Women's basketball

[CP84]

It was fun watching the Iowa women this year but it certainly demonstrates why men's basketball is far superior beyond the athletic differences.

You could probably take any team in the KenPom top 50 and they could beat the #1 on any given night.

Women's basketball has very little parity. Iowa is a legit top 10 and they are a mile behind Baylor and Notre Dame based on their games this season.

Duke entered the tournament as the unanimous #1 and were lucky to get by UCF and VT.

Baylor has destroyed everyone on the women's side.

 

[EvilMonkeyInTheCloset]

And whose fault is that, despite the media and the general public glossing over it time and time again?................


I've been saying this for a while regarding football as well when you consider the disparity there.

 

[CP84]

And whose fault is that, despite the media and the general public glossing over it time and time again?................


I've been saying this for a while regarding football as well when you consider the disparity there.

In football you need to put together a team of 22 athletes. It's harder for non blue blood programs to compete across 22 positions.

A basketball team can be good with 1-2 great players and 3 average. Small schools can piece that together but women's basketball just appears to have a much smaller talent pool that gets eaten up by the blue bloods.

Someone like Hannah Stewart would be comparable to Iowa men starting Riley Till. There is a huge dropoff in talent on Iowa after Gustafson.

 

[Row55]

Very true, although on the other hand, as we saw with Mercer, some very good hoops is being played on the next couple of levels. But the really elite WBB athletes seem to want to cluster at UConn, ND, Baylor, maybe Louisville; more recently, Miss. State & Oregon. Case in point, Kiah Stokes was willing to sit on the bench for 3 years at UConn, whereas she'd have been a 4 year starter at Iowa and a celeb on par with MG now.

 

[BetterLuckNextTime]

They should still have more fans in the stands. If I lived closer to a university, I'd go to their women's games.

 

[HoustonREDHawk]

I don't know a lot about women's basketball, but watching the Baylor game was painful. Great season for Iowa, just wish it could have ended better.

 

[BetterLuckNextTime]

Very true, although on the other hand, as we saw with Mercer, some very good hoops is being played on the next couple of levels. But the really elite WBB athletes seem to want to cluster at UConn, ND, Baylor, maybe Louisville; more recently, Miss. State & Oregon. Case in point, Kiah Stokes was willing to sit on the bench for 3 years at UConn, whereas she'd have been a 4 year starter at Iowa and a celeb on par with MG now.

That's impressive discipline and patience. Kinda reminds me of the stories an ex-Marine friend told me about snipers hiding in bushes, not moving, for hours, sometimes days, even with dengue-infected mosquitoes covering them.