March Madness shows evolution of women’s game

Emma Carmichael Assistant Sports Editor

Somewhere between Candace Parker’s two dunks against Army in the opening round of last year’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women’s basketball tournament and Rashanda McCants’ acrobatic turnaround block against a Tennessee player in last Sunday’s Final Four match-up between University of North Carolina (UNC) and the Lady Volunteers, something changed in women’s college basketball.

ESPN commentator Ann Meyers gasped when McCants, seemingly beaten on the fast break, sprinted back on defense. With her back turned to the driving Tennessee player, she leapt into the air, smacked the ball down with her right hand, caught it with her left and flung it over her shoulder to an awaiting Ivory Latta before falling out of bounds. Latta pushed the ball up the floor and dished to a streaking LaToya Pringle for a fast break lay-up.

“That is as beautiful of an athletic play as you’re going to see in the country—men or women—that was beautiful!” exclaimed Meyers. “That is a new generation play right there,” she continued. “That kind of athleticism is now starting to dictate the outcome of women’s games, and that’s why this game is changing.”

Certainly, the game of women’s basketball has evolved. The first college game took place in 1893 at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. between the freshmen and sophomore classes. With 18 players on the court at a time, players could only hold the ball for three seconds and take only three dribbles each time they touched the ball. No men were allowed in the gym during the game, which ended with a 5-4 victory for the Smith freshmen.

Fast-forward 115 years to Sunday, April 1, 2007. The NCAA women’s Final Four is held at Quicken Loan Arena in Cleveland, Ohio with an average attendance of 20,704 spectators. It is nationally televised on ESPN and the NCAA has issued approximately 590 media credentials for the game. Before her game against Rutgers, Louisiana State University’s All-American center Sylvia Fowles dunks in warm-ups but later shrugs it off, telling the Los Angeles Times, “If an opportunity for me to dunk comes, I’m pretty sure I’ll knock it down, but that’s not my main focus right now.”

Still, the competition is very different from the men’s tournament. First of all, most women who play collegiate basketball stay all four years for which they are eligible to play, while many male players will leave early for the NBA. The average professional women’s basketball player makes about $50,000 a season; the average NBA salary is $4.9 million a year. A male college player with the hopes of entering the league is guaranteed a minimum salary of $412,718, over four times the amount that the highest paid WNBA players make.

Parker, Tennessee’s All-American 6’4” center, certainly has incentive to leave school to play in the WNBA, but not as much as Ohio State’s freshman center Greg Oden, who would probably earn about $8 million during his first two seasons. Nearly all female college players spend their four years in college, increasing their skills and, correspondingly, the overall quality of the game.

Although the men’s game is indisputably more physical and fast-paced, female players are becoming progressively stronger and bigger. If you take a look at the size of the Division I centers across the country, you’ll find 6’7” Alison Bales at Duke, 6’9” Allyssa DeHaan at Michigan State, 6’6” Fowles at LSU, and other controlling the game. Courtney Paris, who plays for Oklahoma, stand at 6’3” and has attributed her success at least in part to her weight as well as her height. Paris will tell anyone who asks that she weighs 250 pounds. She might also mention that she is considered the most dominant player in the country.

In Sunday’s match-up between first seeds Tennessee and UNC, Meyers commended the game’s referees for “letting these ladies play basketball.” Too often the problem is not lack of players’ physicality, but referees’ reluctance to allow players to use their muscle. Latta, UNC’s dynamic 5’6” senior point guard, was warned by Tar Heel coaches last season to tone down her in-game emotions. These basic releases of passion—beating her chest after knocking down a big shot, slapping the floor in frustration, or simply “talkin’ some smack”—are not only overlooked but also praised in men’s games.

The women’s game is often criticized for featuring the same top teams every year and not allowing “mid-major” colleges a chance to compete nationally. Last year’s men’s Final Four included the eleventh-seed George Mason University, and a number of other lesser-known schools, such as Southern Illinois, are starting to make a name for themselves. In an exciting turn, this year’s women’s Sweet 16 featured none other than Poughkeepsie’s own Marist College, which, as the 13 seed, played the Cinderella role and upset both fourth Ohio State and fifth Middle Tennessee before falling to the championship-bound Lady Vols. The Final Four also included 3 LSU and 4 Rutgers.

The Final Four games featured both a blow-out (Rutgers defeated LSU easily, 59-35) and a classic, with Tennessee coming back from 12 points down to finish with a 56-50 victory. Tuesday’s match-up between Tennessee and Rutgers promises to be a memorable one, but look for Vols Coach Pat Summit to lead her experienced squad to a well-deserved national championship.

As the women’s game continues to improve and become more physical, surely basketball fans from all backgrounds will appreciate its evolution and tune in as well. It might take some time, but women have been playing competitively for 115 years now, and they’re only going to get better.