Running 2023-24 NCAA Basketball Thread

Litmus test for where women's basketball is: Several dudes came into the bar last night looking for the game, and our barkeep was debating whether or not it was worth putting the sound on for it. (This is not really a sports bar, FWIW). Think that happens five years ago? Or even three years ago?

 

Saw a tweet last night with some guy saying you know women’s hoops have arrived when people on social media are treating it like an NFL Sunday with Eli Apple starting in the secondary.

 

And 48 hours earlier they were all spiking footballs over Mulkey telling the evil librulll Worshington Post to pound sand. They can't make up their minds.

LSU had the body language of a team happy to be done with it all -- the pressure, the microscope, the taunts, the media attention -- all of it.

 

Berating them for their taunting behavior.

 

Can we just get past the race thing? I watched both games and didn’t care who had what skin color; I watched their talent.

As for LSU being “woke “, go read the WaPo article on Mulkey, she is anything but woke.

 

LOL Sudekis.

 

I feel bad for Reese. She plays the game with such a sass she slides into that villain role so well. But it sounds like dumbasses in America were dumbassing and couldn’t handle a proud Black woman playing with a cocky confidence, that she’s earned. It just sucks. For as much praise as we heap on Clark because she really is that good, I wonder how many couldn’t get past a Black woman one upping a White woman playing for White Iowa.

And this belies something cool about the women’s game: there is just a great swath of talent right now. It feels good to know it isn’t just UCONN anymore. Up and down in the elite 8 were stars in both sides.

 

Between easier transfer rules and NIL, it kind of feels like the women's game might be taking its baby steps out of the "concentrate talent on a handful of teams" model. If you want to make strained comparisons that probably don't hold up to intense scrutiny - Wooden's last championship was in 1975, and 1976 was the first college year for Larry Bird. He and Magic Johnson were vivid, national television examples of singular talents dragging OK rosters to success. I don't think its crazy to think Caitlin Clark might have a similar effect, where a dynamic wing sees her play and goes, "Maybe I'd rather be the #1 option on _____ instead of dealing with Auriemma or Mulkey."

 

At what point did "woke" and Mulkey ever enter the same universe?

 

When they ragged on LSU not being on the court for anthem.

 

At least they’re taking the heat off the American Egg Board for being woke.

 

That would have been a players' decision. Good lord, Mulkey is MTG, only more strangely attired.



The ONLY women's champion to make a White House appearance.



21 shots wasn't enough? If she would have made half of them, and 75% of her free throws, LSU wins.

Flau'jae should have been screaming for the ball.