NCAA: General
The Top 100 Programs in Division I Women's College Basketball: #1-10
And now, we're in the Royal Court of women's college basketball. The programs listed here are dominated by two programs that have won the bulk of the hardware in the NCAA over the last thirty years. Nearly very single team listed here is not merely a significant competitor, but a significant contributor to the history of women's basketball.
The Top 100 Programs in Division I Women's College Basketball: #11-25
We're on the fourth day of our rundown of the best programs in NCAA Division I women's basketball. What all of the programs on the list below have in common is that they've had a great deal of success either recently or just a handful of years back - but usually not both.
This is also is the part of the list where the mid-major programs disappear. Above the #15 spot, all of the programs listed here are from the six major conferences: the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pacific Ten (soon to be Twelve), and Southeastern Conferences. These conferences generally have the money to hire the best coaches, the money to spend on facilities and in some cases, those conferences have their own television sports networks.
The Top 100 Programs in Division I Women's College Basketball: #26-40
We continue with the next level of programs. Most of the programs on this part of the list are fairly well known and can usually be expected to appear somewhere on either the weekly ESPN or AP polls. They're either listed somewhere near the bottom, or can usually be found in the small print, gathering a few votes here and there. They are usually well-known programs that have had some recent setbacks, or less familiar programs that are on their way up.
The Top 100 Programs in Division I Women's College Basketball: #41-70
This post is number two of a five-post series on the best programs in women's college basketball. Yesterday, we looked at the teams that were ranked #71-#100 on the list, this time we look at the next thirty teams on the list.
The Top 100 Programs in Division I Women's College Basketball: #71-100
If you think about it, it doesn't take much to call yourself one of the best college programs in women's basketball. If you went to the NCAA tournament last year, you could say that. If you went to the WNIT you could stake a claim. Even if your program went to the WBI - the Women's Basketball Invitational - with a sub-.500 record, you could point at them as "up and coming".
For that matter, all a school has to do is point at any record of past success - some past success which might be decades old - and a team can stake a claim as one of the greats. But which teams are great programs now? What kind of programs have a record of success where an honest claim could be made to be a top NCAA Division I women's program?
The proposed list of the top 100 teams is an attempt to sort the contenders from the pretenders. There are programs here on the way up, and programs on the way down. There are programs on the list that have had coaches with decades-long tenures and some coaches which have been with their schools three years or less. Some of the programs are annual contenders and some on the list have made their first appearances in the post-season only in the 21st century.
So which schools have the best women's programs in Division I? Get ready to begin the debate. Let's take a look at the programs in the 71-100 range - the programs which are short of serious consideration but which are definitely better than average.
The Future of NCAA Women's Basketball: Austin Murphy and Conference Realignment
The May 3rd edition of Sports Illustrated had an interesting article from Austin Murphy regarding the realignment of the major conferences. The article focused on the changes in the college football landscape, as the money making (*) sport and the sport that gets the most attention in college sports is college football.
Over the past twenty years, conferences changing their membership lists should be no surprise. Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1990, expanding the conference to 11 teams (and giving the conference a rather inaccurate name). In 1991, Arkansas and South Carolina joined the Southeastern Conference. Two years later, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor abandoned the Southwest conference to join the (former) Big Eight, spelling the beginning of the end for the Southwest Conference. The Atlantic Coast Conference picked up Florida State in 1991 and then raided the Big East in 1994, spiriting away Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College out of the Big East.
Currently, college sports is ruled by the six BCS (Bowl Championship Series) conferences: the ACC, the Big East, the Big Ten, the Big Twelve, the Southeastern Conference and the Pacific (Pac 10). However, if one read the above paragraph, you'd recognize that conference alignments are never fixed. The SI article gets underway with a mention of Jim Delany, the Big Ten commissioner, who mentioned that the "timing is right" for an expansion in twelve to eighteen months.
One rule in collegiate sports is that if football drives conference realignment, the other sports will have to follow. This includes our favorite sport, women's basketball. The article mentions three possible expansion scenarios, each with increasing impact on the sport scene.
The 2010 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship: What Houston, TX Ratings Show
Recently, I obtained some Nielsen data regarding the 2010 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship. I thought the championship rematch between Connecticut and Stanford was a disappointing game, and my conclusion was this would be reflected in the Nielsen ratings for the game. I knew that hour-per-hour Nielsens were available, and that those ratings or shares would reflect those of a disappointing game - high numbers at first, and then falling thereafter.
What I forgot was that I had an insider who could look up television ratings. Unfortunately, the only ratings the insider could get me were from Dallas and Houston. I received a set of Houston ratings and hopefully, I'll get the ratings from Dallas soon.
The data I have is Live+SD, Live+3 and Live+7. All of these numbers represent a time range from the original air date of the program, since Nielsen understand that many people these days will record a program on their DVR and watch it later. "Live+SD" reflects televisions where either the game was watched as it aired, or was recorded plus watched on the same day. The +3 and +7 designations extend this viewing window up to +3/+7 days after the game was recorded. Since the numbers are roughly the same, I'll be using the Live+SD (seen live or on the same day) numbers.
Here is the quarter-hour data for Houston, Texas for the Connecticut-Stanford game. The game started at 7:30 pm central time, and 7 pm begins the lead-in to the show.
And the streak rolls on...
78-0 - Connecticut's streak to all-time winningest team just keeps on rolling. Even after a miserable first half in the national championship game and taking a deficit into the locker room, UConn found a way to dominate the second half and notch back-to-back perfect seasons for the first time ever in women's college basketball.
This morning, Oklahoma head coach Sherri Coale was asked on an Oklahoma City radio station if the streak was good for the sport of women's basketball. Her candid response might surprise a few of you.
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