GENO AURIEMMA'S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE IS IN COACHING.

He's frustrated by his sport's lack of a value proposition.  "Geno Auriemma blasts NCAA on women's tournament: 'Their experience sucks compared to the men's'."

Why?

Geno Auriemma did not let a Final Four victory distract him from his grievances with the NCAA's format for the 2025 women's NCAA Tournament,

As he has in the past week, the UConn women's basketball coach blasted the NCAA for travel schedule and gender discrepancy when it comes to the tournaments. Auriemma also called out the NCAA for not caring enough about the student athletes or listening to the coaches.

The Huskies earned a No. 2 seed in this year's tournament and had to travel thousands of miles to Spokane, Washington, for the Sweet 16 and Elite.  Following Monday's 9:30 p.m. tipoff, UConn flew directly from Spokane to Tampa Bay for the Final Four the next morning.

In all, UConn has made two cross-country trips and has played four games in the last nine days. Meanwhile, on the men's side, a few teams will have played four games over 13 days.

Connecticut's seeding reflected early season losses to inter alia Notre Dame and Southern California, although there are probably people who wonder what they were smoking in the pairing committee meeting after Connecticut handled the Dawn Staleys rather roughly in January before handling them roughly again to cut down the nets yesterday.

Ordinarily, doesn't a regional get set up where the first and second seeds can anticipate a short trip to the round of sixteen, even allowing for the pairing committee's reluctance to have too many conference rivals in the same pool of four teams?  Well, yes, yes, it does, and the pairings had South Carolina and Duke first and second in one regional, Texas and Texas Christian in a second regional; and then UCLA and North Carolina State in the third regional with USC and Connecticut in the fourth.  (How odd is it, dear reader, that UCLA and USC played for the B1G conference title and both had regular season records that merited a first seed?)

It's what happens that second weekend that bothers the coach.  "One of his biggest gripes is the fact that the men's tournament has four regional sites, while the women's have just two."  Ah, the old value proposition again.  The teams from Texas and the Carolinas headlined regionals played in Birmingham, Alabama, while the other two top seeded teams were from Los Angeles, making the siting of a regional in Spokane, Washington the logical choice.

Originally, the NCAA said the hope would be to draw more fans to the regional sites, however, Auriemma disagrees that the two regional sites accomplish that goal.

"So what you're saying when you have two regions is you don't care if half the country can't get to a game," Auriemma said. "Basically, that's what you're saying. But yeah, you want to grow the game. I mean, come on, it makes no sense. But if you ever had an administrator that ever coached or ever played in a Final Four or regional, and you realize what the limitations are in one gym with eight (teams), right? Yeah, but they don't think that way. They don't think that way.

"So, you know, it's up to us as coaches. Don't ask our opinion. If you're going to dismiss it, at least give it some thought. And (NCAA President Charlie Baker) probably thinks it's not a big deal that you fly 3,000 miles get here Tuesday night, when the team you're playing against has been home already for 36 hours.

Another season, another privilege check.  Yawn.

Maybe, just maybe, the people managing women's basketball, whether at the team, conference, association, or professional level, ought come up with a better value proposition than "look how unfair this all is." That pitch has probably won over all the professional feminists and alphabet people that are there to be won over. It's unlikely to entice any new eyeballs onto the screen or into the stands.

But then, some of the women of the fevered brow can play basketball pretty well, and then they gripe.

College basketball season is winding down, with Buffalo of the Mid-American winning the ladies' version of the NIT, in their own gym.  In a few months the griping season of the WNBA will be upon us.