UConn Dominance

[Sweetest OU Girl]

As I'm sure we all know there has been quite bit of talk about UConn's WBB team and whether their total dominance is good or bad for the game.

What is your opinion. Please don't just say something like "It means everyone else needs to get better". That is a copout to the question. It has NOT happened in years and years. So it is not wise to believe that the answer is that a bunch of teams are going to get as good as UConn. It is NOT going to happen. Instead list some reasons you can think of for supporting each side of the discussion. You do not necessarily have to actually believe each point you make, but various ideas might help all of us think more clearly about the issue.

Is there actually anything that is positive for the game in general? Something that has actually proven to help lots of other teams simply because no one can beat UConn - or at least could not win more than maybe once in 10( 1000?)tries?

If not, has their dominance actually hurt anyone? Is it a positive that when the year starts everyone knows (or is pretty certain) they have no chance to defeat them or to be the champion?

Part of my thinking on this is how lopsided virtually all the games in the tournament have been on the women's side. The men's side is so different. You go into those games wondering how things will play out. On the women's side? Not so much.

 

[BigTime]

I've weighed in before with my opinion, but, I'll do it again since this thread brings good context to this topic.

WBB needs to reduce their scholarship count to 13 (I'd like to see 12) per team. IF the NCAA would do this then you would see a lot more competitive teams and you would see less tranfers.

Look at it from just the standpoint of Oklahoma. What if OU and OSU only could have 12 scholarship players. Take three OU or OSU level players and give them to TU and ORU. Do you think TU and ORU would be significantly better with three players that were good enough to get 'ships at OU and OSU? Absolutely. Now take 3 off of both TU and ORU and give them to OBU and UCO (D2 schools) and keep going down the line until you get to Rhema Bible college and Hilldale baptist

UCONN does not need 15 scholarship athletes to field a basketball team. Even with injuries, illness and misconduct there is no reason to have that many.

Take my trickle down model and apply it to just the 300 something D1 programs and you can see how that would bring everyone else up and make the sport much more competitive.

In this case, Title XI (the whole reason there ARE 15 schollys) is actually hurting the quality of this sport and causing people not to watch because it is boring and predictable to see the same 5 teams dominate every year. Ironic but sad and true.

Fix the scholly situation and you will see a better WBB product.

:OUbball-logo:

 

[MsProudSooner]

No, a bunch of teams won't get as good as UConn. What will happen, eventually, is what we have seen at Tennessee since Pat Summit retired. UConn will slip a little bit, for whatever reason, and some other teams will catch up as a result.

Perhaps a new young coach will catch the recruits eye and that team will become the next big thing. People insinuated that might be South Carolina but they slipped up badly in this years tournament.

I don't know if UConn's dominance is bad for women's basketball or not. I tend to think it's only bad for those who only turn in to be entertained and give it no thought after that.

On the good side, they play a beautiful style of basketball and I enjoy watching them.

I can think of worse things than UConn being dominant. At least it's not a team that plays like Texas A&M used to play.

We have a Final Four with new faces and upsets of #1 seeds. It wasn't so long ago that the #1 seeds were a shoe in for the Final Four.

Time marches on and UConn won't be the dominant team forever.

 

[MsProudSooner]

Fix the scholly situation and you will see a better WBB product.

:OUbball-logo:

That might make a big difference but the first time several teams were bit badly by the ACL bug and could barely field a team, people would scream for the scholarship limit go to back up.

 

[sybarite]

1966 Texas Western
1974 North Carolina State

What is special about those teams, other than that one was the first basically all-African- American team to win, and the other had one starter 22 inches taller than another?

Every other national championship from 1964 through 1975 was won by UCLA.

Did that destroy the game? Was that bad for the game? We saw different styles win, from teams that were dominated by a post to teams that essentially had no post. We saw records for consecutive victories. Yet, all we really learned was that we needed to work harder to beat John Wooden. We saw men's basketball dominated by one team, and it wasn't because the men's game was relatively new and undeveloped. We saw someone who won because he worked on fundamentals far more than other men's teams did. Eventually, that coach became a fan of ----women's basketball.

Some fans remember only that he had the top players in the country on one team. Well, he admitted that was his least favorite team to coach. He won two titles before he began to recruit superstars, and he had teams that were too short to compete. But, I have never seen any team that could run and hits layups that were fired from six feet to the right or left of the backboard, and never miss. Fundamentals.

 

[BigTime]

That might make a big difference but the first time several teams were bit badly by the ACL bug and could barely field a team, people would scream for the scholarship limit go to back up.

Better have some of Norm's good recruited walk-ons then!

 

[inoref]

I don't think it's bad, shows other coaches how its done. If its bad then other teams should get better.

 

[sybarite]

Don't we have a #7 and a #4 seed in the Final Four? Wasn't that #7 seed only about fifth in the conference? Wasn't that #4 seed about third or fourth in the conference? We had a team in the Sweet Sixteen that was eighth in their conference.

 

[BigTime]

You saw very similar situations in football before they put the scholarship cap in place. Fix the scholarships and you will fix the sport.

 

[sybarite]

You saw very similar situations in football before they put the scholarship cap in place. Fix the scholarships and you will fix the sport.

I tend to agree with you most of the time. But, I think it has been dominated more by a few programs after the advent of scholarship limitations. The title shifted from the Ivy schools in the thirties, and we saw all kinds of schools win from all over.

Now, we have had two coaches win eight of the last thirteen championships, and USC, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Nebraska are the only schools outside the southeast to win a title in twenty-five years.

 

[Oliver Hardy]

I think it's bad for WBB only at tournament time. You cannot exclude what winning means when you try to discuss this. Look at what has happened to us since Paris days.

I don't know what Geno has as a coach that created this imbalance, but I would think more coaches would try to emulate it. It's not just getting the cream of the crop, although that's a major part of it.

If the sport is to grow, if it is to regain its footing, then quality of teams and programs must improve and universities have to spend more to make them interesting and competitive come tournament time.




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[bluesooner17]

WBB in my opinion is still the game to watch, because they are the only ones that still play basketball as it was designed to play. Once the dunk happens in every game as it has with the men's game I would suspect the rest of the game will go also. There are a few men's team that actually play a good game, but at this point the women's game is it. With that said I will take Geno's advice and not watch UConn play. One thing Geno should have to answer for and it happened in the Miss St game, but has happen before. Why are the starters still on the floor in the 3rd qtr. when you have a 50 point lead that is why I will not watch UConn.

Reducing scholarships may help some, but I don't believe it will solve the problem. The women's pool to draw from just isn't big enough to support a large amount of teams. you take 3 players from UConn they are still the team to beat unless you can find a coach to convince enough talented players to come play and knock UConn off their pedestal. Dawn Staley is starting to pull talent in to of all places South Carolina. In a couple more years they may challenge UConn.

Tennessee has dropped off big time to once they have been since Pat's retirement so maybe that is what it will take to get UConn down is for Geno to retire, but that is a few years off.

The biggest thing that has to happen is the girl's have to want to play and be gym rats.

 

[SoonerSpock]

You saw very similar situations in football before they put the scholarship cap in place. Fix the scholarships and you will fix the sport.

The problem with reducing scholarship limits WBB is the addressing of scholarship requirements of Title 9. Reducing WBB and other sports by 1,2 or 3 scholarships places more onus on fewer sports to fulfill the scholarship differentials created by football. It is doubtful the federal government/Title 9 would ever approve such reductions in any women's sport.

Such a change might be good for women's basketball but Title 9 does not give a crap about the good of the game. Not their focus.

 

[BigTime]

The problem with reducing scholarship limits WBB is the addressing of scholarship requirements of Title 9. Reducing WBB and other sports by 1,2 or 3 scholarships places more onus on fewer sports to fulfill the scholarship differentials created by football. It is doubtful the federal government/Title 9 would ever approve such reductions in any women's sport.

Such a change might be good for women's basketball but Title 9 does not give a crap about the good of the game. Not their focus.

Well give softball or volleyball or track the extra 'ships!

No, you are totally correct and it is sadly why it will not change.

 

[SoonerinNC]

I think the last #1 recruiting class UConn had was Stewart's class four years ago.

UCLA and Texas have had great recruiting classes but don't get to final fours. Cal always has a good class as does Baylor, and Notre Dame. Notre Dame played well against UConn when they had Diggins who was like kryptomite to the Huskies.

Geno not only demands excellence but also gets the players to demand it of themselves. That is a pretty unique talent. He has four good players coming back in Nurse, Samuelson, Collier and Gabby Williams. But I don't see Chou and Butler being quite what they need to continue to dominate unless he gets them to improve a ton. Butler is big and has some touch on her shots but seems too slow and doesn't handle the ball well. Chou has some skills but seems out of sync with the other players. Their success next year may well depend on their incoming recruits. Samuelson and Collier improved a lot this year.

I can't believe that an outstanding team is bad for any sport. I have watched at least half of UConn's games this year and really enjoyed watching that level of excellence.

 

[sybarite]

I think the last #1 recruiting class UConn had was Stewart's class four years ago.

UCLA and Texas have had great recruiting classes but don't get to final fours. Cal always has a good class as does Baylor, and Notre Dame. Notre Dame played well against UConn when they had Diggins who was like kryptomite to the Huskies.

Geno not only demands excellence but also gets the players to demand it of themselves. That is a pretty unique talent. He has four good players coming back in Nurse, Samuelson, Collier and Gabby Williams. But I don't see Chou and Butler being quite what they need to continue to dominate unless he gets them to improve a ton. Butler is big and has some touch on her shots but seems too slow and doesn't handle the ball well. Chou has some skills but seems out of sync with the other players. Their success next year may well depend on their incoming recruits. Samuelson and Collier improved a lot this year.

I can't believe that an outstanding team is bad for any sport. I have watched at least half of UConn's games this year and really enjoyed watching that level of excellence.

Chou/Baylor. Dangerfield/Conn

 

[giraffespots]

I don't think its bad for WBB. It is actually causing a bit of conversation, which is always good.

But, Geno is kidding himself if he thinks that the general viewing audience wants to watch these beatdowns. I don't. They are boring. If I was a UConn fan, I would absolutely love it. But I'm not, so I don't.

I have a friend who lives in Connecticut who doesn't call himself a UConn fan, per se. However, he would accuse me of being jealous. Which I am only to the point that I wish OU would have that kind of success, however, its not jealousy that makes me NOT want to watch UConn play, ever. It is truly boredom.

But, again, the dominance is always a topic of discussion and that can be good. I think that WBB is simply evolving and we are in that phase similar to the UCLA phase of men's basketball. It will pass. Other teams will rise, we can only hope that OU is one of those teams.

 

[giraffespots]

For awhile there, Stanford was always in the discussion. People talked about them in the same breath as Tenn and UConn. And acted like Stanford has ALWAYS been one of the dominants. Not true because after the 1996 Olympics, Stanford disappeared for a while.

The rotation of dominance since the emergence of UConn was always between Tenn and UConn. Then Notre Dame joined UConn and Tenn-then faded back; then Baylor joined UConn and Tenn-and has faded back.

Now that Tenn has gone through a change in its very core, I believe they are permanently in with the rest of us. And UConn stands alone. Various teams will join the level of UConn for a season or two, but will still be a part of the rest of us.

Soon, UConn will fade...it will be THEN that we see true parity in WBB. We will always have UConn, Stanford, Baylor, Tenn, ND, etc. as "traditional powers", but it won't be the "one team vs. the rest of WBB" anymore.

 

[SoonerinNC]

Meant Chong not Chou. Also Stanford is a very young team. Could be a factor in the future.

 

[womenssports]

For awhile there, Stanford was always in the discussion. People talked about them in the same breath as Tenn and UConn. And acted like Stanford has ALWAYS been one of the dominants. Not true because after the 1996 Olympics, Stanford disappeared for a while.

The rotation of dominance since the emergence of UConn was always between Tenn and UConn. Then Notre Dame joined UConn and Tenn-then faded back; then Baylor joined UConn and Tenn-and has faded back.

Now that Tenn has gone through a change in its very core, I believe they are permanently in with the rest of us. And UConn stands alone. Various teams will join the level of UConn for a season or two, but will still be a part of the rest of us.

Soon, UConn will fade...it will be THEN that we see true parity in WBB. We will always have UConn, Stanford, Baylor, Tenn, ND, etc. as "traditional powers", but it won't be the "one team vs. the rest of WBB" anymore.

I don't believe UConn will fade until Geno leaves. He and his assistant are superior coaches. Yes, he gets top recruits but so do other teams. He capitalizes on his talent. He develops his players. And they are fundamentally sound. Year after year.