power conferences for a couple different reasons.

1. The three pointer has become a great equalizer. A less-talented team can stay close with a giant if they have a couple players get hot and make up for a gap in size and athleticism. This I suppose could take place in the women's game, although I don't know if they shoot three pointers at the right percentages to make as much of a difference as it does in the men's game.

2. International players, at all schools, has increased the amount of talent available. Guys like Ben Simmons, Domantis Sabonis and Lauri Markakenn have come over to play college ball and been top players. Even the small schools in the tournament sometimes have international players, and programs like Gonzaga and St. Mary's have become national power teams because of their commitment to recruiting outside the US. The women's game is still developing overseas, and while Title IX and everything has been great at developing female athletes in the US, only a handful of other countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, etc.) have really matched their commitment to female athletes. For instance, the Baltic countries love basketball, but to my knowledge women's college basketball isn't being flooded with Serbian and Croatian players.

3. Perhaps the biggest reason is that to my knowledge, there are not many if any at all, one-and-done women's players. Part of the reason the Men's tournament has been so competitive is that the traditional powerful programs rely on one-and-done players so much that they can struggle in the tournament against less-heralded programs because they often have veteran players (see Duke vs SC last night). I suppose if you look at the recruiting quality of UCONN's women and compared it to Kentucky's men, they probably look kind of similar, but Kentucky hasn't dominated college basketball because they are almost always starting 3-4 freshmen while UCONN has all those great players for the duration of their college careers.
Absolutely true regarding the gap, and you could also make a case that there's a big gulf between the top 10 and the rest of the T25. However - the women's game is absolutely seeing the same effects from the 3-point shot and international players. Quinnipiac upset Miami largely on the strength of hot 3-point shooting, and there are several schools in the top 25 that have built their programs around international players. The women's game is much more popular abroad than here; many of the top players out of college go play in Europe for far more money than they can earn in the WNBA (Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner both play for a Russian club). That exposure should help build the international talent pool and allow more NCAA teams to become competitive.

I'm not sure I agree that the 4-year stint of most women's players fuels domination at the top. If anything, the right coach with support from administration & fans can use that to his/her advantage to grow a program by developing recruits over that 4 year period and showcasing the results. That's how Geno & Chirs Dailey built the UConn program, and several other schools are on similar paths now. Hopefully in a few years we'll see some real, consistent competition at the top, much like the UConn/Tennessee matchups used to be when Pat Summitt was in her prime.
 

InstaFace

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Sep 27, 2016
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So if UConn and Stanford win tonight, the Samuelson sisters face each other for the national title. That's pretty cool, kinda bringing to life a universal scenario imagined by 8-year-olds playing in their driveways. Plus unlike, say, the McCourty twins, they'd end up directly guarding each other.