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Doyel: 'Seriously?'
On the telephone is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. I'm clumsily explaining my crazy idea: The women's college basketball game has practically caught up to the men's college game strictly in terms of quality of play.
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| Candice Wiggins has shown that she can play, and play well, with 41 points Monday. (US Presswire) |
Suddenly, Cheryl Miller interrupts me. "What you're trying to say," says the former USC star, now an NBA reporter for TNT, "is the women's game isn't painful to watch any more."
"That's being brutally honest," Miller continued, "and that's why in the past I wouldn't watch the women's game until the Final Four. It was too ugly before then. It's changed. The women's game is now well played and really fun to watch."
So, I'm not a total dumbass?
"You're absolutely not nuts," Miller said. "When it comes to these games, the skill, the entertainment, the women are giving men a run for their money. It doesn't manifest itself in the ratings but it's true."
Women's college basketball, and to some extent the WNBA, were once mostly utterly unwatchable. It was like viewing 12-year-olds playing with greased pumpkins.
If you have not watched women's college hoops in some time -- and apparently many of you haven't, based on the viewer numbers -- a flood of elite athletes into the sport over the past decade or so has changed all of that.
There has been a mostly unnoticed yet significant growth spurt in women's college basketball. If you follow the sport it's impossible not to notice.
The skill level is actually impressive, the games are more fluid and -- dare I say it -- the sport is damn entertaining. The women's tournament this year, for example, has been just as exciting as the men's.
Women's college basketball is on the same level as the men in many, many ways.
The problem is the public hasn't caught up to the reality. The image of the old women's college basketball Miller described is accurate and that is the image most people have of the sport. It's outdated but many sports fans haven't been able to get past it.
The sport has evolved to the point where it's fluid and enjoyable but people's minds have stayed closed and stuck in the 1990s.
You think I'm crazy. You think I was hit in the head by Troy Polamalu. You think I'm looooosing it.
"I totally agree with you," said Tree Rollins, the longtime NBA player who now coaches the Washington Mystics. "You're not so crazy. I have to tell you I find myself watching the women play as much as the men, if not more."
"If you give women's college basketball a second look, you see the difference from some years ago," said David Stern, NBA commissioner.
Again, read carefully. No one is stating that Pat Summit's Tennessee Volunteers can beat Bruce Pearl's. They don't have the physicality to do that.
However the women's basketball skills are actually close to those of the men. Stern compared women's basketball to women's professional tennis. No one expects Sharapova to beat Nadal because Nadal is much stronger, but Sharapova playing Venus Williams is an entertaining match and the skill levels are fairly close to men's.
There are of course dissenters (I didn't speak to current college women's coaches or players because of their obvious bias). There are people who believe I'm the lone passenger on a ship of fools.
Gentlemen, start your ridicule.
"You are crazy," e-mailed Dallas owner Mark Cuban. "If it was on par (with the men's college game) there wouldn't be the Division I blowouts you see all the time. That said, if you write it, every women's player will love you."
So there's that.
The women's college game still has flaws. There are still too many moments when you see a women's college player bounce the basketball off her knee. The women's games lack the basketball equivalent of heroin: the huge slam dunk.
But based on various interviews -- and my own eyes -- women run their offenses almost as well as the men, shoot almost as well (though sometimes still a little more awkwardly) and move the ball in transition almost as well. You could have never said anything like just a short time ago.
"The only thing, in my opinion, the women can't do is dunk the ball in traffic," said Rollins. "Almost everything else they're doing as well as the men. People may laugh at that but it's true."
There are several major things that have made the women's game improve dramatically:
1. The women have closed the gap on the men in terms of two major fundamentals: dribbling and shooting.
"One of the big things is 3-point shooting," said Rollins. "It's much better."
2. Women actually play more team ball than the men. "When I played we had a better grasp of the fundamentals than NBA players today," Rollins said. "We were team oriented. You don't see that now as much in the NBA and in some ways you don't see it as much as you do in men's college ball."
3. More ex-NBA players are involved in the women's college and pro game than ever before. That is particularly true in the WNBA and there seems to be a trickling down effect beginning in college.
"The women listen to you more and trust what you're saying more," said Rollins.
Maybe I am indeed losing my mind.
But at least my mind is wide open.