One of my favorite drives is State Route 4 in California. You can take its two narrow lanes from the hot Central Valley up into the Gold Rush country, continue up past the redwood groves of Calaveras County and, between June and October, along a single lane filled with hairpin turns through the Sierras. It's like a sampler platter of what the state has to offer.
One stretch that seems uninteresting at first glance has intrigued me most every time I have driven Route 4. When you head east out of Stockton toward the eventual mountains, you pass gradually from farm fields into ranch country. Almost imperceptibly, you climb well over 1,000 feet. So gradual is the grade that you only notice how far you have come when you turn to view the panorama behind you.
I got a little of that same feeling at the NCAA Women's Final Four Sunday night in Indianapolis.
The women's tournament doesn't command the TV ratings that the men get—not yet, anyhow—but the event has definitely climbed into the big time.
As configured for basketball, the RCA Dome was a sellout for the two semifinal games. ESPN's whole array of announcers and analysts were on hand. Press row was full. Just like the men's tourney.
There were also other, more subtle signs that women's basketball has matured. Each of the four teams in Indianapolis appeared to have a loyal following that went well beyond the audience of women and families with girls stereotypically associated with women's hoops. There were male students, middle-aged men—in short, many of the characters you once would not have expected to find at women's games.
Although their men's team had played in St. Louis the day before, Michigan State was represented by a sizable contingent. Many in Baylor's raucous crowd stood for long stretches of the first semifinal; after the Lady Bears' thumping of top seed LSU, players mingled with their adoring fans, posing for pictures, shaking hands and politely thanking the home folks for making the trip.
The women's collegiate ranks also are steadily developing the kind of parity that prevails in the men's brackets. Although three No. 1's made the Final Four and the seedings held for seven of the Elite Eight spots, no longer is the women's NCAA a two-team tournament between Connecticut and Tennessee. No less than seven teams this year were credibly capable of taking the trophy.
Meanwhile, the big coaching dogs are being seriously challenged by a new generation, three of whom—Michigan State's Joanne McCallie, Baylor's Kim Mulkey-Robertson and LSU's Pokey Chatman—were represented in Indianapolis. Tuesday's championship was decided by two teams that, five years ago, had virtually no NCAA Tournament tradition.
Besides losing a 16-point, second-half advantage, it must have been especially galling to Pat Summitt to have been beaten by Michigan State on grit and determination—two customary hallmarks of Tennessee. But it's not that the Lady Vols have slipped; it's that others have gained.
Given where the women's game is now, and how matter-of-factly we regard its stature, it can be surprising what a look in the rearview mirror reveals about how far it has risen.
Barely three decades ago, the girls mostly played the now obsolete game of six-on-six, with players confined to one or the other half of the floor. It was entertaining (and it might be fun to see the men play it today), but it was designed around the glass-ceiling premise that women lacked the stamina to play full-court.
Just 30 years ago, there was no NCAA women's field of 64. There may not even have been 64 major universities that fielded teams. Women's basketball was dominated by schools few fans today have ever heard of, like Immaculata and Delta State, Stephen F. Austin and the Wayland Baptist Flying Queens. In the early '80s, Mulkey-Robertson bypassed nearby LSU for Lousiana Tech, where she played in four Final Fours, because women's basketball received minimal emphasis in Baton Rouge in those days. The big schools that wanted to win championships competed in the women's division of the NAIA, where the real action was. It all seems as quaint and remote now as single-platoon football or helmetless hockey.
Yet I find also a disturbing trend line within the upward trajectory of women's basketball: becoming more like the men's game isn't always an improvement.
Watch the tournament this year, and you'll see how many women, instead of patiently passing the ball around, are emulating their male counterparts, dribbling, dribbling, dribbling, taking it headlong to the basket—and colliding with defenders.
As money and prestige accrue to the women's game, will the no-holds-barred (and no-ethics-displayed) recruiting that stains men's basketball be far behind? Will the female student-athletes gradually become just athletes, as so many of the men have done?
I hope I'm wrong, but that's what the road ahead for women's basketball looks like to me.
You've come a long way, baby, in the quest to be treated like the boys. But for all our sakes, please don't go so far that you act like them.
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