Staley's gals now consensus #1 - and Sharpe's HoF presser comments ...

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Still gotta go to Kentucky and Connecticut.

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Kentucky will depend on the refs. If you see the blonde chick with the ponytail count on a win for the Cocks. If you see that same chick as the ref at the Uconn game expect a worse ref situation than the Duke game. While she seems to strongly dislike UK she loves, loves, loves the Uconn team. Uconn wins at home for multiple reasons one being the refs assist them on the games in question.

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She was one of the refs up at Duke.

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Impossible, she was at the UK @ UL game in Louisville when the USC @ Duke game was going on. She tried hard to give the game to Louisville till the second half when the other 2 refs started calling fouls for UK so the numbers were not so lopsided.

I think I know who you had tho. Think of the two of them as Thing 1 and Thing 2 or 1 and 1A in terms of their love for Uconn. The one I think you got also likes the ACC teams and really liked Notre Dame when Diggins was there. Diggins would make blatant fouls and ended the game with like 1 or 2 fouls. I think that is the chick who did not call fouls on Simms when she was at Baylor either.

Neither are bad looking but have always appeared to be card carrying rug munchers. I think the one at the UK / UL game is the one who likes to be more dramatic for the TV cameras. Neither seem to like SEC schools - even Tennessee - yet both seem to get to call all kinds of SEC games. Never have understood this.

Yeah that is Thing 2 (Karen Preato) . Thing 1 (Dee Kanter) was in Louisville that day and her blonde ponytail is more brassy. Here she is trying to give MM a technical till his assistant pulled him back.



Dawn is lucky she just got 1 technical. When they play Ucon expect 2 and the ejection if she is laying the wood to Uconn @ Uconn. They really do not like to lose in that place.

Here they are together calling last years ACC tournament. Surprise surprise (think Jim Nabors in Gomer Pyle) that Notre Dame and Duke made it to the championship game last spring!


I am pretty sure many fans have desired to go all Tanya Harding on those 2.

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How they are getting away with what you are describing is crazy

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TL;DR summary : ESPN gets what they want and the NCAA turns a blind eye.

I think it all starts with ESPN and what they want. They needed Uconn and the ACC back in the beginning when the primary conferences (B1G, Big 8, PAC, SEC, and SWC) were all tied to the Big 3 (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and cable was in infancy. Like any infant they needed food all the time in the form of content and Bristol and the ACC provided it. Before long the folks in front of (and more importantly behind it) were kids hired right out of the east and the ACC footprint.

Now ESPN is full grown but the young kids have now gown into old executives and they run the shop. It creates much homerism wether it is intentional or not. The bigger problem is when it starts affecting sports and how it gets covered. Pat stopped playing Geno because he was using ESPN to recruit his players. Clearly this should be an issue for the NCAA but they just turn a blind eye because it is ESPN. You got a slice of it in your game but what you might have missed was the leading scorer against you.

The leading Duke scorer against the Cocks was Rebecca Greenwell. Rebecca was born and raised in KY where she played her high school ball and for all 4 years she was staying in the state. Seems simple as the state had 3 top flight women's teams in UK, UL, and WKU and she was about an 80% lean UK with UL as her 2nd choice. Both schools are basketball schools and both can draw around 20K for a women's game which puts them in the top for national attendance each year. Rebecca never had Duke on her radar those 4 years then word hits the grapevine she travels to ESPN and out of the blue she signs with Duke. it is like ESPN pushing Uconn the same way over Tennessee. It has already repeated the cycle for next year. #5 recruit for 2015 was between UK, UL, and PU yet somehow Duke comes out of nowhere and she signs with Duke at the end. I am willing to bet she made a trip to the ESPN shop in NC and it affected her final decision.

The irony in all this is for women's basketball to grow they need to feed maybe 12 to 24 teams to grow a national base. Case in point was the UK @ UL game this weekend.[ Big rival game + usually close every year + draws some of the biggest live crowds in the sport + both teams are usually Top 10 when they play]. It should have been on ESPN somewhere yet all it got was ESPN3. Game went back and forth and the crowd was into it and it ended when UK took the lead very late to win it. Top it off with the fast style of play and it makes great TV except it was not on TV. No offense to the Cocks, but instead you get a game @ Duke where they barely sold 6,000 seats (and I am guessing the Cocks had a hand getting that high of a number) and broadcast the sh*tshow of a ref job and I am certain ESPN was not happy Cocks beat their beloved Duke.

Instead ESPN has chosen to concentrate on just 4 teams or so and they push them non stop even if the fans across the country don't want to see it. They did the same thing with men's basketball back in the 80's and 90's especially in the heyday of Billy Packer acting as shil for the ACC and UNC specifically. Stanford has probably one of the Top 4 programs out there but last year they were on ESPN all of 1 game! If you followed WBB outside of the Cocks you are aware they slobber knocked all over Skylar Diggins while she was at Notre Dame yet for the 4 years she played there they never once made it public that Diggins was a paid intern for ESPN in the summer. I only found out when it dropped in a conversation with some ESPN folks I know that cover games. How will the SEC recruit when the ESPN recruits for specific schools outside the SEC?

When they did not build a studio in the SEC footprint for the SECN I said it would be a bad thing for SEC recruiting and exposure outside of football. Moving Host (media) out of KY and CLC (merchandise) out of AL to the ACC footprint was a bad thing. I mean how often does the much smaller company in a buyout get to decide where the HQ gets moved to?



Here is a list of the Top 20 for live attendance in WCBB, the ones in BOLD are the ones ESPN favors to broadcast

1. Tennessee 18 FF, 8 NC
2. Iowa State 0 FF, 0 NC (one of the best places to watch a WCBB game but ESPN never broadcasts them)
3. Louisville 2 FF, 0 NC (2nd largest WCBB venue behind UK and great place for TV if ESPN ever gets there)
4. Notre Dame 6 FF, 1 NC (place is usually packed but the venue is small, really benefits from ESPN love)
5. UConn 15 FF, 9 NC
6. Purdue 3 FF, 1 NC (ESPN really should go here more often, they really should)
7. Michigan State 1 FF, 0 NC (solid atmosphere and should get more ESPN love)
8. Baylor 3 FF, 2 NC (ESPN loves them so much their coach went crazy and they called the technical on opponent Louisville)
9. Kentucky 0 FF, 0 NC (like Iowa Sate, falls just short of FF's but draws very well)
10. South Carolina 0 FF, 0 NC (Dawn is putting them on the map)
11. Nebraska 0 FF, 0 NC (good support and very nice fans, yet never on TV)
12. New Mexico 0 FF, 0 NC (The Pit is nationally known for atmosphere but never gets TV love)
13. Oklahoma 3 FF, 0 NC (another team that gets little love from ESPN but should)
14. Texas A&M 1 FF, 1 NC (Reed supports the women but not enough TV love, that goes Texas and Baylor)
15. Ohio State 1 FF, 0 NC (no comment)
16. Gonzaga 0 FF, 0 NC (good place for game broadcasts but only get noticed in March)
17. Penn State 1 FF, 0 NC (usually gets a single game on ESPN each year)
18. Maryland 4 FF, 1 NC (got love in ACC, will be interesting to see if that changes now they are in B1G)
19. Middle Tennessee 0 FF, 0 NC (great WBB environment and good teams and players)
20. Duke 4 FF, 0 NC (was a nobody till about a decade ago when ESPN started pushing them non stop)

BTW, Scrooster, are you going to the Cocks vs Cats game on 3/15 or the SEC tournament in LR?

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It all seems so conspiratorial ... but at the same time, it sorta makes sense.

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Conspiracy generally implies tin foil and illumanati type talk. I look at it more as cluelessness based on location, perception, and a general sense of entitlement. Some of the most inbred folks in the world live in NYC and summer in the Hamptons but they think they are so worldly and have such broad experience. Having worked for some of them in the past the arrogance and entitlement looks like conspiracy to folks on the outside.

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You're talking about the Women's game up in Lexington on 3/1/15 right?

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Correct, it is played in Memorial (where UK plays all their conference games) and it will be Senior Night so it will sell out early probably as Memorial max is 8,000 I think since they downsized it from 12,500. If both are doing well by seasons end it will be a hard ticket to get.

Memorial Coliseum is the one with the big tall brick wall at the end of the court near the entrance I guess? I seem to remember banners hanging on that wall or something? Or wait, was Memorial used for the men's games some years back while Rupp was going through a remodel? I've got this memory in my head ... I may have actually been to a game there I think, I dunno.

BTW, I posted on the Recruiting board under the WBB 2015 thread that Sadie Edwards is leaving Uconn. No word yet on where she will land. She is from NJ and Rutgers just picked up another Top 100 kid so maybe she lands there.

You are blowing my mind, bro. That's crazy

Tar Heels got beat by 15 points tonight by the Beavers!

Wish they played the Cocks this year so they could get stomped.

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Britney Griner

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Where's he playing now?