ARE YOU TIRED OF ALL THE WINNING?

The regional winners in the women's basketball tournament were all the top seeds.  Them that has gets, and all that, but them that gets has parity, at least for one weekend.  The Women's Hoops Blog has more links than you can shake a rosary at, starting with Friday evening's semifinals.  First game,  last year's runner-up, Mississippi State, playing Louisville.  Less than a minute to go, Louisville leads by five, Mississippi State ties it, then dominates the overtime.  Second game, last year's Evil Empire, Connecticut, playing former conference nemesis Notre Dame.  Notre Dame rallies in the second half, less than a minute to go, leads by five, Connecticut ties it.  Overtime remains tight to the very end.  "In overtime, with both teams hitting big shot after big shot, it was Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale who stole the show, knocking down a game-winner with one second remaining on the clock, giving Notre Dame it’s [c.q.] final lead at 91-89."  That's correct, dear reader, two games, both decided in overtime.  As Whitney Medworth notes, "UConn’s dominance has raised the level of the game in ways most don’t recognize."  That, dear reader, is how to get tired of all the winning.  If that sounds like "make a better product, sell it at a better price" with sneakers and balls, so be it.

Then comes the final game, late on a Sunday afternoon, and there are more links than you can grill at an Oktoberfest.  Mississippi State holds Notre Dame to a field goal (well, OK, let's not stretch the football analogies, it was a bunny and a free throw) in the second quarter and leads by as many as fifteen, and yet, it's tied after three.  Deja vu: less than a minute to go, Mississippi State leads by five, Notre Dame ties it, are you ready for more overtime?  Call the copy-editor.  Ogunbowale for the win, this time with a tenth of the second left on the clock after video review.  Is this video review necessary?  You can't legally get off a three-point shot for a tie with a tenth of a second left.

Matt Ellentuck notes, "Sometimes it’s just best to see the top talents battle it out."

What, then, about being tired of all the winning?  That started, for this year, with a David Berri column suggesting that all that regular-season Connecticut success was, contrary to conventional wisdom, not a knock on the sport.

Once upon a time, economists really believed that competitive balance was crucial to the survival of a sports league. Many academic articles were written making this argument. I personally have co-authored at least a half-dozen academic articles on the subject.

The empirical evidence, though, suggests this interest might have been misplaced. Competitive balance simply isn't as important as we thought.

His gripe: it's the lack of interest in the sports media, stupid.

Florida Gulf Coast defeated Missouri, Central Michigan downed LSU, and Buffalo defeated South Florida by 23 points. ESPN.com does list these scores (something that can't be said for all major sports sites). But you will find many more stories about the men's tournament — and other men's sports — than you will find about these games.

His essay, though, brought out commentary reinforcing his point.  Natalie Weiner chastises the unthinking.

If this annual dialogue has taught us anything, it’s that the people who insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that UConn is “bad for women’s basketball” are the ones actually hurting the sport—not the Huskies’ exceptional athletes and coaching staff. What is presented as concern for the welfare of women’s basketball is, in practice, an excuse for ignoring the sport altogether. The trope only endures because of deep-rooted double standards for female athletes and mainstream sports media’s unwillingness to challenge them in any substantive way.

Reality might be the emergence of a power rule, as is the case in most other sports.

Assuming the sport continues to grow, it will eventually reach the same kind of parity (for the most part, a few dominant programs that take turns winning the title) that exists on the men’s side—which the people who assert that UConn is hurting the women’s game believe is so integral to attracting fans.

Let us call the roll.  Tennessee.   Connecticut.   Stanford.   Notre Dame making a case.  Anybody heard from Baylor or Louisiana Tech lately?

Barbara Barker suggests people aren't paying much attention.  "When was the last time you filled out a bracket for the women’s NCAA Tournament?"  Yeah, you could start with Connecticut winning, and by backward induction, fill in that regional, but would that be good enough to beat an aficionado who understood the other three regionals, or, worse yet, someone who understood the rest of the field and picked Notre Dame or Mississippi State?  It's not as if brackets get busted in the men's tournament.  "But how many people picking brackets outside of Chicago ever had watched Loyola men’s basketball or had a clue who Sister Jean was three weeks ago?"

Les Carpenter, writing from New England, notes that Connecticut wasn't always Connecticut.

What struck me [years ago] was how much Auriemma wanted his team to be great and how much his players wanted to be great themselves. UConn was not yet the place where every top high school star wanted to go. His best players mostly came from New England, not California or Florida or Texas or wherever else the great recruits grow up. He built a giant in the Connecticut woods and then hunted down Tennessee ... until his program became the next Tennessee.

Someday Auriemma will leave UConn. The Huskies won’t be the greatest women’s basketball team forever. Somewhere, more UConns are bursting to rise. If nothing else, Connecticut’s basketball dominance has raised the level for women’s basketball, inspiring better players, pushing rivals to be better. There’s nothing wrong with a super champion. There’s no shame in a team that steamrolls through their opponents on the way to presumably another confetti ceremony Sunday night in Columbus, Ohio.

There’s just a team that came from nothing and climbed to the top showing others that they can do the same as well.

Never unleash the confetti until the votes are counted in Wisconsin, oops, baskets are counted in Indiana.  And ponder the strange geographic pairings in Connecticut's American Athletic Conference.  Wichita State or Cincinnati or South Florida might have aspirations ...