The WNBA has many fine qualities and for the most part does a good job of maintaining and promoting the teams, games, and players. However, there are areas in which it could improve.

Now, most articles like this focus on things that cost money. Wouldn't it be great to pay salaries competitive with those in Europe, have the players flown on chartered jets, and have massive advertising blitzes during the NCAA tournament, and so on. The WNBA doesn't have tons of money, so today we're going to focus on things they can do that cost nothing.

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So often in sports the "big stars" and "big names" get all the attention, many fail to recognize the true heroes on the team aka: the unsung heroes. So I think it’s time we give these unsung heroes some love. I will start off by covering the East teams, since A is the first letter in the alphabet I will start off with the Atlanta Dream. Atlanta Dream: The dream has won the last two Eastern Conference championships. The undisputed star on the team is Angel McCoughtry. Angel is a great player and I can’t take anything from her because baby she is a star (wink, wink). We will also put Harding in the category, she does not really play like a star but she is extremely popular The Dream are a run and gun team, they run, run and then run some more. This is a fast break team, the fast breaks often start with a steal or a post player grabbing a rebound and hitting the outlet man. So with that said let’s get to the unsung heroes of the Dream. Atlanta Dream Unsung Heroes: Erika DeSouze and Sancho Lyttle Atlanta has two all-star post that are the cream of the crop as far as post players go. Erika is a bruising, powerful, rebounding force. No other post in the WNBA has such power. Getting an offensive rebound over DeSouze is an extremely difficult task and most post players don’t succeed. She is also an emotional leader on the court. If you have ever watched a Dream game you know what I mean, Erika can ignite a crowd with her passion and fiery approach to the game. Erika is also money inside, she backs down and over powers whoever tries to guard her. Having an inside post like this allows the wings to be freed up for open shots. Erika plays with a power not seen in the women’s game. Unfortunately Erika will be away with the Brazilian team prepping for the Olympics Sancho Lyttle is the other unsung hero on this team. She is not the bruising force that DeSouze is but she is a handful in her own right. Sancho is what you would call a pure athlete. She’s from the tiny Caribbean island St. Vincent and the Grenadines and did not pick up basketball until she was 18 while her U.S. counterparts picked up the game 9-10 years before she did. Sancho was not healthy for 90% of last season so her numbers were down. But her cat like reflexes and basketball smarts she managed to lead the league in steals. This is not something many post can do (outside of Lyttle and Parker) and does not. Lyttle also has developed a silky smooth shot away from the basket. Unfortunately Lyttle has not yet learned to stop shooting when the ball is not finding the bottom of the net but when she’s hot that shot is a thing of beauty. When 100% Sancho Lyttle is an amazing rebounder, and arguably the fastest post in the league. Unlike Erika and many of her teammates Sancho has a very calm approach to the game, very laid back, kind of like she’s on island time. Players and coaches for Atlanta have talked about her leadership abilities and the importance of them to the team’s success. They will also tell you she is money in the bank late when the game is on the line. Last year Lyttle hit two game winners and also sent a game into overtime. The only worry this season is how her body will hold up; she has to be the busiest woman in the WNBA over the last two years. She does not take any time off; will her body break down or hold up? Honorable Mention: Armitie Price Price is a hell of a defensive player but not much else, as funny as it sounds a shooting guard that can’t hit an outside shot to save her life. She defends and hits lay-up’s. I think that Price is in danger of losing her starting position that she just happened to fall into after Izzie started out slow. So there you have the Dream’s unsung heroes Erika and Sancho. Next up: Chicago Sky (All of these are my opinions) Follow Dream players Armintie , Sancho , Yelana, Ericka, Tiff Hayes, Angel and Harding on Twitter.

I have eight extra lower level tickets for the Mystics game against the Seattle Storm on Tuesday, June 26 at 7 PM that I would like to give away to the first folks who want to claim them. The game is in Verizon Center in Washington, DC.

I know this is a weekday game, that is still over a month away, but the Mystics will be playing a popular team, and it's summer vacation time for the kiddies. Still I'm doing this now so anyone who takes them can plan ahead. Washington is the best city to visit in the US of A, hands down. I lived here for my entire life and I still love touring the area. If someone wants to throw the Nats at me as a reason why he or she doesn't want to go (yes, I know the Nats are doing great this season so far and I want to see them do real well this year by the way), they are playing the Rockies in Denver that night.

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Over at Grantland, Bill Barnwell proposed a system for measuring an NFL player's performance as a draft pick. It's a very simple system that can easily be adapted for the WNBA.

Let's try it out and see how it looks!

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The 2012 WNBA draft ended the exact same way it had been projected to be all year: weak. With the lack of acknowledgement for the last several picks, this draft ended with a thud. With that being said, several teams made significant moves forward as well as a few team lying down and rolling back down the hill. I began to write this article strictly as an angry Phoenix fan, but I figured it would be in better taste to give an outlook on several teams that I thought either got significant pieces or missed the target completely.

Poll

Which team got the best of this draft?

32%

Los Angeles Sparks

17 votes

5%

San Antonio Silver Stars

3 votes

19%

Minnesota Lynx

10 votes

28%

Tulsa Shock

15 votes

13%

Another Team

7 votes

52 votes | Poll has closed

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Flashback to the 2005-06 season in girl's high school basketball in the state of Mississippi. The debate, at the time, was which of three teams: Meridian, Murrah and Clinton would come out on top in a talented 5A class. The best of the battles took place between Murrah and Clinton, which are located within 10 miles of each other in central Mississippi. Murrah, led by legendary coach Anna Jackson and Clinton by the extremely talented Felicia Lofton battled each other for supremacy in the capital city area. The teams played a remarkable four times; each team winning twice but with the total difference in all four games being 17 points, it seemed like this might have to come down to a pivotal fifth game if each team could find their way to the 5A state championship game at the "Big House.' That fifth game didn't come to fruition as Murrah lost in the semis to Meridian in a controversial game that still gets the blood boiling if you speak to players and dedicated fans from both sides.

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DENVER, Colo. - It's time to crown a new national championship. For Notre Dame, this is familiar territory of sorts. Only, this time instead of being considered the team to beat, the Irish enter with the underdog mentality.

"Last season everyone was saying how we were the team to beat and that Texas A&M was an easy win - they were a good team," Skylar Diggins told the media yesterday. "Now most people are putting us as the underdogs. They say things like, 'If anyone can beat them, it's Notre Dame', but they aren't calling us the favorites."

Those favorites are in the form of 39-0 and top-ranked Baylor.

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(Be warned- this is a FanPost in its truest form. I claim no neutrality, no analytic purpose, no informative content. Just entirely too much squee to cope with.)

This is never the post I want to write, because it's the last post, because it means that the ride's over and the line is seven months long. But it's the post that always has to be written, because I love my team and I appreciate what they've done, especially in this amazing season.

Every season is a wild ride. Don't let anyone fool you about that. Every year has its highs and its lows, the moments that make your breath catch and the moments that make you hold your breath, the things that make you pump your fists in the air and the things that make you raise your face to the heavens (sometimes even in the same game). But some years, some seasons, some teams, give you the highest highs and make the lows more complicated to bear- easier because you can be sure another high will come along, harder because the high is addictive and you want to see just how much higher they can go because you just know they can take it further.

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Making it to the Final Four is one big party, a parade of awards, a chance to play dress up, and get sized for rings. Pretty heady stuff. Too bad they still have to play the games. Stanford came up short in the semi-final game, losing to Baylor 59-47. Let’s face it, Stanford had the game plan, they just couldn’t execute on offense.

After much secrecy, ESPN reportors reported just before the tip off that Stanford would play a 54 defense against 6’8 Brittney Griner, who had won the Player of the Year Award the day before. To Stanford fans, this defense was not new, having seen it done to Cal and a couple other teams this year. It has five Stanford players surrounding the paint and the four better scorers and leave one Baylor player open. It worked for a half. Jordan Madden was the first victim to find herself surprisingly open. She missed a lot, going 2-8 for the half. Brittney Griner only had 7 points and went many minutes without touching the ball.

But Stanford could not hit on offense. They could not hit a three. Stanford’s standout player Nneka Ogwumike played away from the basket to pull Brittney Griner away from helping. When Stanford got some back door passes, it worked. When Nneka tried to shoot from out there, she missed. She also would have 7 points at the half. Freshmen three-point specialist Bonnie Samuelson was brought in off the bench and instantly hit a three. That would be her only one, although she popped a second one and the ref said she stepped out of bounds.

The half time score was 25-23 Baylor, and that was because Lindy LaRocque did not take care of the ball and it got stolen for a lay up. Stanford only had 4 turnovers against Baylor’s quick defense, but they lead to 8 points. That won’t win you games. When Stanford came out of the locker room at the half, they put Nneka back inside where she is most comfortable, which means she had to go right at Brittney Griner, and she did.

Nneka drove in and as she jumped, and Brittney jumped to block, Nneka flew in the air to the other side of the basket for a reverse lay up. Nneka went inside again and was fouled by Griner. Then the third time she attacked the basket and made a high bank shot. And like that she has 13 points. The fourth time she was blocked.

And then the wheels came off. No one else from Stanford was scoring. They stopped going back door. Stanford got it to 34-21 Baylor. Then Chiney got called for an illegal screen and her third foul. Nneka did a screen and SHE got called for an offensive foul.

Then Chiney got her fourth and then a short time later, her fifth at the 7:48 mark. Although, it wasn’t that big of a loss as she was ineffectual against Griner inside. She could hardly rebound, and she certainly didn’t get any put-back points. She would leave the game with just 4 points. But at that point, the game was not lost, if someone else could step up and make threes. Jos Tinkle, who has a steady hand the latter part of the season, only scored 2 points and missed all three of her three-point attempts.

Stanford was limiting Brittney Griner, but now Jordan Madden and a bench player by the name of Terran Condrey were making their shots. If you would have said to Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer that Brittney Griner would get one field goal in the second, half, and Nneka would lead all scores with 22, AND Stanford would win the block-battle with 5 team blocks to Brittney Griner's 2, she would have thought the game was in the bag.

But no one, not even Baylor counted on Madden scoring 9 and Condrey scoring 13. Baylor point guard Odessey Simms had a better second half, scoring 11 for the game. And Tara would not have liked Stanford going 2-17 from three-point land. And the fact everyone else not named Ogwumike combined for 21 points.

Like we said, the game plan was there, but the other players did not step up and score. The second half ended 59-47, and like that, Stanford’s stellar season was done.

Yes, it was stellar season. That was only their second loss, going 39-2 for the year. They made it to the Final Four. Nneka was in the running for Player of the Year. She got to share this amazing journey with her sister Chiney. She sometimes single-handly put Stanford on her back and won games by herself. It was as much fun to watch as it must have been for Nneka and Chiney to share, and the other Stanford team members to experience.

Although they did not win a championship, we will always remember this season with joy. Congratulations to the coaching staff, players and support system of Stanford on a great year!

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AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR.
The pinnacle awaits.

It's everywhere here in Denver. On the Pepsi Center. Downtown. On the media guide cover and in-game graphics.

"The Four" as it were will meet up today beginning with the battle of the Big East as Notre Dame and Connecticut tip off for the fourth time this season. Can Kelly Faris show up and show up big? Will Skylar Diggins get the Irish back to the championship game for the second year in a row?

The nightcap here in Denver features No. 1 and No. 2 in all the polls as the Baylor Lady Bears continue to keep their undefeated record intact on the quest for a 40-win season. Can Brittney Griner and Odyssey Sims be neutralized? Can the Ogwumike tandem continue the Cardinal's season?

Who gets to the elusive pinnacle of the 2012 NCAA women's basketball season?

Game notes: Connecticut | Notre Dame | Stanford | Baylor