Tennessee/Stanford women's basketball vs. Men

Where would the best NCAA women's basketball team rank as a men's team? A colleague and I debated this tonight. I say they'd be like a very small college -- NAIA or D-III -- or a good (but not necessarily great) high school team. He says they'd be better than that -- maybe a below average D-II team.

Personally, I think some enterprising businessperson ought to arrange a pay-per-view game between the women's champ and a boys/men's team of some caliber (that can't happen, I know, because of amateur rules and such. But still...). Maybe Tennessee (i'm assuming they go on to win) vs. the NAIA men's champ, whoever that is. With proper marketing, I think that would be a good seller.

 

I think a lot of it would depend on the style of the women's team.
A team who pounds it inside wouldn't have much success. Think about this -- a 6-4 woman is a beast. A 6-4 guy is not. How would you even get the ball inside to a 6-4 girl with 6-10 guys down there?
So now, you've got matchups where the guys probably average about six inches taller. That is a huge difference.
Thus I think a women's team that had a lot of sharp shooters and finesse would do a lot better than one that tried to attack the basket, draw fouls, rebound, etc.

 

This is stolen from another board, D3hoops.com, of which I'm a member. If it outs me, it outs me...I'm not sure I'm really worth knowing. But I've had this conversation before many times... here's my comparison between men and women's basketball. This is a couple years old and I didn't feel like editing it a ton, so bear with me.

#1. Back in my first year of college, when I attended Penn State, I attended a fare number of D-1 women's games. Kelly Mazzante was at least a 2-time (maybe 3-time) All-American guard who ended up as the leading scorer in Big Ten basketball (which is a whole other argument for another time that included Bob Knight's thoughts on women's basketball). But, I would cheer for Kelly and the Lady Lions and they were good. However, in that entire time, I never thought that Mazzante, the leading scorer in the nation, would ever get a shot up against a more physical, quicker and stronger male defender.

#2. A few years later, I saw this played out on the open gym floors of Schuckman Court at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana (where I was a scrub player). Former Indiana Miss Basketball April McDivitt, of Connersville, was preparing to try out for the New York Liberty. McDivitt played three years as a starter at Tennessee before having a falling out with Coach Summitt and transferring to Long Beach State. So, McDivitt would play against some of the Earlham guys, and other former Richmond High School players, who were still in the area. Often, McDivitt was matched up against Tyler Stewart, the senior guard for the Quakers. She held her own handling the ball against him, but was never able to penetrate or get good shots off with him guarding her. Now, I agree that Tyler is one of the more underrated perimeter defenders in the NCAC, but this was the former starting point guard at perennial power Tennessee. Conversely, Stewart, who averages about 5 points a game this year, was able to post up McDivitt at will and score whenever he chose. That was the clearest indication to me that D-3 men would destroy D-1 women.

 

They would be destroyed by any men's DI team.

 

Fixed.

 

I remember when UConn first blew onto the scene with Rebecca Lobo and Jen Rizzotti and were practicing against like intramural guys. Some guy blocked shot by Lobo -- the all everything best women's player remember -- so hard that the ball smashed into her face and broke her nose.

Guys are just bigger, stronger. There's no way.

 

But the women work just as hard and they play with better fundamentals.......

Fixed

 

You know, I actually agree with that statement.
I'm not saying women would do any better against men than you are, but I do think they work just as hard and are better at the fundamentals.
Part of that is that almost none can dunk, so they have to be able to make jump shots more often. They spend their time working on that instead of trying a new 360.

 

The idea that women have better fundamentals is laughable.

However, they do work just as hard.......but that doesn't mean we have to cover them......

 

Well, I don't want to turn this into a contest, but I've covered both at the D-I level extensively. In general, D-I women have better fundamentals than D-I men in my opinion. They also have a better attitude.
You don't have to cover anything.

 

You walked right into that one, Demo. Zagoshe hates women's basketball. It's best to ignore him.

 

I hate ignoring people. I tend to believe most people are reasonable (and I'm not saying Zag isn't, necessarily) and can make logical arguments for what they assert.
Of course, sometimes that leads to feeding trolls, but I've also seen some great discussion come of it, even with those others label trolls.