The sports world is abuzz with the soaring popularity of women's basketball. Iowa's remarkable Caitlin Clark has developed a national following. She led the Hawkeyes this past weekend to victory in the Big Ten's post-season tourney at Minneapolis in front of a sold-out arena. By contrast, there are still plenty of seats left for the men's tourney in the same venue starting Wed Mar 13.
Another example of the growing interest in the women's game came when Steph Curry eagerly engaged in a three-point shot competition with Sabrina Ionescu during the NBA AllStar Game festivities last month. The WNBA's New York Liberty star held her own against the Golden State Warriors superstar who needed a bevy of late shots to narrowly win the contest.
Women's college basketball in the New York metro area is also having a banner season. With identical Ivy League records of 13-1, Columbia and Princeton seem destined for a Sat aft Mar 16 5P rubber match for the right to earn the qualifying bid to the NCAA tourney. (The Ivy League as a whole hasn't yet earned the respect of the tourney selection committee to get a second bid in addition to the league champion.)
The Ivy League tourney this year will take place at Columbia's cozy Levien Gym on 120th Street just east of Broadway. On Fri Mar 15 at 430P Princeton will have to dispatch 4th place Penn and then Columbia will try to beat Harvard for the third time this season at 730P. These games will be televised on ESPN+ with the Sat Mar 16 5P final being broadcast on ESPNNEWS.
Based on past record, Harvard is a more formidable opponent than Penn, but if the dream final matchup happens, it will mark the final appearance of Abbey Hsu in her home gym. The great thing about following women's basketball is that you can see the growth of a player from "the kid" - what coach Megan Griffith affectionately called Abbey early in her career - to the polished all-around veteran and candidate for national awards.
Hsu gets plenty of help from the Henderson sisters from Australia, junior Kitty and first-year Fliss; the versatile junior transfer from Bucknell Cece Collins; and the emerging sophomore front court threats of sophomores Perri Page and Susie Rafiu. Heralded first-year Riley Weiss is also showing signs of becoming an important contributor off the bench.
Perennial champion Princeton, coached by former UConn star Carla Berube, is led by the formidable powerful rebounder and passer Ellie Mitchell and sharp-shooting guard Kaitlyn Chen. Both, from the standpoint of this Columbia partisan, are fortunately seniors. Madison St. Rose is another dangerous guard and she is only a sophomore.
(ESPN2 is televising all the Ivy League men's games from Levien. Sa Mar 16 at 11A, top-seeded defending champion Princeton plays the refreshing new blood from Brown, and at 2P Yale and Cornell tangle. The final will be on Su Mar 17 at noon.)
Division III basketball, neither men's nor women's, gets very little press or TV coverage, but coming up this Thursday Mar 14 at 730p is a titanic matchup of undefeated teams, the NYU Violets (29-0) versus the defending D-III champion Transylvania Pioneers (31-0) from Lexington, Kentucky. The Pioneers are carrying a 64-game winning streak into a game that will streamed on NCAA.com/game/6285164. (Smith from Northampton MA and Wartburg from
Waverly, Iowa, meet in the 5P semi-final but it seems likely that the true championship game will pit the Violets against the Pioneers.)
The last time NYU lost a game was to Transylvania in last year's Elite Eight, 73-69. It is a testimony to NYU's perseverance that they have remained a constant title contender even though they were without a home gym near campus for almost eight years - the new Paulson Center on Bleecker and Mercer Streets was finally opened for this season on the site of the demolished Coles Field House.
I had the pleasure last weekend of seeing the Violets ease into the Final Four with convincing victories over the Hardin-Simmons Cowgirls from Abilene, Texas and the University of Scranton Lady Royals. Before the first game of the Friday doubleheader, a Brass Quintet from the NYU music school gave a no-frills but stirring rendition of the National Anthem. They went two better before the Saturday final by delivering a septet version of the Anthem.
If you are wondering where I got the title for this blog, it came from the saying on Scranton's warm-up T-shirts: "Every Rep Every Drill Every Time".
The slogan worked well on Friday when they eliminated the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays from Baltimore.
The Royals needed more than a slogan on Saturday when they tangled with NYU. After a tight first period, NYU pulled away to a 14-point half-time lead and eased their way to a 73-55 victory.
Confident coach Meg Barber, a 2002 NYU graduate now in her 6th at the helm, is proud of her squad's versatility on offense and defense. Don't blame her when she can send out such potent front court players as shot-blocking whiz senior Natalie Bruns; graduate transfers point guard Megan Bauman and forward Morgan Morrison; and sharpshooting junior guard from Mendham NJ Belle Pellecchia.
Once again you can stream the game Th Mar 14 at 730P on ncaa.com/game/6285164. And here's one more shout-out to NY metro area teams having great seasons: The Fairfield Stags (yes, a women's team named Stags!) went 20-0 in MAAC conference play as they head to their conference tourney and beyond. The Sacred Heart Pioneers, winners of the Northeast Conference, are also heading to playoffs with dreams of more March Madness and beyond.
And here's an idea to broaden women's basketball interest. How about all you teams with Pioneers nicknames start a contest to come up with more original and livelier names. Say you heard the idea here.
More on baseball and movies and music next time. But I wanted to give women's hoops deserved love. Here's to good health for every team and some great competition ahead. And as always, stay positive, test negative, and take it easy but take it.