Women's Final Four

Monty'sBiggestFan

Monty'sBiggestFan

Starter
Is anybody interested in getting together on Sunday for the two games? We could try to get a television @ the Riverside Clubhouse, Pyramid, Players or Hangar 17 or something. Anybody game?
 
Monty'sBiggestFan said:
Is anybody interested in getting together on Sunday for the two games? We could try to get a television @ the Riverside Clubhouse, Pyramid, Players or Hangar 17 or something. Anybody game?
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I'm in depending on time. I should be able to work it out.
 
WOMEN’S FINAL FOUR April 2 and 4

Boston (TD Banknorth Garden) National Semifinal No. 1 - 7 p.m. Eastern time [ESPNHD] National Semifinal No. 2 - Approx. 9:30 p.m. [ESPNHD] National Championship - 8:30 p.m. [ESPNHD]
 
Where you all meeting? I'll try & swing by if the rain slows...almost 17 days of rain this month already! '' I'm pulling for LSU & North Carolina...should be some great games!
 
I'd love to go this Sunday, but I can't. My parents from the Bay Area are coming up to visit me and will be in town for the next several days after that, and I need to spend time with them. Sorry, but family comes first.

When the season first started, my early-season prediction on who would win it all is Duke University, and I'm sticking by them. At the time, I never figured that the UNC Lady Tar Heels would be having the sensational season that they're having right now. But it would be interesting to see both of them in the championship game: a battle between two North Carolina powerhouse programs, and involving two schools who already have a long intense rivalry between one another (usually in the men's b-ball teams).

But I wouldn't mind it if LSU wins the championship. At least it's something that the late Sue Gunter would've loved to have seen! :)
 
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So, anyone want to pick a place? Sounds like 1st game starts at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Clocks leap forward tonight!
 
Monty'sBiggestFan said:
Does Players out in Rancho/Citrus Heights work for everyone? Seems like we've had good luck with that place.
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I can get there. Good food....nice atmosphere...I am down with it.:D
 
Carole said:
Any address info? I can look on Mapquest
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Carole, it is on Sunrise @FairOaks Blvd (actually just before Fair Oaks Blvd). If you were coming from Hwy 50, it would be on your right hand side just after the river and the underpass. I will look up the address.


Edit: Okay, it is 4060 Sunrise Blvd in Fair Oaks.
 
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Read this on another Board

I Picked this up off another Board. Want to get peoples thoughts. Of course I will share mine.

Sorry, this article is long, but if I posted the link you'd have to be registered w/ Washingtonpost.com to read it.

NCAA Leadership Isn't Matching the Talent of Its Players
By Sally Jenkins
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page E10
BOSTON
Get the biddies out of women's basketball. The game has come too far, too fast, to be held back now by a bunch of blue hairs. Yet as the Final Four gets underway, the unfortunate fact is that the players running the floor are light years ahead of the archaic people who are running the sport.
Anyone who has watched the NCAA women's tournament cannot have failed to notice the fabulous escalation of talent, from North Carolina's Ivory Latta sinking NBA-range threes to Tennessee's Candace Parker dunking. But you also can't fail to notice how poorly administered the game is, too, from ludicrously uneven officiating, to a selection committee that annually botches the brackets, to the NCAA harridan who screamed at LeBron James when he tried say hello to Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer in Cleveland last week.
"You need to get off the court, now!" she shrieked at James, who was accompanied by teammates Eric Snow and Damon Jones. He should have yelled back at her, "You need to get out of the game!" Anyone who thinks it's a bad thing for LeBron James to be interested in the women's game should be coaching field hockey at a finishing school. In 1963.
The top women's coaches are so frustrated with the slow pace of progress that they held a meeting Friday night at a Boston hotel to air their complaints, and kick around solutions. North Carolina's Sylvia Hatchell is so concerned about upgrading the sport, she says: "I could talk for two hours. A lot of people are concerned about improving the level of officiating. Others are upset about the brackets. It's just a lot of things. The game has improved so quick, and it's such a good game, but we need to look at some things around the game."
The first thing the NCAA needs to do is hire an entirely new set of officials. The same amateurish, slow-footed crews show up every year and make the same incoherent calls. They allow post players to maul each other at one end of the floor, and then whistle a hand-check on the other end. In the region final between Tennessee and Carolina, the crew couldn't even keep track of the possession arrow on jump balls. Hatchell found herself imploring the refs, "Please don't penalize us for our athleticism."
The second thing the NCAA needs to do is fire the entire women's tournament selection committee and start fresh. For far too long the committee has been dominated by aging gym teachers and administrative hacks whose qualifications are questionable at best, and who seem more concerned with status than fairness.
One source of anger among coaches, for instance, is a report that the committee was more interested in holding down travel costs than it was with making balanced region brackets. As long as cost trumps fair play, the women's game will fight for legitimacy, coaches say.
"There's still so much that hinges on the dollar and the bottom line," says Oklahoma's Sherri Coale. "Coaches feel that if you grow and legitimize the sport, the other [money] will follow. . . . But some things are hard to change."
Until the more calcified members of the committee are shown the door, real change may be impossible. Good luck in prying them out of their seats. A major problem coaches have with the committee is that no one is sure how the members got their places on it. The process is secretive, and, one suspects, highly politicized too. "It's a mystery to us," Coale says.
A quick look at the committee makeup provokes the question, who are these people? The committee chair is American University Athletic Director Joni Comstock -- a former volleyball coach. Then there is Duke associate athletic director Jaclyn Silar -- a former field hockey coach. Other members include Cindy Hartmann, an associate athletic director from the University of Dayton; Tina Cheatham, an associate commissioner of the Southland Conference; and Sandra Booker, an assistant athletic director for academics from Bethune-Cookman.
Compare that with the makeup of the men's NCAA committee. "Look at the difference in backgrounds and responsibilities," says Coale, "and you see some subtleties."
Actually, what you see is a laughable difference in quality. The men's committee is populated entirely by top-tier athletic directors and commissioners, all of them with deep basketball knowledge and business experience. Such as: Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage, who was both a player and head coach at Penn; Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference; Princeton Athletic Director Gary Walters, who played in a Final Four as a point guard.
Above all, coaches want more accountability and openness from the committee, as opposed to the current closed-door process, which they suspect is highly prone to back-scratching, vote-swapping and individual agendas.
"Things have to be on the up and up," Stanford's Tara VanDerveer said. "You have secret ballots and no accountability. It's just, 'Here it is, and it's a done deal.' "
VanDerveer says there have been occasions when her players were so baffled by the committee's actions that they turned to her and said: "Coach, they made a mistake. Do you think they'll fix it?"
VanDerveer just laughs ruefully. "Uh, no," she replies.
The good news is that the blue-haired bureaucrats haven't prevented the players from expanding their games. With every Final Four, the quality of play continues to improve exponentially. Women are getting off the floor and up around the rim. Now it's time to find some officials and administrators who want to go there with them.
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Any thought on this sentiment? I for one find TARA Vanderveer's statements astounding. One of the reasons that I have lost so much respect for her is that in the mid to late 90's this very thing benefited Stanford. She took inferior teams to the Final Fours because she was placed in less competitive brackets and she played either at Stanford or very near Stanford. So now it needs to be fixed.

Well yeah it does actually need to be fixed. Personally I think NCAA needs to take a small step back. They are trying to follow the Men's Blue print in terms of doing the regional thing. And that is great because a neutral site tends to level the playing field. But I think they need to do so diligence in picking the regional locations.

The last 2 final fours looked pee poor as far as attendance was concerned. At least from the crowds in the stands. Regional this year looked equally empty. Now maybe that was a result of poor bracket Seeding. More likely it was. City site selection could be an issue to. They need to go to places that turn out WBB Crowds, or maybe the (W)NCAA needs to require that the host cities do a 3 month media campaign to ensure butts in da seat.

As far is Officials are concerned, they have the same issues. Same ole officials. Despite the argument that they are looking for officials, officiating is a hard thing to break into. Good officials are hard to come by. And good officiating teams are even harder to come by. That is where the inconsistency comes from. One strong official who lets the post players play, and one weak one that calls touch fouls. No happy mediums. And Officials at that level get paid decent money. So they are hogging all of the higher paying gigs. It is like Civil Service Reform. Good luck at it.

There needs to be a concerted effort at the development of the Womens game as a whole. The players have developed. The coaching has caught up and they have opened that door, to some degree. It is still an "ole Boys network" but it is catching up.

Maybe an Officiating academy, someplace Higher level can attend for a year before qualifying for The NCAA and the WNBA. Because the poor officiating had definitely spilled over into the W. If there is poor officials in the NCAA to W pool can't be that big.

Just throwing some things out there, what are some other Ideas?
 
I don't really agree about the nature of the handout that Stanford received to get to the Final Four, there wasn't enough parity back then (still isn't today either, but at least it's getting better) for her not to be able to walk a relatively decent team to the Final Four. It's the same hand holding that LA Tech, Tennessee and UConn get or got. I still do not understand why UConn can't play a first or second rounder or semi-final and final outside of Connecticut. (assuming that it's bracket allows it to get to a regional) and why New Mexico always seems to have a chance to play at some point on its home floor.

I'm a fan of neutral floors across the board, there's been the counter argument that the women's game is not quite there yet. I don't care, it's baby steps towards building to where it can sustain itself like the men's tourney has grown. And the sites HAVE to sell tickets or at least pony up enough money to grow the tournament if they can't get butts in the seats.

The selection committee was ridiculous this year and their justifications for why that Cleveland bracket was so unbalanced compared to the other regions was laughable. The studio team at ESPN rightly pointed out that they stuck UNC in Cleveland over the difference of 50 someodd miles between that region and Bridgeport. The officiating, yeah, until somebody actually gets serious about correcting it I'm done complaining about how obviously bad it is. It's like arguing the sky is blue.
 
Perhaps...

Monty'sBiggestFan said:
I don't really agree about the nature of the handout that Stanford received to get to the Final Four, there wasn't enough parity back then (still isn't today either, but at least it's getting better) for her not to be able to walk a relatively decent team to the Final Four. It's the same hand holding that LA Tech, Tennessee and UConn get or got. I still do not understand why UConn can't play a first or second rounder or semi-final and final outside of Connecticut. (assuming that it's bracket allows it to get to a regional) and why New Mexico always seems to have a chance to play at some point on its home floor.
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Good point... I just think that it is a little pretentious of her. But I am not a big Tara fan as you know. My only arguements with the UConn comparisions are at the time Tennessee and UConn were the best teams around and earned their seeding. Where as Standord wasn't even in the top 5 and they were getting regional preference.

Let's not belabor that.

What happened to LSU??? I thought it was unfair for them to say that Augustus had a bad game. Good Lord She had 2, 3, sometimes 4 people guarding her. What the Hell happened to LSU's mid range shooter? Duke played solid post defense but Mother of Goodness.

I am pulling for Maryland. There was just something about them that I liked. Maybe it is their coach getting in the officials faces. Got to love when you coach is a fighter. Still fond of Larkin and Latta.

BTW Class Move by Larkin going over and shaking the coaches hands when she fouled out. I like her. She was outstanding. I think UNC needs a little more depth. But Big Ups to Maryland.

 
Dunno what happened to LSU or UNC. UNC I could sorta understand because only Larkins was able to find the basket, but shoot, LSU???

Gotta agree, I have NEVER seen anybody fly into a ref's face that quickly as Friese flew into Melissa Barlow's face except in a baseball game and usually that gets a manager tossed on the spot. That was classic. I actually thought the refs might have gotten the call right but still...that was classic.
 
For sure, I thought she'd get T'eed UP! I like her fire...& her team flat out hustled all game. I was dissapointed Augustas did'nt bring her A game...was it good defense or her teammates inability to get her the ball? Must be hard on her as well, being it was her last college game.
Many props to Duke & Maryland...don't have a favorite...but I'll go with the underdog....Maryland. I just hope it's not a blowout.
 
Beautiful game to watch...and the Drama was there!
I really had fun watching that game...just luv that coach & her FIRE!
She didn't have no problems getting after her players , on national TV.
They responded like CHAMPS...CONGRATS to Maryland!!
 
Congratulations to the Terrapins....I haven't watched the game yet but have seen all the important highlights....I think I share Kara's comments..."wow"...

Amazing what happens when you believe huh?

And you know...seeing the blowing conffetti and a bunch of happy women donning hats and t-shirts and people hugging anybody and everybody they can get their arms around brought back fond memories.... :)
 
That 3 point shot by Tolliver to send the game to O.T was classic.
Talk about memories...can you say POWELL for 3!!!

Anybody know what time the draft is this morning? Is it ESPN 2?
I'm off today & very excited!
 
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