NFL
By: Jeffrey Newholm
“I’ve changed my face, I’ve changed my name, but no one wants you when you lose.” Ouch! Those are harsh lyrics, but Peter Gabriel is right about defeat in sports. Thanks to several amazing athletes, the spotlight on women’s basketball is the brightest it’s ever been. But most of those athletes are far removed from their college glories. Tennessee hasn’t played in the final weekend since 2008, and even Uconn will be watching in Storrs for the first time since 2007. No time to cry for the rest of the hoops world, though, as four teams reach for the Walnut and Bronze championship trophy. Don’t think there’s much doubt considering South Carolina’s 36-0 record?
Remember Nike’s astute advice: if it all worked out the way it was “supposed to,” why would anybody play? By examining each of the four teams battling in Dallas for the Friday semifinals, even the casual women’s hoops fan (which will soon be everyone!) can understand the tremendous heart of four winning teams that, for a shining moment, each fan wants.
South Carolina
Wasn’t it frustrating (until Daniel Craig cleaned up the role brilliantly) how every James Bond movie was the same? Bond got into trouble, but we all knew it was just a prelude to a predictable escape.
Imagine, though, that Blofeld won in a thrilling upset. Not only won but took Bond’s place and started destroying the other characters in Bond’s stead.
That’s precisely the role the Gamecocks took in 2022.
After Uconn won its 11th national championship in 2016, the Huskies putzed around with subsequent losses. Surely, though, the dynamos would bounce back for another title.
Gamecock coach Dawn Staley and star Senior (and potential #1 WNBA pick) Aliyah Boston said: no. Heck, no.
SC won the 2022 title dominatingly, and the underrated SEC (golly, only half the spots in the Final Four?) rarely challenged the ascending program.
Friday, South Carolina battles an also tremendous Iowa Hawkeye program, seeking their third National Final. In the brilliant movie Letters from Iwo Jima, Japanese general Tadamichi Kuribayashi observed that “everything happens in threes.”
Hmmm, threes? Hold on a moment. Don’t the Hawkeyes know a fact about threes?
Iowa
True, some readers who are spectacularly excited about the men’s tournament may not know every player in the women’s big dance. There’s one name, however, that every hoops fanatic should know: Caitlin Clark.
Oh, come on, a skeptic may say. Who cares about women’s basketball?
Ok. Who is concerned about the Associated Press and Naismith player of the year?
Who needs to know about the woman with 11 career triple-doubles, including a 40-point trip-dub in the Elite Eight?
Gosh, pedestrian numbers for any basketball player. Not!
Clark’s most inspiring accomplishments aren’t her stats but her incredible shooting range. Even from the midcourt logo, where defenders never lurk, Clark is a downtown danger. True, Iowa could only earn a two-seed, as Stanford had a more robust regular-season résumé. But after Ole Miss downed the Cardinal and Clark’s Hawkeyes Buffaloed Colorado in the Sweet 16, Iowa’s momentum flight reached the farthest reaches of our great sphere’s atmosphere.
The storied Louisville Cardinals could only muster a feeble counterattack after a Clark blitz in the Elite Eight. For the first time since 1993, Iowa has reached the semifinals.
With Clark returning next year? 30 years seems a wee bit pessimistic for their return. However, Clark knows that tomorrow is promising but not promised. The savant has the game’s sternest target in her sight.
Want to bet on her to miss? Quick reminder: only wager what you can afford to lose.
But wait: that’s the nightcap, 9 pm eastern. What are we to do leading up to the main event?
Don’t worry: the undercard offers significant intrigue, with LSU matched with Virginia Tech at 7.
LSU
Kim Mulkey’s seen a win or two because she knows a fact or two. Make that a rather uncomfortable truth about her team’s quarterfinal tussle with Miami, where her Tigers could reach their first Final Four since their five straight appearances between 2004 and 2008.
“If I were watching this game,” she candidly barked to ESPN’s sideline reporter after the third quarter, “I’d turn this game off.”
Oh, no! What terrible advice for the embattled television network. Mulkey had a point: the Tigers’ battle against the nine-seed Hurricanes wasn’t the most incredible work of art in basketball history.
Sometimes, a team must win ugly should they wish to reach the Elysian Final Four Fields. LSU made every needed play in the final game minute (more like 20 minutes in real-world time) to earn a 54-42 triumph.
Some said the Tigers didn’t deserve their regular season glory due to an easy schedule. Yes, a 32-2 record must be so effortless to achieve!
One could observe that the Tigers are not quite ready to win the championship due to their lack of Final Four experience. That’s never been the University’s way, though, nor Mulkey’s. LSU is perhaps the sternest program in SEC history, once one considers the entire athletic department.
A Tiger doesn’t race for second place. Yet, it’s not a race without an opponent, and the stunning Hokies want to reach Friday evening’s checkered flag.
Virginia Tech
This just in: Team NBS Media heard a rumor that some fans like men’s basketball more than women’s.
By golly! That must make every hardworking women’s coach and mentor furious.
There is one leader, though, who seems unperturbed by adversity. One who shrugs off seven years of skepticism and scribes that argued that his Hokies were the least talented of the four #1 seeds.
Kenny Brooks desires no tomfoolery in the gym nor on the Twitterverse. VTU has work to do, and so far, no one’s stopped them.
Brooks, though, has probably heard the dreaded yeaaah but or two. The Hokies started 16-4? Yeaaah, but they hadn’t played their most challenging games yet.
(VTU wins all those games.)
#1 seed? Yeaaah, but they’re in the same region as Uconn.
(Ohio State blows out Uconn while VTU has no such troubles with Tennessee.)
Yeaaah, but the Buckeyes forced 25 turnovers against Uconn with a wicked press.
(Hokies handle press so well that OSU abandons it.)
While three men’s programs had to battle for their entire program’s history to reach this year’s Final Four, funny how the Hokies are the only women’s team who needed to take so long this season. But better late and correct, as any good journalist knows, than predicted too early and wrong.
And there’s nothing wrong about these Hokies or any of the four teams that are unquestionably the field’s best in 2023. Will the Gamecocks earn their third National championship?
Will Clark earn another piece of another net?
Or will the hungry Tigers or focused Hokies win their first rings?
For these four mighty programs, there’s no need to change faces, no desire to alter names. Only four regional champions desire another step up the staircase to unimaginable basketball glory.
