New champ for women’s basketball
As a racetracker might say, with no pun intended, Mississippi State “bounced” higher than a helium-filled basketball in the NCAA women’s Final Four Sunday night.
Extending that analogy, the Bulldogs finished second in their next start after beating Man o’War.
South Carolina is the 2017 champion of women’s college basketball — Dawn Staley, after all you have done for the sport, take a bow — but the shock waves are still being felt from Mississippi State’s semifinal upset of Connecticut, which had won 111 consecutive games.
UConn, seeking its fifth consecutive NCAA title and record
12th under coach Geno Auriemma, looked as imposing before Friday night’s game in Dallas as the Russian hockey team against the United States in the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
Mississippi State, though a solid team from a power conference (SEC), was making its first Final Four appearance and had bad vibes from its last meeting with Connecticut — a 60-point thumping from the Huskies in the previous year’s NCAA tournament. Game films can be burned or unwatched, but beatdowns cannot be forgotten.
“It was personal,” said Mississippi State guard Victoria Vivians. “We got beat by 60 last year. We had to prove that we’re a way better team than we were last year.”
With UConn losing its top three players from last year, many thought this would be the season that Auriemma and the Huskies would get their comeuppance. But like clockwork, here they were again, 36-0 against a national schedule, playing on the last weekend of the season like UCLA did so many times under John Wooden and Duke has under Coach K.
“I think it’s great for the sport,” said Oregon coach Kelly Graves before his team fell 90-52 to UConn in a region final March 27 played in Bridgeport, Conn., only
80 miles from the Huskies’ Storrs campus. “It makes us all accountable. We need to get better. We’re got to improve our game.”
Mississippi State, with a chance to make history, sprang an upset for the ages. UConn fell behind 2913 in the second quarter, its largest deficit of the season, requiring the Huskies to reveal qualities they seldom have to show any opponent. UConn briefly gained the lead but could not hold it, making mistakes common to any basketball team but not suspected of one with the Huskies’ propensity for winning.
The Huskies had 17 turnovers to 11 assists and took 21 fewer shots than the Bulldogs.
“They beat us,” said Auriemma, whose graciousness in defeat befitted a Hall of Fame coach. “They took us away from the things that we like to do. We didn’t have the kind of maturity that you need to win at this level at this time of the year.”
At the risk of disrespecting his young team, which had only one senior starter, Auriemma could not repeat the mantra heard often in the wake of UConn’s defeat: that for this Goliath to be slain was the best thing that could happen to women’s college basketball.
Women’s college basketball will benefit more when it can produce more than one giant-sized figure. UCLA men, it should be remembered, won back-to-back titles under Wooden in 1964 and
‘65, missed a year and then won seven in a row. Mississippi State’s March 31 conquest of UConn came exactly 42 years after UCLA, in Wooden’s final game as coach, beat Kentucky for its 10th NCAA title in 12 seasons.
UCLA has won only one national title (1995, against Arkansas) since the Wooden dynasty ended.
Tennessee’s women once enjoyed this kind of dominance in the SEC and nationally under the late Pat Summitt. The SEC remains strong in women’s basketball but with new giants, Texas A&M winning a title under Gary Blair and South Carolina beating Mississippi State. Kentucky has built a strong program under Matthew Mitchell and with former Wildcat star player Kyra Elzy as top assistant. Missouri made great strides this season.
Arkansas once played women’s
basketball at a high level, reaching the Final Four in 1998 (losing to Tennessee in the semifinals) and winning the ‘99 WNIT championship. Revisionist historians have been kind to Blair, making him the Eddie Sutton of the UA women’s program, although it is doubtful he could have enjoyed the success at Arkansas that he has achieved at Texas A&M.
Critically, none of Blair’s three UA successors came close to the Nolan Richardson level. Perhaps it will be different under Mike Neighbors, who was announced as the ninth coach in Arkansas women’s basketball history Monday. Neighbors, a UA graduate, came from Washington, which in four seasons he led to the Final Four. He succeeds a UA alum who couldn’t quite make the transition from TV analyst to basketball coach.