SBN Links: Lady Vols Face UK In SEC Finals, Nikki Caldwell Makes More UCLA History & BEast Bias

It’ll be no sooner than 5-10 years or so, so Bruins fans can enjoy her coaching for a while.

Of course I myself am biased, but who needs to go home and away against the best teams when you have so damn many good teams to choose from? Besides, Notre Dame might have several… more colorful words for that theory.

I’m starting to think their is West Coast bias. Hip Hops wars is being replaced by WBB wars.

I will give you West Virginia should not be ranked. But the Big East is as competitive in the middle as any league in the country. Our 8th place team beat those Lady Vols that are thinking the SEC is getting the shaft.

I had left West Virginia out of my last bracket update but replaced them a couple of days ago. Why? I coulfn’t fill a bracket, which was also Creme’s point. 4-6 over their last 10 but you have to have the best teams and WVU is one of the best.

16 teams is awful and way too many. But unless you divide the league and not play everyone every year, you are stuck. There are 4 “GIve me” games in the Big East. There are 5 “Give me” games in the SEC, leaving you 7 competitive teams, SEC country needs to stop their whining and look to improve the bottom half of their weak league.

but since I wrote the Anatomy of a Bracketology Prejudice I might as well chime in.

The piece was a specific attack on Charlie Creme of ESPN and his bracketology wherein he pushes for 10 teams to be included in the field of 16. The results are now in and he was ONLY 9 tenths right. So the question is: Does Creme and ESPN have undue influence over the selection committee and is that detrimental to the other major conferences.

Much has been said and debated on this situation on The SUmmiTT in this Thread . There is a wealth of information here to support the argument. And now we can carry that argument further with the predictions by ESPN “experts” following the Monday night bracket show. Specifically Charlie Creme who predicts that Notre Dame will defeat Tennessee as the only non one seed in the final four. He is joined by Melanie Jackson in picking UConn as the champion, the inclusion of Skyler Diggins of Notre Dame’s weblog, A Charlie Creme piece on the great guards in the Dayton region that does not even mention UT"s Meighan Simmons – high scorer on the Lady Vols and not one ESPN analyst picking Tennessee to prevail as Nation Champ despite the depth and longest current win streak in WCBB.

ESPN is in Bristol some 17 miles from Hartford and 44 miles from Storrs. Folks there attend the games at Gampel and the XL Center, have friends and neighbors with kids at UConn and generally have the same affection for their state U as most employees of any company located in or near an excellent college sports program.

ESPN is the voice and view of WCBB. They broadcast most of the games and have by far the dominant web presence in the sport. Any selection committee member or any coach or writer who votes in the polls has to be influenced by Creme, Melanie Jackson, Rebecca Lobo, and Doris Burke. Even former Lady Vol Kara Lawson has been influenced to favor Big East teams in her AP voting since she lives and works at ESPN and the Connecticut Sun. 18 of the 40 AP voters are from Big East markets as opposed to 4 in SEC markets.

ESPN is to UConn women’s basketball as Fox News is to the Tea or Republican parties. – a totally biased source of information. So does that bias have an undue influence on rankings and the selection process for the tournament. and recruiting? It is difficult to predict what the difference in scheduling does to conference records. A couple of the mid level Big East teams played the 6 bottom teams in the league and either Seton Hall or Cincy twice. That’s an almost automatic 7 wins. If a favorable draw gives either Syracuse, St John’s, Louisville Marquette or West Virginia the other teams in that group at home it makes for an excellent chance at a very good record since it results in losses to say UConn, Notre Dame and DePaul and wins vs Seton Hall, Cincy, Nova and South Florida on the road and wins vs the other’s at home.

Of course PAC 10 teams get to beat the Washington and Oregon teams home and away for 8 wins but they also get to lose to Stanford, UCLA, and ASU for 6 losses. What they don’t get is the constant hype from Creme, Burke Lobo and Jackson. Stanford beat UConn, UCLA won at Notre Dame, Arizona State beat DePaul, and Cal beat Rutgers, but the PAC 10 is the worst major conference according to ESPN. How does that mesh with the record?

SB Nation is a good place to launch an effort to review what we read and hear from ESPN to quantify the bias in the only media that really covers the sport nationwide. After several years of devoting significant time to study of the WCBB game and ESPN I am certain that the bias exists to the detriment of every conference except the Big East and that influence is bearing fruit as more young talent is drawn to the Big East because of that influence.

This is beyond the charge that ESPN provided a private tour to Maya Moore and her mother when they visited UConn and that visit helped to cement her decision to sign up with Geno. Not many of us care enough about WCBB to observe this situation in detail. I have and I am certain that the bias and influence are an increasing element in the favor of UConn and the Big East in this sport.