First off, let me just get this out of the way. I don’t generally follow women’s basketball. It’s not because I’m sexist either, it’s because I really only have so much time to dedicate to following sports, and I don’t follow any basketball very much. Oh sure, I pay attention to the NCAA tournament, and I have a vague idea of what is happening in the NBA, but basketball just isn’t a sport I’m going to to sit and watch more than a couple of times a year.
That being said, like any good fan of the NCAA tournament, I was paying attention to college basketball in March, and thanks to a couple of programs that I specifically have interest in, I was aware of what was happening in that tourney.
I grew up a Syracuse fan, rooting for guys like Pearl Washington, Derrick Coleman, etc. That rooting interest, of course, included wishing the other sports well also.
My wife works for, and we live just down the road from, Oregon State. Corvallis is Oregon State. This is the quintessential college town. It would barely exist if not for the university being located here.
With both of those programs advancing to the Women’s Final Four, of course I paid some attention, even if that didn’t include watching much of the games. And while I could make some excuses about being on the road and not having an easy time watching the games, the reality is I didn’t watch because there was zero doubt as to what was going to happen. Both schools got creamed by the Huskies. No one doubted that would happen, and sure enough, it did. As I said after they bet Syracuse on Twitter, this is the state of women’s college basketball.
Is it OK to admire the domination of UCONN while also admitting there’s nothing interesting about women’s college BB right now?
— Mike McBride (@MikemacSports) April 6, 2016
So look, all the credit in the world to Connecticut. They’re amazing, but it doesn’t make for a compelling sport right now.
That being said, both Oregon State and Syracuse had historic seasons and they should be celebrated. They both made the Final Four for the first time ever, and are really good basketball teams. They just aren’t UCONN. Maybe for right now the best you can hope for is to know your season went as long as it could, before you had to play the Huskies. That’s success. I fear, however, that as well as those ladies played, and as much history as they made, no one will remember anything from the last 4 years aside from UCONN, and that’s a shame.
Let’s hope someone can build a team that might challenge them eventually and make this more interesting. Right now, it’s not even that they win all the time, it’s that the games aren’t even close. If you want to watch one truly great team, UCONN can give that to you. If you want to see compelling stories and competition, not so much.
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