Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Of course we saw the championship game: right now we are trying to ruin women's basketball by not writing about it.

If you can't wait, here's some celebration from the Nutmeg State, and some joylessness from Cardinal-ville.

Here's Geno: ""I don't know how we're going to be able to go 39-0 next year. The only reason I say that is, if we win every game we play next year we'll be 40-0."

And here are some late thoughts I haven't seen elsewhere yet:

1. In the other two high-profile rematches in the NCAA tournament this year, the first-time losers won the second time round. But not this time, however it looked at the half.

2. When Stanford lost to UConn in December, the folks in dark red had just played Tennessee and Duke, Appel wasn't quite well, and the game was in Hartford.

When the Cardinal got beat again by Connecticut's epoch-making team, Jayne Appel was clearly in great pain; she made not a single field goal in 30 minutes on the floor.

UConn are the best team in the land, if not the best of all time-- they were really the best last year too-- on all the evidence available; but Cardinal fans will wonder for a long time what would have happened had the two teams met just once, this year, on a neutral court, with all players on both sides healthy at last.

(That said, Appel didn't look much worse at the end of the game, after colliding with Hayes and re-hurting her ankle, than she did at the start of the second half: it's the chronic ankle pain I'm talking about, which had her grimacing even before the collision-- she didn't look healthy matched up against Xavier, either.)

Mechelle has not one, not two, but three new columns related to UConn's big win.