Category: NCAAW

Fans ripped the NCAA for bragging about the updated weight room at women’s tournament

This back-patting effort isn’t right.

While the NCAA is working to correct the major discrepancies between the men’s tournament bubble in Indianapolis and the women’s bubble in San Antonio, teams and their fans are still rightfully angry that this is even an issue.

Simply, the women’s teams have received unequal and subpar treatments.

One of the biggest inequalities was in the weight room, highlighted by strength and performance coaches for the women’s teams, including Stanford’s Ali Kershner. They also noted that their teams’ access to improved equipment would happen after they make it to the Sweet 16.

Saturday, ESPN’s Holly Rowe explained how the facilities in the women’s tournament bubble work and what recent upgrades have been made since the masses voiced their outrage, especially after one of the NCAA’s excuses was a lack of space.

Still, the NCAA failed the women’s tournament teams in so many ways, and then it tried to brag about the latest upgrades to the women’s bubble.

Between the “Let’s gooooo” and the exclamation point, the tone of this back-patting tweet is all wrong. It makes it seem like this was the plan for the women’s teams the whole time and the equipment was just delayed a bit.

And college basketball ripped the NCAA apart for it’s too-little, too-late response.

https://twitter.com/JJSullinger/status/1373333835467866113?s=20

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Dick’s Sporting Goods is offering to bring gym equipment to the women’s NCAA Tournament

Which begs the question: Did the NCAA ask for help before the tournament?

For reason that are not real and do not deserve to even be heard, the NCAA gave women’s basketball players living in the San Antonio tournament bubble a gym setup that … would not even be good enough for any single person, let alone a several dozen elite athletes.

A coach with the Stanford women’s team noticed the discrepancy between what her team had to work with compared to the vast, fully equipped men’s gym in Indianapolis and went public, sparking a national conversation.

The NCAA blamed the paltry setup on limited space (players quickly showed there was plenty of room) but said it was working to fix the situation.

Dick’s Sporting Goods is here to help!

I’m about as cynical as anybody when it comes to brands, and this is clearly a brand noticing a chance for good publicity. So why am I giving them the publicity they seek? Because I think if the NCAA had just tried, Dick’s — or many other companies — probably would have helped earlier.

In fact, here’s Orange Theory basically saying as much:

We’ve catalogued all the inequities that players at the women’s tournament have had to fight through in recent days, and the more I think about this situation the more angry I get because it just sort of seems like maybe the NCAA didn’t even try.

Lining up a partner to provide some gym equipment for an event like the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament should not be that difficult. That’s incredible exposure for any company. Finding restaurants or catering companies to deliver real food at reasonable prices doesn’t seem like too much to ask, either.

The tournament isn’t the usual economic engine it is for the host city due to limited fans, but it’s still a big deal. There should still be ample local support. And we’ve all lived through a pandemic for a year, we’re accustomed to things not being what they once were. And we’ve tried to adapt.

It seems as though the adaptation for the women’s basketball tournament was taking the easiest way out. That’s why this is all so appalling: Things got a little complicated and the NCAA quickly turned to treating the less-lucrative tournament like an afterthought.

Dawn Staley eviscerates Mark Emmert and the NCAA over shabby treatment of women’s basketball

Dawn Staley eviscerates Mark Emmert and the NCAA over shabby treatment of women’s basketball

“What we now know is the NCAA’s season long messaging about ‘togetherness’ and ‘equality’ was about convenience and a soundbite”

Dawn Staley put together a basketball career as good as anyone over the last few decades. She was twice national player of the year in college, won two Olympic Gold medals, had six All-Star seasons in the WNBA on her way to being voted one of the top 15 players in the history of the league by fans and is in multiple halls of fame.

After her playing career she turned to coaching, dominating at Temple before taking over South Carolina and building it into one of the country’s top programs and winning the national title in 2017.

When Dawn Staley speaks, people should listen.

And on the issue of the NCAA’s unthinkably shabby treatment of women’s basketball teams and players this year … Dawn Staley has really spoken.

The paragraph that sticks with me here — that makes me more sure than I was before that NCAA President Mark Emmert should shuffle away and disappear forever — is this:

What we now know is the NCAA’s season long messaging about “togetherness” and “equality” was about convenience and a soundbite for the moment created after the murder of George Floyd.

She’s absolutely right, of course. I’ve been writing about the NCAA’s hypocrisy for a long time, but even I’m shocked by this. I didn’t think the organization would fail to at least pretend it cared about the women’s game. The NCAA has always chased the money, but it at least knew there was a charade to uphold for the sake of public perception.

Yet here we are. Hemal Jhaveri put together an exhaustive list of all the ways the NCAA has made it clear they view women’s basketball players as second-class citizens. Please read it. 

Let me intercept your lousy logic before you can even get it out there: Nothing about the difference in revenue generated by these events justifies any of this. There’s plenty of money to go around, and creating equal opportunities for athletes is supposedly one of the guiding principals of the NCAA. It’s supposedly one of the reasons players in the men’s tournament can’t get paid; that money supports other sports!

But of course that’s just a convenient justification. The truth is plain for all to see. The NCAA thinks women’s basketball players should just be happy they even get to have a tournament. That’s the clear message here.

College athletes are waking up to the exploitation inherent in this system, edging every closer to dramatic action. Meanwhile, the NCAA slow plays all the various movements to get athletes the rights to their name, image and likeness. It also continues to make absurd arguments as the Supreme Court prepares to consider the matter of compensating college athletes:

Only an organization fighting imminent change it is powerless to stop could flail and fail as badly as the NCAA has in recent days. It’s a clear sign that the power brokers in college sports are hanging on and getting out what they can while they can.

All the ways the NCAA has failed its Women’s March Madness teams

All the ways the NCAA has failed its Women’s March Madness teams

The NCAA has never prioritized the health and safety of its athletes and yet every level seems like a new low.

It’s not just the weight room.

On Thursday afternoon, Ali Kershner, the performance coach at Stanford, posted a jarring image of the workout facilities that the women’s NCAA tournament teams had access to compared to the men. The men, who are in Indianapolis, had a giant room equipped to the gills while the women, who are in San Antonio, had one rack of dumbbells and a stack of yoga mats.

Kershner’s pictures went viral and, bowing to public pressure, the NCAA released a weak statement blaming the lack of equipment on “limited space.”

That frail excuse was debunked just as quickly, as Oregon player Sedona Prince showed in her viral TikTok.

The weight room sparked such outrage not because people have grown accustomed to men and women receiving the same treatment, but because the discrepancy was so outrageous and so obvious, it was a slap in the face.

And yet, that wasn’t even the most glaring example of the unequal treatment between the men and the women during the NCAA tournament. As news of the weight room made its way through social media, other stories started to emerge.

First, the food.

Here’s a side-by-side of images taken from Prince’s TikTok, and from a tweet posted by Alan Bishop, Director of Sports Performance for Men’s Basketball at University of Houston, of the food that men and women are getting.

At the least, the dining experince for the men certainly looks better.

Also noteworthy, the difference in the swag bags.

It may seem like a minor thing, but the amount and quality of free goods sent to the athletes shows where the priorities of the organization lie, and it’s not in making the women feel welcome. As people pointed out on social media, the NCAA was so petty that the puzzles included for the men had 500 pieces, while the women got ones with only 150 pieces.

It’s absurd but the real insults keep going.

As The Athletic pointed out, the NCAA also refused to make allowances for child care for coaches during the tournament, which primarily effects the female coaching staff of women’s teams.  The NCAA will offer no childcare stipend, and for mom’s who choose to bring their breastfeeding children, that child counts against the team’s traveling party.

These choices are utterly thoughtless and negatively impact women the most.

Finally, there are the COVID tests. As first reported by Amanda Christovich, the NCAA is using PCR tests for men’s teams and daily antigen tests for the women’s teams.

The PCR tests are often called the ‘gold standard’ of COVID testing. According to the FDA, “antigen tests are very specific for COVID-19, but are not as sensitive as molecular PCR tests. This means that there is a higher chance of false negatives than with many molecular tests.”

NCAA President Mark Emmertn told USA TODAY he wouldn’t get into a debate over testing.

“I’m not a medical expert so not going to get into a debate about PCR and antigen. All the health experts said the protocol that we’re using in all of our venues and all of our championships has no different at all in terms of our ability to mitigate risk,” Emmert said.

The difference in COVID testing are the starkest and most brutal reminder of all the other ways the NCAA has failed its female athletes during the tournament.

The weights, the food, the swag bags were all surface level markers that showed how little the NCAA cared about the women, but the different COVID tests are irrefutable proof of who and what the organization values.

The NCAA has never prioritized the health and safety of its athletes, which is why so many athletes have chosen to speak up via the hashtag, #NotNCAAProperty, yet every new level they sink to seems like an unexpected low.

In the end, all the NCAA does is reap the financial rewards from the hard work of unpaid athletic laborers, who have long tried to make their voices and concerns heard.

This is the latest example of their utter callousness, lack of thought and fierce allegiance to a financial bottom line that enriches no one but themselves. This is not just about the women getting the very short end of the stick, but shows the lack of care, gratitude and respect the organization actually has for its female athletes.

What’s happening inside the women’s tournament is an absolute disgrace, and one that just adds to the long list of the NCAA’s embarrassments.

The NCAA tournament’s women’s basketball “weight room” is laughable compared to the men’s

The men get an actual weight room, the women get…yoga mats.

That women’s sports aren’t treated with the same priority as men’s is no surprise, but the latest example of unequal access within the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments is an absolute joke.

Ali Kershner, the performance coach at Stanford, highlighted the discrepancy in access to weight rooms and equipment between the women and the men on social media. In an Instagram post, Kershner showed side-by-side shots of the men’s fully equipped weight room, and literally the one rack of dumbbells and yoga mats that the women have access too.

“@ncaawbb @ncaa @marchmadness this needs to be addressed. These women want and deserve to be given the same opportunities,” she wrote.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkRJ2LswFp/?utm_source=ig_embed

Her concerns were backed up by other NCAA women’s strength coaches, who further showed that the women have access to basically nothing until they make it to the Sweet 16.

“Same sport. Same national tournament. Same number of teams. Wbb only has access to 1 stationary bike and a “weight pyramid” for the first 2 rounds. WBB can’t use the weight room till the sweet 16. MBB has access to theirs right away,” Zack Zillner, Texas’ director of sports performance said.

Molly Binetti the performance coach for South Carolina said the weights they had access to also didn’t go past 50lbs, jokingly noting it was because women can’t lift more than that.

After being called out on social media, the NCAA’s vice president of women’s basketball Lynn Holzman blamed the mix up on “limited space.”

“We acknowledge that some of the amenities teams would typically have access to have not been as available inside the controlled environment. In part, this is due to the limited space and the original plan was to expand the workout area once additional space was available later in the tournament. However, we want to be responsive to the needs of our participating teams, and we are actively working to enhance existing resources at practice courts, including additional weight training equipment.”

Limited space huh?

Despite being treated so poorly, the teams are trying to make the best of it.

This is great, but the point is that they shouldn’t have to make the best out of a bad situation. Women’s sports already face an uphill battle in coverage and equitable funding, and this is just another slight from the NCAA.

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The NCAA will let athletes wear social justice messages on their jerseys but still won’t pay them

It’s time to change this.

The year is 2020 and the NCAA is still doing absolutely any and everything but paying the athletes.

The NCAA is allowing its student athletes to wear social justice messages on the backs of their jerseys throughout the upcoming college sports season, according to a report from The Athletic’s Shams Charania.

The NCAA’s new policy follows in the footsteps of different professional sports leagues who are allowing their players to do the same, including the WNBA, NBA and MLS.

The athletes will be able to replace their last name with words celebrating or memorializing people, events or other causes they support.

That’s a great thing! It’s nice to see the NCAA allowing these young athletes to support causes they feel strongly about on a big platform.

But. Question. Can they put “pay us” on the back of their jerseys? Because that absolutely falls under the umbrella, though it’s probably not a cause the NCAA sees as valid.

The NCAA is an organization worth billions and it’s all on the backs of these various student athletes who aren’t paid a dime for it. This initiative is beyond hypocritical.

The internet took the NCAA to task for it.

Yeah, the NCAA absolutely had this one coming. They can fix it, though. They just need to pay their athletes.

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UConn basketball players: ‘Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed’

“As a team we are hurting,” the players wrote in a statement.

UConn basketball players released a statement of solidarity on Sunday, expressing their support for people protesting racial injustice across the country and condemning police brutality.

For days, people nationwide have been protesting police violence and the deaths of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday after a white Minneapolis police officer held his knee on his neck for almost nine minutes; Breonna Taylor, who Louisville police shot and killed in her own apartment in March; and Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed while jogging in February. Protesters are demanding justice for those killed and the arrests of those involved.

The Huskies are among many in the sports world — although, not enough people — showing their support for anti-racism action “because we are tired of innocent black lives dying at the hands of police officers who do not care about our humanity,” they wrote, in part, in their statement. Like activists and other athletes, they also put the protests into a historical context to highlight that these protests are not solely about Floyd but also about “the 400 years of oppression that black people have been subjected to in America.”

Others who recently have spoken out against racial injustices and in support of protestors include Colin Kaepernick — who initially took a knee to peacefully protest police brutality and is now paying for protesters’ legal fees in Minneapolis — LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, JJ Watt and Joe Burrow.

Additionally, the UConn women’s team’s statement called out people who are not black and not vocal, describing their silence “the biggest betrayal right now.”

Here is their full statement:

As a team we are hurting. We feel responsible for speaking out and advocating for our black community and the injustices we face. Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed, and more people are becoming aware of the 400 years of oppression that black people have been subjected to in America.

We are nauseated by the social injustice and police brutality that is reoccurring toward the black community. So yes, we kneel during the national anthem. Yes, we are rioting. And yes, we are protesting because we are tired of innocent black lives dying at the hands of police officers who do not care about our humanity.

For those who are not black, silence is the biggest betrayal right now. The hardest part is watching our friends who are not of color not even question what is happening right now. It’s time for us to start preaching togetherness, justice, and love amongst one another.

We are proud to be a team made up of diverse women who will never stop pushing for the most basic human rights for our people. Standing up, fighting for what you believe in, and bringing attention to these injustices is the only way it will progress.

As a team, we are here. We are listening. We are woke.

#BlackLivesMatter

The Huskies’ powerful statement echoes similar sentiments expressed by those in sports who have spoken up.

San Jose Sharks left winger Evander Kane insisted white professional athletes, like Tom Brady and Sidney Crosby, to utilize their platforms to fight systematic racism. Eric Reid and Steve Kerr were among the many who called out Vice President Mike Pence’s hypocritical statement about peaceful protests. Boston Celtics player Jaylen Brown marched with protesters in Atlanta on Saturday. Borussia Monchengladbach striker Marcus Thuram took a knee on the field after scoring a goal in a Bundesliga match Sunday in an apparent statement of solidarity.

Report: NCAA to give some athletes another year of eligibility because of the coronavirus

Spring athletes who have had their seasons impacted by the coronavirus will get another year of eligibility.

A lot of dreams were dashed when the NCAA canceled the men’s and women’s March Madness tournaments because of the coronavirus, along with all other winter and spring sports championships.

The NCAA did the right thing by canceling them, but there were a lot of seniors who had their college careers end in an instant. Last year’s teams didn’t get a chance to defend their titles. This year’s teams didn’t get a chance to make a run.

That led for many people to call for the NCAA to add an extra year of eligibility for players who have been impacted by this situation. On Friday, the NCAA obliged, according to reports.

Spring sports athletes will get another year of eligibility. The NCAA is also looking into what to do with athletes who played in winter sports.

Twitter was absolutely delighted by the news.

This absolutely feels like the good and correct thing to do for the NCAA. However, there are definitely questions that still need to be answered surrounding it.

It’s unclear what this means for the scholarships promised to committed freshman for next season. We also need to know how this ripples down the college rosters — in other words, will this season’s freshman still be considered freshman next season? How does it work?

Those answers will come in due time. For now, though, it’s pretty great to know the seniors who dreamed of playing one last year can still get a chance to do so.

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Sabrina Ionescu made NCAA history just hours after speaking at Kobe Bryant’s memorial

Sabrina Ionescu made NCAA history Monday night.

On Monday morning Oregon star basketball player Sabrina Ionescu stood in front of a packed Staples Center crowd and spoke beautifully about her friends. Kobe and Gianna Bryant.

Then hours later she made NCAA history during the Ducks’ road win over Stamford in what was a battle between two top-5 women’s teams.

Ionescu, who met Kobe last summer and then spent time learning from the NBA legend while also teaching Gianna some moves, became the first player, man or woman, to reach 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds in NCAA Division I basketball history.

She also picked up her 26th career triple-double in the process.

What an awesome way to pay tribute Kobe and Gianna.

Here’s the historical moment:

What a day she had:

Now that is Mamba Mentality.

Kobe and Gianna would be very proud of their friend.

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UConn basketball honors Gianna Bryant, who dreamed of playing there

The UConn Huskies paid tribute to the late Gianna Bryant, daughter of Kobe, who wanted to one day play there.

Gianna Bryant, Kobe’s daughter, died tragically this weekend along with her father and seven others aboard a helicopter that crashed outside Los Angeles.

She was 13.

Gianna was a budding basketball star. Her father coached her, and talked often about her winning mentality, as well as her evolving game. Gianna’s goal was to play for UConn, a goal that she and her father were working toward.

On Monday night, the UConn women’s basketball team honored her by setting aside a jersey and flowers on the bench in her memory before their exhibition game against Team USA.

The stadium also showed a tribute to Kobe and Gianna on the video board.

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