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A league of their own

The Final Four should be great -- but will anyone watch?

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Posted: Thursday March 25, 1999 11:00 AM

Truth be told, the Duke Blue Devils don't look that unbeatable. Sure, they're good and all, and they've beaten the best in the country. But c'mon, now.

They're not exactly Louisiana Tech.

Yes, the Final Four in women's college basketball is this weekend and, where it won't get nearly the attention that the men's will, it's liable to be a lot more entertaining.

But old ideas die hard.

Monday night, for example, you watch Duke play three-time defending champion Tennessee, and if you're trying to compare it to the men's game, you're immediately disappointed. A few plays into it you're convinced even you can take Tennessee starting point guard Kellie Jolly to the hoop.

And you, by the way, are well past the age where you should be doing anything with coeds.

You watch women's college basketball and you think "That's nice. When are the real games on?" Or "'Get it across half-court, willya?" Or "How about an alley-oop?"

From the e-mailbag Some comments on Flaming mad, March 16, 1999. How the American and Canadian public (I'm a Canadian) can continually pay Don King money has had me appalled, bewildered, p***** off, sick and a thousand others... All you fellows can write about this, but it is a given that come 6 or 7 months from now, the turnstiles will be lined with idiots ready to drop their money down and get [taken] by this piece of [garbage, Don King], again. To quote the man "Only in America." -- Norm Bailey You are correct in stating that all fight fans "roll the dice" when watching a fight. You never know if you're going to be watching Hagler-Hearns (the best fight I've ever seen) or a slow-motion dance, such as the Lewis-Akinwande debacle. But to presume that we should also "roll the dice" in asking for the barest minimum of competence, decency and standards with respect to boxing's judging, officiating and governance is unconscionable. Your view may (unfortunately) be an accurate assessment on the state of boxing, but it's hardly how it should be, or how a society of laws and of rules should conduct itself. To say that all boxing fans should have expected something to go wrong, playing the tired old "we were asking for it" card, is to presume that we should expect incompetence and corruption to ruin athletics. I, however, refuse to take such a position, and resent the implication that I am somehow a dupe for having refused. -- Scott J. Stitt The days of Dempsey and Sharkey, Patterson and Louis, Marciano and Ali are long gone. When a convicted murderer like Don King absolutely controls the sport, there is no hope, no future. And that's too bad. Literally hundreds of thousands of youth, inner city and suburb, could learn many lessons from the once grand sport of boxing: competing, not quitting, learning to get back up when knocked down, etc. Boxing can be cured. But until the Don Kings of the sport are run out, there is no hope. -- John Schwendler I've seen better fights on Jerry Springer. Boxing for a belt? C'mon, get real. Have a match where the winner takes 90% of the purse and the loser takes home what's left, then you'll see who's the best. -- Skip Danesi The one thing that might have made this re-match interesting to me would have been if the order would have made to make this fight non-profit (or closed). No purse, no cut for King, no pay-per-view. A Friday night, network television broadcast. Just let the two fighters decide it. Yeah, that could happen, eh? -- Joe Power I don't think I had purchased a pay-per-view fight since the Hagler-Leonard debacle. After hearing how great the De La Hoya-Quartey fight was, I decided I'd try it one more time. After the bout ended and while waiting for the decision my son proclaimed Lewis the new champ. My response was, 'This is boxing. Wait for the decision.' No surprise, really. Don King was involved. All the reasons I stopped following boxing came back to me. No I won't get fleeced again. It was my last pay-per-view fight. -- Steve Murphy The history of the sport reflects much worse instances of "peculiar" results going back as far as it is recorded. Boxing lends itself to chicanery more readily than any other sport which is the object of a lot of gambling. It would be easy to tank in figure skating, but who bets on that? This will never change. You are correct in that the suckers are asking for it. They should each send Don King $10, or whatever he gets from the pay-per-view fee, and watch a movie instead. -- John Barnard

Or "What channel is Baywatch on?"

Old ideas.

The Duke-Tennessee game drew a regional-record crowd of 12,235 in Greensboro, N.C. Compare that to the men's regional final in St. Louis' Trans World Dome ... well, that drew a regional record of 42,519.

Some 9 million households tuned in for the men's games on the Sunday of the opening weekend of the tournament. The Tennessee-Duke women's game managed to attract more viewers than any non-Final Four game ESPN ever has aired -- about 1.6 million households.

Old, stubborn ideas.

The thing is, Tennessee was down by 11 points at the half Monday night, a stunning situation for the Lady Vols to find themselves in. But they came out ripping in the second half.

Duke's lead dwindled to seven, then to six, then to two, then to one. The Blue Devils were shaken, they were throwing the ball out of bounds, they were heaving up hurried prayers, they were fouling and Tennessee had the game won as sure as the Vols won the last three national titles.

Then the Dookies settled down. They started to move the ball. They worked to get open shots, cutting to the basket, setting screens for their jump-shooters. They cranked up the defensive pressure. They took charges.

They rebounded the heck out of the ball. They scored. They made free throws when it counted.

They beat seemingly unbeatable Tennessee.

It was not mind-boggling athleticism from every position. It was not dunks and blurry cross-over dribbles and rebounds grabbed venomously off the rim. No, it was not the men's game.

But it was good shooting in the clutch. It was hellacious, man-to-man defense.

It was beautiful. It was basketball.

Eddie Robinson, the great former football coach at Division I-AA Grambling, once said something about winning on your level, whatever that level may be. And today's women's game is a winner any way you look at it. And on a consistently high level, too.

The truth is, Kellie Jolly would absolutely eat my lunch if we ever played one-on-one. She'd drive by me faster than Rick Majerus on his way to a Waffle House.

She'd leave me standing in a puddle of sweat, sucking wind, as open-mouthed as Dick Vitale in front of a TV camera.

She'd Szczerbiak me

Probably. But ... maybe not.

Old ideas do die hard.

John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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