For most guys, there is no good time to watch women play hoops.
If you agree with that, you missed three well-played games last weekend. The NCAA women's Final Four in Indianapolis was very competitive, and the title game was better than the men's. Which isn't saying much.
Texas A&M squeezed Notre Dame out, 76-70, in the final. That was after those teams beat two #1 seeds each to reach Tuesday's game. And two of the bullies on the block were Connecticut and Tennessee.
The big problem with women college teams is that the divide between the haves (UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, about a half-dozen others) and the have-nots (everyone else) has been huge since the ladies' tourney began in 1982.
Some years ago, it was not easy to appreciate Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes or Sue Bird when their college competition didn't always look ready to play. And watching the University of Conneticut's sublime Maya Moore destroy unskilled defenders doesn't show me how good she really is.
That's why I picked up on the women's tourney at its end. The teams are stronger top to bottom. The title game's stars, Skylar Diggins and Danielle Adams, led two teams who can really play.
Let's anticipate a shift. Maybe a female basketball recruit who was only thinking about one of the powerhouses will think about a Notre Dame or an A&M. Maybe the 101-39 scores I always see in women's hoops will start to equalize. While those kind of scores exist, people will know that the game is not competitive yet--that there just isn't a big enough pool of talented players.
In college, I wrote for the school newspaper. One of my beats was the women's basketball team, a team that went undefeated in conference play before getting beat down by Tennessee in a #1-#16 match-up. A few of the male writers on staff would laugh into their hand at me. Like a lot of men, they thought basketball was all about high-flying. They didn't know what I knew.
I knew that a skilled, fundamentally-sound player, no matter the gender, is dangerous. And very fun to watch.
