2009 UConn women: Greatest college team ever?

This UCONN team was so loaded that it was able to withstand the loss of the #1 recruit in the country, Elena Della Donne, but she quit hoops and transferred to Delaware to play volleyball.

 

They certainly don't do anything for UConn, but the patsies are more than willing to be fodder, it seems.

 

They also lost Caroline Doty, another top recruit, to injury, extremely early in the season. She should help make up for the loss of Montgomery.

 

That right there is the biggest factor. There are only 6-7 teams that belong on the same floor with the UConn women. Mid-majors are noncompetitive to this day in the women's game, and yet nobody's going to fill the entire schedule with power-conference teams.

How many more instances do you see of a team leading 48-14 at halftime, comparing women's D-I to men's D-I? A lot more.

If you're Auriemma, I'm sure you could get them up for the few games where they might get something resembling a test.

BTW, you CAN make comparisons between the men's game and the women's game. Just because one's not in the same stratosphere as the other doesn't mean the comparisons can't be made.

 

Yeah, to get back to the original premise of the thread: In 1973, the apex of the UCLA dynasty, only maybe a dozen universities were really pouring resources into basketball. UCLA was in a world of its own, then you had maybe 10 more "contenders," and a great sea of mediocrity.

Very comparable to women's basketball today, except you have two teams, not one, towering over the landscape like a colossus (although this year, it is just one). Then another 10 or so which might be able to put together a run, and then the great unwashed multitudes.

 

Somebody brought up an interesting point a few years ago, but damned if I could tell you who it was. But the rise in women's basketball can be charted by how the traditionally strong athletic programs generally now have the top women's programs.

Once was the time Louisiana Tech was as storied as Tennessee and more so than UConn. Ditto Old Dominion. Before that, Stephen F. Austin. They were the smaller schools that, for whatever reason, had a good women's basketball team, and they were able to shoot their way through the stratosphere because a lot of the big-league schools didn't put a lot of emphasis on it.

Now you could have had a men's and women's Final Four comprised of the same schools. UConn had a No. 1 seed in both. Oklahoma and Duke had a 1 and a 2. UNC and Louisville, a 1 and a 3. Pitt, a 1 and a 4.

So in a weird way, maybe the way this year's tournament played out is a sign that the sport is gaining traction, at least in the sense that it's more accepted and promoted at the highest levels.

 

In that time, Northwestern was one of the top programs in the Big Ten. As you noted, Louisiana Tech, Western Kentucky, SFA and SW Missouri State were players for top recruits (and national powers) at some point in their life cycle.

In the AIAW days, it was even more crazy. The first three-peat champ was Immaculata, a team that featured Marianne Stanley, Theresa Grentz and Rene Portland (three pretty darned good coaches). Another early power was Cheyney State -- led by C. Vivian Stringer.

Interestingly, the area of the country that put the most resources into women's basketball early was the SEC, which is in a traditionally conservative part of the country (as politicized as college women's hoops can be, I find that interesting).

UConn's emergence in 1995 really helped bring women's basketball to the forefront, because of the fact that a team in ESPN's backyard having that kind of success made The Leader start paying attention (and giving big play) to women's hoops, which led some other schools to start pouring some resources into it ...

 

Considering this year's men's national champ, UNC, would beat the UConn women by a score of roughly 177-30 or so, how about we change the title to "is this the best women's team ever?" You simply can't lump the men's and women's teams together in a best-ever comparison.

 

Yes, you can.

You can make the comparison because you're comparing women to women and men to men. UConn is or isn't more dominant in its group than any men's team has been in its group. Nobody's saying the women are comparable to the men, per se.

And let us not forget Immaculata's No. 1 rival -- Luisa Harris-led Delta State. Not exactly a major-college powerhouse.

 

All that football/TV money has to go somewhere, once the football program is taken care of.

I'd still like to see a gymnastics program at Tennessee to compete with mega-powers Georgia and Alabama, but Summit will never permit it because it might take away some of her basketball fans. No excuse for UT not to field a program.