Post Exhibition Game Pic (Damned Small)

Another picture of the Dream, this time taken after practice. Someone got on the bus!

(Note: in order to see the picture full size, you have to quote the link. Yes, I hate these teeny-tiny pictures probably as much as you hate them, but that's how Twitter wants to work the system. Twitter wants the hits, so you have to click on the picture.)

E2/2010 - Mystics 77, Dream 58

Okay. The Dream have lost a lot of games in their history by 19 points or more. Hey, last year we lost games by 19 points or more. The last game that we lost that badly was...no, wait, we didn't lose by 19 points last year. The biggest losses we had were by 18 points. You have to go back to August of 2008 to find a loss of that magnitude, where the Dream lost to Connecticut 98-72 at Philips Arena.

But even that game had high points. Betty "Big Buckets" Lennox scored 19 points. Katie Mattera had 13 points and six rebounds. And we don't even have those players on the Dream anymore. Looking at the box score, high points are few and far between.

* The Dream shot 27.1 percent from the floor. First half shooting was 22.2 percent. Thank goodness this was the preseason. We still didn't have Sancho Lyttle, or Erika de Souza or Chamique Holdsclaw...and where on earth is The Claw? She's becoming harder to find around the Dream training camp than Waldo.
* Atlanta had 12 first quarter turnovers. Alison Bales turned the ball over four times in the first quarter.
* This was a Michael Price officiated game, and he must have purchased a brand new whistle. The Mystics were whistled for 36 personal fouls. The Dream were whistled for 28 personal fouls. The Dream had 37 foul line visits and the Mystics had 27. Price must have needed an oxygen tank after the game.

I've not seen a report on the game. Maybe everyone's trying to pretend that it never happened. I know I am. If there was a high point to this game, it can't be found anywhere in the box score. The "high point" is that it didn't happen during the regular season.

We'll take a look at the game flow a la Dean Oliver.

Pace:

Estimated possessions = [(69-15+23+0.4*27)+(59-10+21+0.4*37)]/2 = ...approximately 86.

The Dream's offensive rating was 58/60 = 67.4 and the Washington's offensive rating was 89.5. The Dream's offensive rating comes from the fact that the Dream couldn't hit the side of a barn offensively.

Game flow: The Dream's cold start put them behind early on in the game and they pretty much stayed behind by double-digits for most of the game. The Dream were never in it. In the second half of the third quarter the Dream closed Washington's lead to single-digits but the closest the Dream were able to come were eight points.

Shooting percentage: Mystics 37.7 percent, Dream 27.1 percent.
Effective shooting percentage: Mystics 39.9 percent, Dream 28.8 percent. Neither team had much of a range. The Mystics went 3-for-16 from 3-point range, the Dream went 2-for-18.

Turnovers: Dream 21, Mystics 23. Not the best game when it came to moving the ball around.
Offensive rebound percentage: Mystics 45.4 percent, Dream 24.3 percent. Having neither Lyttle nor de Souza hurts in these games.
Free throw visits: Dream 37, Mystics 27. However, the Dream's big advantage at the free throw line was negated when they shot 65 percent from the line. Atlanta only hit two more free throws than Washington.

All in all, it was easy for Washington to dominate. The Dream simply didn't show up.

And now, let's look at the Dream's individual performances.

Chanel Mokango: We'll get something straight right off. There were no great individual performances - the best performances were mediocre. Therefore, there was no "Dreamer of the Game"...there were merely survivors.

Mokango was one of the players who actually reached the level of mediocrity. Four points, one rebound. 1-for-4 shooting, and three personal fouls - but she did have a couple of steals and a blocked shot, so there you go.

Iziane Castro Marques: Castro Marques is back! And sure enough, she went 5-for-13 and missed every 3-point shot she made. (She tried six of them.) She went 3-for-6 from the free throw line. 13 points scored, but 19 scoring opportunities. She led in points, but gave the Mystics a lot of opportunities with what she missed. Bleah.

Armintie Price: Price got the start...and scored one point. She returned to her old free-throw shooting ways, going 1-for-4 at the free throw line. However, Price had three assists and a steal so it wasn't all bad.

Brittainey Raven: Raven scored 7 points - five of them at the free throw line. She went 1-for-5, including 0-for-3 at the 3-point line. Four rebounds helped, a -14 raw plus/minus did not.

Alison Bales: She managed to recover from the previous awful game into a mediocre one. She played 25 minutes and had the most time on the floor than any player. She scored 7 points, but had five turnovers to lead the team. Five turnovers to lead the team, with four in the first quarter. Three personal fouls. Not the kind of game you want to add on your resume.

Angel McCoughtry: 11 points and six rebounds. McCoughtry shot 3-for-12 to match the team's fortunes. She had four personal fouls, falling into the same kind of pattern that we saw in 2009. On the other hand, her +1 raw plus/minus led the team.

Shalee Lehning: 18 minutes played. Two points. Three assists. 1-for-3 shooting. Two personal fouls.

Erica White: She had the smallest amount of time on the court - 8 minutes, 52 seconds. She went 4-for-4 from the free throw line for four total points. She was 0-for-2 shooting from the court with one turnover.

Coco Miller: Coco Miller isn't going to help herself in camp with this kind of game. Miller went 0-for-3 and scored both of her 2 points at the free throw line. She had three rebounds and two assists, but scored three personal fouls - an average of one every four minutes.

Kelly Miller: She played 13 minutes and scored only three points. One rebounds, one assist, one personal foul. Her -17 in raw plus/minus was the worst on the team.

Brigitte Ardossi: Less than ten minutes played. Two points on 0-for-2 shooting. One rebounds, two fouls, two turnovers. "There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling."

Shawn Goff: 2 points. Believe it or not, it wasn't the worst offensive output of any of the starters - Price only scored one point. Two rebounds, two personal fouls...but four turnovers. Only Alison Bales had more turnovers than Goff did. Goff would have gotten the Bad Dream of the Game award, but it wouldn't be fair to give that award to her since she was helped by so many people.

(* * *)

Okay, between now and Friday evening, the Dream have to begin cutting players. It looks to me like Marynell Meadors will have some tough decisions to make.

The next game for the Dream will be on Saturday, in San Antonio as they open the 2010 regular season against the Silver Stars on the road. Afterward, they fly right back to Atlanta for the home opener against the defending Eastern Conference champions, the Indiana Fever. The new Dream is about to go on-line - we can only hope that we've finally worked some of the bugs out.

Digest 04-2010

* Mean Brigitte
* Erika de Souza (and others) Not Returning to Ros Casares
* Joe Maloof's Bizarre Plea
* The Future of NCAA Women's Basketball: Austin Murphy and Conference Realignment
* This Week's Games (That Weren't in the USA)






One of the arrivals in Atlanta training camp for 2010 is Georgia Tech graduate Brigitte Ardossi. Ardossi was the second round draft pick for the Atlanta Dream this year out of Georgia Tech university. For those who have never heard of Ardossi, Ardossi is a power forward who was forced to step up in a big way for Georgia Tech basketball this year when scorer Alex Montgomery - a junior in 2009-10 - was sidelined for much of the season recovering from an ACL injury. There were many games for the Yellow Jackets where Ardossi more or less carried the team on her back, scoring many of her points off of her own offensive rebounds.

Ardossi is a native Australian as well. She was written up in the Australian newspaper The Age.

From the link above:

''Six-foot-one, probably the quickest player out on the court and had a mean, very competitive streak in her,'' [Coach Adrian Giblin] said. ''It made her a bit of a handful to coach, but also made her a delight to coach because you knew she wanted the ball and wanted to win. That's a head start from anyone.''

Another interesting kernel of information was her background in netball:

Ardossi, at that stage, was also committed to netball. Although she eventually opted to give up on pursuing the sport in favour of basketball, Giblin said the skills she learnt from that code made her a much more damaging player.

'Her netball background gave her a bit of a leg-up because she was so agile and she moved brilliantly laterally, so she could go side-to-side as well as going forwards and backwards,'' [Giblin] said.

Interestingly enough, Ardossi is not the only potential Dreamer with a netball background. According to Mechelle Voepel, Sancho Lyttle also had a netball background and was on a national netball team with Sophia Young at one time.

The article implied that Australian basketball is keeping its eye on Ardossi. It's hard to say if Ardossi can make the dream, but the WNBL - the Women's National Basketball League, the premiere league in Australia - might be interested in having Ardossi on a team. There's also an outside chance that Ardossi could make the "Opals" - the Australian women's national basketball team.

Followers of women's basketball might be seeing Brigitte Ardossi for a long time...if not in the WNBA, then elsewhere.

(* * *)

For at least the last couple of years, Dream player Erika de Souza has been playing with the Ros Casares club in Spain. No longer. Erika de Souza will not be appearing in blue-and-orange next season. Neither will Amaya Valdemoro, Elisa Aguliar, Anna Montañana or Delisha Milton-Jones. After a Liga Femenina championshp and after making it to the finals of Euroleague, it looks like Ros Casares will be virtually disbanded. In addition, coach Isma Canto will be departing.

Currently, no definite information as to where de Souza will end up next year. The most likely destination is that of Perfumerias, the second-place finisher in the Liga Femenina and Ros Casares's opponent in the Liga Femenina Finals. This would put Erika de Souza on the same team with her Atlanta Dream teammate Sancho Lyttle.

(* * *)

An article by Ailene Voisin for the Sacramento Bee reports that Joe Maloof, the owner of the former Sacramento Monarchs, would like to bring the Monarchs back to Sacramento.

Maloof plans to beg WNBA President Donna Orender and plead with NBA Commissioner David Stern to reinstate the original WNBA franchise that captured the 2005 championship and routinely ranked near the middle in attendance.

"Just give us a few years," the Kings co-owner insisted. "Timing is everything."

For those of you new to women's basketball fandom, the Monarchs were one of the eight original WNBA franchises. On November 20, 2009, the Maloof brothers - owners of the Monarchs - folded the team. According to Mechelle Voepel at ESPN, even the employees of the team weren't informed - employees, season-ticket holders and the press all found out the same way, by press release. The idea was that with the Monarchs folded, the Maloofs would devote all of their energy to the Sacramento Kings - the NBA franchise in Sacramento.

How much advance notice the WNBA was given is still a state secret. In practical terms, it left the WNBA to scramble to find new ownership mere weeks before teams needed to know the upcoming season schedule and before the positions for the 2010 WNBA Draft were determined. Add the facts that the American economy was in recession and that it's very hard to wheel and deal during Thanksgiving and prospects for the Monarchs relocation or resale looked bleak. On December 8, 2009, the WNBA gave up the effort and on December 14, 2009 the former Monarchs were dispersed across the league.

Some WNBA writers, like Mike DiMauro, were glad that the Maloofs were gone:

It's great news, just not for the people of Sacramento, who will miss their team.

But for the future of the league? This is beautiful. Because the WNBA just rid itself of a fraudulent ownership group.

The WNBA did not - and does not - need owners who feign interest in their franchises. It's still a problem. Some owners supported shrinking roster sizes from 13 to 11 last season, a move that crippled teams beset with injuries.

...

Let's be clear on this: Owners who spend more time cutting jobs than finding new and creative revenue streams (as some franchises did last summer) should get rid of their franchises forthwith. No, really. Get out. It's OK. Clearly, you tolerate your teams at best. So dump them. And then don't let the doorknob leave a lasting impression.

So given the difficulties that the Maloofs caused the league, why would this ever come up as an issue again. As the song says, "How can we miss you if you won't go away?"

My first question is: was this an unprompted comment? Was Voisin's discussion with Maloof specifically about the Monarchs? Or was it about several topics, with the Monarchs being one topic of many? The article failed to make that clear, and context would help us a lot. Furthermore, did Joe Maloof contact Voisin or vice-versa? All of the context for this conversation...is missing.

Context is important. If the conversation was about the Monarchs specifically, or if Joe Maloof initiated the conversation, it might indicate that Maloof really is interested in bringing the Monarchs back. But if Voisin posed the question, it could be that Maloof - to put it nicely - is feeding Voisin a massive line of horsepuckey. Maloof's thoughts might have been, "Hey, if I say something nice about the Monarchs I might be able to get a couple of ex-Monarchs fans to see Kings games."

The latter will probably never happen. WNBA fans and NBA fans tend not to overlap. The old Monarchs season-ticket holders would not want to be offered the Kings as a consolation prize, particularly if the unspoken message is "Ex-Monarchs fans, come and see the important Sacramento basketball team!" The impression left by the Maloofs when the Monarchs were dumped was that Monarchs fans were an afterthought to the Maloofs; it would take great effort by the Maloofs or Kings management to turn back the memories of that snub.

Let's assume that we're taking Joe Maloof's comments at face value - a dangerous proposition. Does the WNBA really want Joe Maloof back? It's not about the Monarchs being back; the W would be just as happy with some other owner with big pockets putting a team in Sacramento. Rather, it's about the Monarchs being back with Joe Maloof as the head.

Rick Horrow wrote in 2005 for CBS about the difficulties in starting a league. (Oddly enough, the Monarchs won their WNBA championship in 2005). One of the four factors that Horrow listed for a successful league was "The start-up league must attract a stable of emotionally and economically secure owners and investors committed for the long term."

Note the emphasis on emotional maturity. The WNBA doesn't need owners that will bail out at the first sign of trouble. No league does. At Pleasant Dreams I wrote the following in 2009:

For the WNBA, I think the more important question is that of the "emotionally secure" investors. How long have the owners of WNBA teams had their fortunes? How experienced are they as business managers? How likely are they to bail out at the first sign of trouble? I have my doubts about some of the WNBA owners - without naming names, I wonder if some of them really have the nerve - there's no nicer way to say it - to navigate the rough patches.

I wrote this in September 2009. Two months later, the Maloofs blinked in the face of the recession and the troubles with the Kings. They bailed. They didn't show emotional maturity, at least not on the WNBA side of the ledger. If Joe Maloof is being serious, the proper answer to the Maloofs by the WNBA , by the NBA and by Donna Orender or David Stern should be a collective "Joe...you can't be serious."


(* * *)

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 in college sports is college football and it is the sport that gets the most attention.

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 of 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.

Big Ten Plus One: The first scenario has Missouri becoming the twelfth team of the Big Ten. Sensing weakness in the Big Twelve - and wanting to increase the allure of their own national sports network - the Pacific Ten grabs Colorado from the Big Twelve and Utah from the Mountain West conference. The Big Twelve replenishes itself with the addition of Brigham Young and Texas Christian from the Mountain West. (This leaves the Mountain West as a six-team conference.)

Using the ratings from RealTimeRPI.com, how does each conference change in strength?

The addition of Missori to Big Ten women's basketball won't have Ohio State or Michigan State trembling in terror. Missouri would come into the Big Ten as the weakest team, probably replacing Northwestern (at least for a little while). The addition of Colorado and Utah will not affect the balance of power in the (hypothetical) Pac-12.

The teams added don't significantly affect this new version of the Big 12. Furthermore, the Big 12 actually gets stronger by swapping out some of its weaker members. The relative strength of each conference to each other doesn't change. But who is the real loser in this rearrangement of colleges? Texas Christian. The Horned Frogs women's basketball team finished as the Mountain West's regular season champion - they were eliminated in the quarter finals of the Mountain West tournament but went on to the NCAA Tournament where they were eliminated by Dayton.

But in a reconstituted Big 12, TCU wouldn't even be in the top half of participating teams. TCU would probably be buried under a mountain of Texas A&Ms and Oklahomas and Baylors and Texases and Iowa States. They'd have to play an extra game in the Big 12 tournament and would probably slip out of national notice - the NCAA would have to send seven or eight teams to the tournament from the Big East to get TCU in with the way things stand now. TCU might love the football money they get, but women's basketball would be a tradeoff - it might be easier for TCU to recruit but performance might suffer.

Big Ten Plus Three: The Big Ten decides to become a fourteen-team conference. The three teams that get added...Missouri...and Rutgers and Nebraska. Mama, hold the phone! The Big 14 want Rutgers for the New York connection, and New York has always been a hotbed of women's basketball talent. The Pac-10 add Colorado and Utah as indicated above. The Big Twelve drops to the Big Nine. The Big Nine could pick up TCU and Brigham Young as in the other scenario, but that would leave the last team to be either San Diego State, New Mexico, Wyoming, UNLV, Colorado State or Air Force - which would probably kill the Mountain West conference dead and leave the Colonial Athletic as the most powerful of the mid-majors.

So how does the Big 14 shape up? Rutgers gets itself out of the tough Big East conference and if Nebraska's amazing 2009-10 is The Shape of Things to Come, then the Big Ten's landscape is changed and Jim Foster and Suzy Merchant have some competition. (And C. Vivian Stringer might get Iowa as a regular conference opponent.) The Big East loses a tiny bit of its luster, but could probably find a replacement somewhere for Rutgers. The Big Nine would be a very strong basketball conference - the Big Twelve Minus Nebraska, Colorado and Missouri would still be very, very strong. There's no real loser here, except for maybe San Diego State, a strong Mountain West team now playing in a weaker conference.

Big Ten Plus Five: According to Murphy's hypothesis, in order for the Big Ten to pick up Notre Dame as a football member, they have to wreck the Fighting Irish's Big East membership. So they do. Missouri, Nebraska, and Rutgers all come to the future Big Sixteen. The Big Sixteen grabs Pittsburgh, and Notre Dame, sensing the momentum shift, leaves the Big East to join the Big Sixteen.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, having a history of successful Big East raiding, senses blood in the water. They extend the Atlantic Coast to the Mideast by picking up Cincinnati, Louisville, Syracuse and West Virginia out of the Big East - and the ACC becomes the next sixteen team conference. The Big East is reduced to a nine-team conference of schools from the Northeast...and South Florida.

The Southeastern Conference wakes up and determines not to be left out of the land-grab. The Pac-10 probably still takes Colorado and Utah, although it isn't mentioned in the article. The Pacific Ten wants Texas, but the Southeastern Conference wins the bidding war. Since Texas is technically southern, the SEC picks up Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State. The Big Twelve is reduced to the Big Six and has to pick up spare parts from the Mountain West and the WAC.

This leaves five "superconferences" - The "Big Ten", the Pac-Twelve, the SEC, the ACC and the still-big-but-not-as-big Big East. (What becomes of the former Big Twelve no one knows.) These five superconferences then abandon the NCAA and form their own intercollegiate sports organization.

The Big Sixteen becomes more interesting. Notre Dame is more than a match for the Ohio States and Michigan States, and Notre Dame will be playing Michigan, Purdue and Indiana on a regular basis. As for the ACC, the addition of its four former Big East clubs don't really change the balance of power in the ACC, which will leave Duke and North Carolina breathing a sigh of relief. The Big East teams give the ACC the best of both worlds - they bolster the level of competition but aren't powerful enough on their own to change the ACC landscape.

The biggest winner is the Southeastern Conference. It could be a beast of a conference, with seven or eight of its 16-prospective teams regularly ranked in the Top 25. (Tennessee vs. Oklahoma! Texas vs. Vanderbilt!) The Big East takes a major hit, but in terms of women's basketball remains relatively strong.

The loser in this scenario? Baylor. Baylor would be one of the left-over teams in the (former) Big Twelve and would be left scrambling. Even though Baylor has a strong women's basketball team, they don't have a strong football history and football drives each of these realignments. So who would Baylor be playing? Iowa State and Kansas State? Or do they become the bigwig in some mid-major conference? And would Britney Griner transfer if Baylor stops becoming a "big-time" school?

Okay. Enough of the wishful thinking game. "Pet," you say, "nice try, but this could never happen." True, maybe it won't happen the way that Austin Murphy proposes it will. But I'll bet that something will happen. Conferences will realign to get bigger pieces of the football money stack, and women's basketball and all of the other sports will be dragged along with wherever football decides to go. So if you're a fan of a Big Six team, enjoy those matchups next year with your hated foes...because in a year or two, it might be an entirely different set of teams you'll have to learn to hate.

____
(*) College football makes a lot of money, but spends it just as quickly - according to many studies, college football does not add to the net profit of a university.

(* * *)

The Turkish League championships are still continuing, and that keeps Yelena Leuchanka off our shores...for now.... This is the section devoted to those Dream players that are still overseas....

Spain

LFB2: in the Liga Femenina 2, Burgos is playing a round robin with three other teams to determine which teams have a shot at being advanced to the upper division. The round-robin took place from May 6th through May 8th.

Burgos 70, Eivissa 48. Eivissa was held to 30 points over the final 30 minutes of the game.

EIV: Beachem 13, Lara Ramirez 10, Lopez Marques 9
BUR: Lozana Adan 20, Nascimento 10 (Jorge Portela 7)
Demetress Adams: 9 points, 3-for-6 shooting, 4 rebounds, 2 steals, 33 minutes played

Navarra 69, Burgos 57. Burgos collapsed in the fourth quarter, scoring only nine points. Navarra was sent to the free throw line 21 times where they hit 20 shots.

BUR: Nascimento 12, Ortega Esarte 8
NAV: Cinite 17, C. Smith 16, Plumier 10
Demetress Adams: 11 points, 5-for-7 shooting, 6 rebounds, 20 minutes played

Ensino 79, Burgos 75. It comes down to the fourth quarter, with Ensino knocking regular-season leader Burgos to a 1-2 standing in the round robin and out of the chances for advancing to the Liga Femenino. Burgos coach Guillermo Fernandez blamed the fact that his team "qualified for the final too early."

ENS: Gomez Iglesias 25, Herrera Arevalo 15, Roddy 13
BUR: Nascimento 18, Lozana Adan 12, Pablos Villarroel 9
Demetress Adams: 10 points, 3-for-3 shooting, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 24 minutes played

Turkey

Galatasaray 67, Mersin 62. Galatsaray moves on to the finals with a 3-0 sweep of Mersin - the first win came from the winning the regular season, and this was the second win of the playoffs. Galatasaray came back from a 38-34 halftime deficit. Ivory Latta helped get Mersin to 59-58, but it wasn't enough. Katie Douglas did not play in the game for Mersin due to a sprained foot.

GAL: Catchings 21, Young 17, Yigit 15
MER: Latta 14, Turner 14, Scott 12, Larkins 10
Yelena Leuchanka: 7 points, 3-for-6 shooting, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 24 minutes

Fenerbahce 57, Galatasaray 51. In the best-of-five finals seres, Galatasaray loses the first game on the road to regular season champion Fenerbahce despite being up by 11 early on. Leading 31-25 at halftime, Galatasaray remained ahead until a pair of Nevriye Yilmaz free throws put Fenerbahce up 41-39 at the end of the third quarter.

FEN: Vardarli 13, Hoffman 11, Tuncluer 11 (Taylor 9, Yilmaz 8, Sutton-Brown 5, Powell 0)
GAL: Young 18, Catchings 15, Palazoglu 11 (Douglas 0)
Yelena Leuchanka: 5 points, 2-for-6 shooting, 3 rebounds, 2 steals, 15 minutes played

Fenerbahce 61, Galatasaray 56. Fenerbahce wins Game Two of the best-of-five Turkish championship series and could win the Turkish title on Tuesday with another win. Galatasaray was shut out during the overtime period and Penny Taylor scored all five points of the overtime for Fenerbahce.

FEN: Taylor 19, Tuncluer 10, Yilmaz 9 (Hoffman 8, Sutton-Brown 7, Powell 1)
GAL: Catchings 14, Young 12 (Douglas 6)
Yelena Leuchanka: 8 points, 4-for-5 shooting, 9 rebounds, 3 offensive rebounds, 25 minutes played

More Training Camp Pics

A couple of pictures from the Atlanta Dream training camp (posted by @AtlantaDream on Twitpic).



First, see the Dream recover from practice at Cookville High School. See all of the Dream players recovering, and see if you can find out who they are...because the org won't release a training camp roster (grumble).



Second, see Shalee Lehning take on a future WNBA fan in a practice drill. A lot of blowhards like to talk about how they'd score 50 points against a WNBA'er, but I think Lehning can take this guy.

Atlanta vs. Washington, Sunday May 9th

Who: The Atlanta Dream (0-1, preseason) take on the Washington Mystics (1-0, preseason).

Here were the training camp rosters for each team in the previous preseason game:

Dream: Angel McCoughtry, Shawn Goff, Alison Bales, Armintie Price, Shalee Lehning, Coco Miller, Chanel Mokango, Brittainey Raves, Erica White, Brigitte Ardossi, Britany Miller.

Mystics: Monique Currie, Jennifer Lacy, Nakia Sanford, Katie Smith, Lindsey Harding, Marissa Coleman, Kristin Mann, LaTangela Atkinson, Nikki Blue, Ewelina Kobryn, Shanavia Dowdell. Lauren Ervin and Alexis Gray-Lawson, participants in the game in the link above, have already been cut.

What: The second of two preseason games, both outside of Atlanta. The last time the Dream played the Mystics in the 2009 regular season they lost 82-64 on the road in the Dream's final regular season game. Atlanta had already clinched, but the Mystics needed the win. Unfortunately, Shalee Lehning was hurt in that game and she could have been of help in the postseason against Detroit.

Where: The Hooper Eblen Center on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Cookeville, Tennessee.

When: Tipoff is 4 pm on Sunday, May 9th. The game will most likely not be available on TV, or on WNBA Live Access. Maybe there will be a live update of the box scores, maybe not. I'm sure we'll at least know who won. It is also the final competitive game before the Dream travel to San Antonio on Saturday, May 15th to kick off the 2010 regular season.

Why: In the first place, if you wanted an excuse for a road trip, this is it. For Marynell Meadors, it's a return to the place where she started her coaching career - she was a women's basketball player at MTSU between the years of (approximately) 1961 through 1965. Back then, says Meadors, their coach Sue Gunter left after their sophomore year and Meadors offered to take over duties as a player-coach as Middle Tennessee State didn't want to pay money to have someone coach women's basketball. (My, how much things haven't changed in fifty years). So your going to this game supports women's basketball, which is a good thing.

For players on the edge - Brittainey Raven, Alison Bales, Brigitte Ardossi, Britany Miller, Shawn Goff, Erika White - even Coco Miller, maybe - this is the final chance to show their stuff to Marynell Meadors, because she has to have this roster cut down by Friday, May 14th to just eleven players. Media Day for the Dream is the morning of Thursday, May 13th and the Dream might wish to showcase who they think will be the final roster. Meadors hasn't made too many cuts - there are theoretically twenty people who could call themselves members of the Atlanta Dream, including Demetress Adams and Dalma Ivanyi - so the axe will have to come out.

The Mystics have it tougher. Alana Beard, injured for the 2010 season, is still technically on the roster because Washington doesn't want to cut her and...oh Spencer Pratt, even I don't understand the WNBA roster rules. That means that Washington will have an active roster of only 10 players, one of which might be Jennifer Lacy, the former Atlanta Dream player that the Dream did not re-sign out of free agency.

Atlanta Dream-Connecticut Sun Gallery

The gallery is here at SportsPageMagazine.com.

Oh, and who is #53 up there in the photo? It's Brigitte Ardossi! There are also photos of Shawn Goff, Chanel Mokango, Brittainey Raven and others, so check out the link.

E1/2010 - Sun 86, Dream 79

The Dream have played their first game of the 2010 season. They headed back to Connecticut, but fell short. The good news is that they took eleven players with them; the bad news is that among those eleven players, only 2 1/2 could be called "starters" if you were generous. So you have to take the loss with a grain of salt. No Lyttle, no de Souza, no Castro Marques, no Holdsclaw.

Here's the report from John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant.

Here's the report from Jim Fuller of the New Haven Register.

And here's the Guru himself, Mel Greenberg.

All right. Even SportsPageMagazine.com doesn't have any pictures yet. There were only 3,779 in attendance - no, wait a minute. For a Tuesday game at 11 am in the morning in the woods of Connecticut, that's great attendance! Still, there weren't many people present. There was no WNBA Live Access, and frankly, the boxscore didn't update automatically. If you were able to follow this game minute by minute, you were either in Uncasville or you have a very long neck.

So let's take a look at the post-mortem. The Dream got off to a very good start - an 11-0 start in the first quarter, but any Dream fan from 2008 knows that you can never depend on an 11-0 lead, and not particularly in a "game of runs" as this one was called on RebKell. The Dream held on to a 48-46 lead at halftime, and Fuller's article tells what happened next:

Connecticut Sun coach Mike Thibault resisted the temptation to insert some of his more established players to get his squad back on course. Third-year forward Kerri Gardin, with 67 regular-season games to her credit, was joined by second-year guard Renee Montgomery and rookies Tina Charles, Kelsey Griffin and Allison Hightower.

What happened next was a surge propelling the Sun to an 86-79 win over Atlanta before 3,779 at Mohegan Sun Arena.

Charles, the former UConn star who was the top pick in last month’s WNBA draft, began and ended a 19-2 game-altering run with baskets. But she had plenty of help from her fellow rookies.

So 19-2 beats 11-0 hands down when it comes to runs. Furthermore, Angel McCoughtry scored 17 points in the first half, but only two in the second half.
Only three players played for the Dream for more than 25 minutes - Montgomery, Shalee Lehning and Armintie Price. Whereas the Sun had three players who played for at least 29 minutes. Tina Charles and Renee Montgomery each played 31 minutes.

Let's examine the box score in detail. We'll go into an article by Dean Oliver and how he examines a box score:

Pace:

Estimated possessions = {(72-11)+20+0.4*20)]+[(70-9)+19+0.4*22]/2 = ..approximately 89 for both teams.

The Dream's offensive rating was 79/89 = 88.8 and the Sun's offensive rating was 86/88 = 97.7. This sort of implies that neither team dominated offensively, and defensive skill made the difference.

Game flow: Quarter by Quarter, the game was decided in the middle, particulary in the third quarter when the Sun outscored the Dream 25-14. The Sun led 71-62 after three quarters. The Sun didn't blow out the Dream - if you look at the play-by-play results the Dream crawled to within seven points, 71-64 in the fourth quarter with 9:12 left - but after that, the Sun went on an 11-2 run to take a 16 point lead with about four minutes left. That run killed the Dream's chances of winning.

All of the big names: McCoughtry, Lehning, Charles, Montgomery - were on the bench in the fourth quarter, to return only briefly if ever. The only starter on the floor for significant time appears to have been Kerri Gardin. The 11-2 run was basically a testimony to the Sun's bench. No one particular Sun player dominated the fourth quarter.

Shooting percentage: Sun 47.1 percent (33-70), Dream 38.9 percent (28-72).
Effective shooting percentage: Sun 52.1 percent, Dream 43.1 percent. That pretty much did it. The Sun won because they could hit their shots, and the Dream (collectively) couldn't.

Turnovers: Sun 19, Dream 20. It was at best an average game for protecting the rock.
Offensive rebound percentage: Sun 25.7 percent, Dream 23.4 percent. No edge here, but the Dream definitely missed Lyttle and de Souza.
Free throw visits: Sun 22, Dream 20. However, the Dream hit 17 of their attempts, and the Sun shot a sad 59.1 percent from the stripe (13-for-22). I'd give the advantage to the Dream, but that wouldn't be enough to cool down the Sun's hot shooting hand.

And now, let's look at the Dream's individual perfomances:

Angel McCoughtry: Can you think of McCoughtry not coming to play? She led the team with 19 points. She had to take a lot of shots, but she hit 3 out of 4 3-point attempts. She kept personal fouls down, but unfortunately, it looks like Tina Charles's team beat Angel McCoughtry's team again. (See: 2009 NCAA Finals.) Even with the lost, McCoughtry brought her game to Connecticut and she was the Dreamer of the Game.

Armintie Price: A big question was whether or not Price or Shalee Lehning would be able to shake off the rust. Not only did Price have a 10-point game, but she hit four out of five free throws. Maybe she's been working on that in the off season. Price, furthermore, led the team in rebounds with seven total, and she picked up five assists as well. This whole Armintie Price thing might be working out, except for getting three of her shots blocked.

Shalee Lehning: Lehning must have heard me muttering "you have to shoot more" because she hit four out of five shots. However, she had two assists and four turnovers. I guess you can't do everything to please all people, but since Lehning's arm didn't fall off during the game, we can only count the result as a plus.

Britany Miller: For just 17 minutes played, the third Miller in Dream training camp - Britany Miller, a center who once played for the Detroit Shock - did an okay job. She had five rebounds and two blocked shots. However, her 1-for-5 shooting won't impress many people, but Britany Miller probably earned another day in training camp.

Chanel Mokango: The best you can say about Mokango's game was that it was average. Eight points on 3-for-7 shooting. However, in 15 minutes of play she picked up three personal fouls. Her -7 in raw plus/minus was the third worst on the Dream - the dream slid behind when Mokango was on the floor. But hey - it ain't easy playing in the W, not even in the preseason.

Erika White: Now, we're entering the realm of "meh". White played 20 minutes and had a grand total of four points. Negative plus/minus. Three assists, three turnovers. One rebound.

Brittainey Raven: Raven was the fourth member of the Dream that schored in double digits, but in 23 minutes she had four personal fouls. That led the team, and kept the Dream from making more effective use of her. No assists, one turnover. Raven will need to get herself in better control if she wants to make the Dream.

Shawn Goff: Goff only scored two points in 19 minutes of play. She did have four rebounds, which were counterbalanced with the four personal fouls she committed. She turned the ball over twice. This is the part of the list where the players will have to fight to stay alive in training camp. You might only get one shot at making an impression. However, Goff got to start and had a +7 in raw plus/minus, partially due to that 11-0 Dream run to start the game.

Coco Miller: EGAD. Coco Miller had a raw plus/minus of -15. Maybe she was playing with nothing but rookies on the court, but Coco only generated four points to go with her three assists. At least she only turned the ball over once, but that raw plus/minus is just horrible.

Alison Bales: She started, and in the Battle of the Centers, Bales scored four points - and Tina Charles scored 21. Bales went 1-for-5 in shooting but she did have six rebounds. I don't know; I'd hate to have to guard Tina Charles too.

Brigitte Ardossi: 20 minutes played. Only two points scored. 1-for-4 shooting. -11 plus/minutes. 3 personal fouls. I'm not going to call Brigitte Ardossi the Bad Dream of the game, as this is just an exhibition. But right now, given the limited statistical lines, Raven just moved ahead of Ardossi in terms of training camp security.

Current Atlanta Dream Preseason Roster

Here is my current understanding of the Atlanta Dream's training camp roster:

C Alison Bales
C Yelena Leuchanka (*)
F-C Erika de Souza
C Shawn Goff
C Britany Miller

F Demetress Adams
F Brigitte Ardossi
F Tatum Brown
F Chamique Holdsclaw
F Sancho Lyttle
F Angel McCoughtry
F Chanel Mokango

F-G Iziane Castro Marques
G-F Armintie Price
G Dalma Ivanyi
G Shalee Lehning
G Coco Miller
G Kelly Miler
G Brittainey Raven
G Erica White

bold type - not listed on Atlanta Dream website
(*) - currently overseas

We have photographic evidence that Brown is there. Goff comes from the University of Mississippi sports website. Miller only comes from the CBS Sports WNBA Transactions page, and we don't know how accurate the news is yet.

Atlanta vs. Connecticut, Tuesday May 4

Who: The Atlanta Dream (0-0, preseason) take on the Connecticut Sun (0-0, preseason) in the very first preseason game of the year for both teams.

Both teams have a cast of new training camp invitees. The Dream can take a few people, but we have no idea who is going to Connecticut. We also have no idea who they'll meet.

What: The first of two preseason games, both outside of Atlanta. The last time the Dream played the Sun in the 2009 regular season they won 88-64 in Atlanta. The win secured a spot in the post-season as they clinched second place. It was also the final game that the Dream won in 2009, as they lost to Washington and then lost both playoff games to Detroit.

Where: The Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut.

When: Tipoff is 11 am on Tuesday, May 4th. The game will most likely not be available on TV, or on WNBA Live Access. Our fervent hope is that somehow, someway the fans will be provided with a box score.

Why: You have to ask? We've been starvin' for women's basketball around here, and the Dream will be back on the court. After several months of waiting, the season is back in full swing for Atlanta.

There are a lot of good plotlines here. The first is that this could be a matchup between the #1 WNBA Draft pick of 2009 - Angel McCoughtry - and the #1 WNBA Draft pick of 2010, Tina Charles. Furthermore, the win last year knocked the Sun out of the post-season, so you'd think that there would be the "revenge factor".

Unfortunately, this is a preseason game. It doesn't count. Nominally, the point of these games is to evaluate talent, and I have a list of 20 people who might or might not be on the Atlanta Dream's roster. So it could be Angel McCoughtry or Demetress Adams. Odds are de Souza and Lyttle won't be ready. Leuchanka is in Turkey. And you've got to give Chanel Mokango, Brigitte Ardossi and Brittainey Raven some time to play. It could be a real collection of spare parts on both sides of the roster.

Of course, WNBA fans will be poring over the box score intently, trying to divine the future from the results. If the Dream lose, don't take it too seriously. But if Angel McCoughtry is there, she's going to want to win.

Chandi Jones Waived

It looks like a pedigree from the University of Houston - Sancho Lyttle's [i]alma mater[/i] - isn't enough. According to the cbssports.com web page, Jones has been given her release from the Atlanta Dream.

Chandi Jones, we hardly knew you. Since information about training camp is released with the same frequency of the Manhattan Project Newsletter in 1945, she might be back on the team two hours from now. So keep checking the websites.

Alison Bales Back With the Dream

On the Atlanta Dream Facebook Page, one can see members of the Atlanta Dream - or at least those members invited to training camp - at work at the Brookhaven Boys and Girls Cub and at the NFL/Youth Education Town center. Among those who have pictures in the albumb are Erica White, Tatum Brown, Brittainey Raven....

...and Alison Bales??

Yep, the photographic evidence is clear - Bales is back with the team, or at least, during the training camp. The other Dream player in the picture is third-round draft choice Brittainey Raven.

So where has Alison Bales been all this time? This newspaper article from the Dayton Daily News tells the story. During last season, Bales ended up in the Phoenix Mercury training camp but was waived on June 3, 2009. In the off-season - when most players travel to Europe - Bales heard nothing.

“Overseas, a lot of times, is just kind of inconsistent,” she said. “You never know where you’re gonna end up: ‘Oh, you’re gonna go to Latvia.’ Then two days later it’s: ‘No, Latvia is a no-go, but there’s a team in Israel. ... And another team in Turkey is interested, but your old team there is being difficult.’ ... Then it’s: ‘Oh, there’s a team in Siberia that wants you.’ ... I’ve heard all that this year.”

In the mean time, Bales figured that she had better begin planning for a career outside of basketball:

“I’m not ready to be done yet with basketball, but I also figured I better have a backup plan for all this or I’d just end up so frustrated,” she admitted. She had graduated from Duke with a double major — biology and cultural anthropology — so now she began taking pre-med classes at [Wright State University].

In the meantime, she has decided to cast an eye towards medical school, but still hoped that a team would pick her up:

This spring, it seems likely she’ll end up back in a WNBA camp, though jobs are more scarce than ever with 12 teams and now just 11 players per roster. To prepare herself, she’s spent several months going through intensive, thrice-weekly workouts with trainer Andrew Winkler of Fast-Twitch Performance Enhancement in Centerville.

And now, it looks as if Bales has been given a chance to catch on with the Dream. If you're interested in Alison Bales, I'd read the article - it's a clear, consice update as to what Bales has been doing, complete with a peek at some of the anxieties of a professional athlete with her feet in two different worlds.

“Seeing my friends starting to get married and having babies,” she said with a smile and shrug, “and me still holding onto the basketball dream, it kind of made me feel like I haven’t quite grown up yet.”

Digest 03-2010

* The Democratic WNBA
* Lyttle, de Souza Earn Honors in Spain
* The Power Law of Sports Fandom
* Shawn Goff, Chandi Jones and Tatum Brown Get Training Camp Invites
* Women's Basketball Expands (Again)
* Dream Takes Practice on the Road
* The 2010 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship - How Houston Saw It
* This Week's Games

When I write "Democratic" I'm not writing that the WNBA advocates an egalitarian political system characterized by equal participation and representation. Rather, I'm writing about the political party that WNBA fans belong to.



The accompanying graph - full size at this link - should be self-explanatory. The horizontal axis represents the political spectrum - the left side votes for the Democrats, and the right votes for the Republicans. The vertical axis represents how likely the fans of a certain sport are likely to vote - the upper part indicates high voter turnout and the lower quadrant represents low turnout.

The study, which was commissioned by National Media Inc. (a Republican firm) and whose polling was conducted by Scarborough USA, has implications primarily when it comes to deciding where one wishes to spend money on political advertising. The actual proportions shouldn't be surprising - as some commenters in the link noted, sports viewership is dominated by white males, and while males strongly tends toward supporting Republicans.

What sport do you want to associate with if you're a Republican running for office? Probably college football - it's a large audience, it has decent turnout at the polls and it's predictably Republican. PGA Tour followers have a higher turnout and are more Republican, but there aren't as many of them. What if you're a Democrat? Probably the NBA, which has average voter turnout and whose fans tend to vote for Democrats. The WNBA's fans are most likely to vote for Democrats, but they aren't numerous enough to spend a lot of cash on. (Although if it's a close election, and you need to pick up a few thousand votes....)

I don't know if this study does anything than confirm our own biases, but the graph is definitely interesting to look at. If you're a WNBA fan looking for ideological fellow-travelers and are looking to change sports, call David Stern in New York - I think he has a sport to suggest.

(* * *)

In Spain, players Sancho Lyttle and Erika de Souza picked up some of the honorariums doled out by the Liga Feminina - the Spanish League of women's basketball.

Lyttle was named the "Player of the Year" of the Liga Femenina, the equivalent of the MVP award. Lyttle played for Perfumieras, taking them to a 23-3 regular season record, good for second place in the LFB. As of this writing, the team made it to the LFB Finals. Perfumerias also made it to the quarterfinals of Euroleague, where their march to the European Championship was stopped by Ros Casares. Lyttle averaged 17.6 points and 8.3 rebounds against the best women in Europe, and in Spain, she is averaging 15.8 points and 10.5 rebounds a game.

This isn't Lyttle's only hardware. She was named Center of the Year and made it to the LFB's First Team, along with familiar names such as Shay Murphy and DeLisha Milton-Jones. (The complete list is here.) She was also named to the LFB's All-Defensive Team.

Erika de Souza made it to the LFB second team along with Jazz Covington (out of Louisville), Crystal Langhorne and Shannon Johnson. De Souza averaged 13.3 points per game and 8.6 rebounds per game in Euroleague, where her Ros Casares team made it to the finals before losing to Spartak Moscow. In the LFB regular season, Ros Casares finished the season 25-1 and is currently playing against Perfumerias in the LFB Finals. In LFB play, de Souza has averaged 14.4 points and 9.5 rebounds per game.

Congratulations to Lyttle and de Souza! Now finish up the season in Spain and head back to Atlanta!

(* * *)

I'm going to ask you ten trivia questions about the WNBA. The answers to these questions won't be provided - for help, see your local internet.

1. Name the first team to win four WNBA championships.

2. Name the only two players to win the Most Valuable Player award in the WNBA three times.

3. Name the only player to win the MVP award as a rookie.

4. What were the two major changes made to WNBA rules in the start of the 2006 season?

5. Which team won the first WNBA game ever played?

6. Who was the first player to ever score a basket in the WNBA?

7. What player scored the most points ever in a WNBA game? (Bonus: How many points did she score?)

8. Which WNBA player born in the United States played for the Russian Olympic team in the 2008 Olympics?

9. Who is the tallest player in WNBA history?

10. After which player is the WNBA's Sportsmanship Award named?


If you feel bad that you don't know the answers to many of these questions, well...don't. My suspicion is that a lot of the attendees at WNBA basketball games couldn't answer these questions if their lives depended on it. It's not that those season ticket holders and game followers aren't interested in women's basketball - far from it - it's just that they aren't intense fans and don't see the need to immerse themselves completely in a "culture of fandom". By an "intense" fan I mean someone who is what I call an "insider" or "ensnared"....

...at least according to a book called "The Elusive Fan" by Irving J. Rein, Philip Kotler, and Ben Shields. The three writers argue that there is a fan involvement ladder in sports fandom. (And possibly, in any fandom.) These levels of fandom are:

1. Indifferent: In the case of the women's basketball, these people have either found the women's game unsatifying, threatening (gasp!) or for whatever reason, they really don't care enough about women's basketball (or basketball) to have an opinion.
2. Eyeballers: These are probably the largest group of women's basketball fans out there, those that make up that 2.7 rating in the Connecticut-Stanford final game. They'll watch special events - the WNBA Finals, the NCAA finals, maybe an All-Star Game - but they're not going to be involved at any level beyond the "most important" events.
3. Wallets: These are the fans that will actually attend a WNBA game, and indeed, they'll socialize around the game. They'll pull up WNBA Live Access or catch regular season games - and that's when they can't economically attend the games themselves.
4. Collectors: These are fans interested in sports memorabilia.
5. Attachers: These are fans interested in receiving communication from the team/their heroes and wanting the opportunity to exchange messages.
6. Insiders: These are fans whose goal is to enter into or participate in the inner circles of women's basketball.
7. Ensnared: These are the most involved fans, because they identify personally with a team. These are involved fans, and sometimes, too involved and a little bit creepy. (Think of the Monica Seles stabbing. Seles was the #1 women's tennis player who was stabbed by a Steffi Graf stalker.) They can either be a boon or a problem to a sport.

My theory is that if one were to draw a graph of women's basketball fandom, it would be a power law graph. It would look something like a hockey stick. It would not look like a bell curve, or what is called a "normal distribution". The normal distribution assumes that most women's basketball fans/potential fans would be somewhere in the middle - perhaps "wallets" or "collectors" and involvement would trail off on both sides. The power law distribution assumes that the overwhelming majority of women's basketball fans are in that "eyeballer stage" - they'll watch the game when there's an important women's basketball event or they might be a men's basketball fan but nothing else is on TV. There are a few wallets - the attendance figures at WNBA games bear that out - and as we go up to the collectors/attachers/insiders/ensnared, the numbers decrease even further. The "ensnared" are simply the capstone on a pyramid with the "eyeballers" at the base - and the base is always wider than the apex.

So what are the implications of the power law theory? The first is that despite the fact that the wallets spend the money on the games and despite the fact that the attachers and insiders are really, really involved - the potential cash is in getting the eyeballers to attend a game. They are the potential source of future revenue. A preacher should spent his efforts on the people who are receptive to his message, and as they saying goes, one doesn't waste time preaching to the already converted.

The second implication is that we tend to look at the world through the lenses of our own particular group.

* For the indifferent, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that it exists.
* For the eyeballers, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that if you're not careful you might forget when the WNBA Finals come on TV.
* For the wallets, the biggest problem with the WNBA is in buying concessions, tickets, and paying for parking, as well as balancing going to the games versus your job.
* For the collectors, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that it isn't confident enough to sell more jerseys, banners, and WNBA collectible cards.
* For the attachers, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that you don't get enough information from the teams.
* For the insiders, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that you don't have the ears of important people in women's basketball - or if you do, that they don't listen.
* For the ensnared, the biggest problem with the WNBA is that they won't give you Becky Hammon's phone number.

The third implication is that the segment of the fandom that writes blogs and posts on messageboards is heavy with the top three groups. Those groups begin to assume that they are WNBA fandom and that their voice is the only important one. The bulk of people going to WNBA games don't want to buy jerseys, nor do they need an hour-by-hour update on team transactions. They just want to have a good time at a sporting event. The eyeballers just want something good to watch on TV. Neither of those groups care about Carol Blazejowski and how she manages the Liberty.

The power law says "pay more attention to the casual fan, and less attention to the hardcore fan". My anecdotal argument comes from the early days of Monday Night Football. The "big three" announcers in the early history of the show were Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford and Don Meredith. Gifford and Meredith's approach to football announcing was the same dog-and-pony show that we're still familiar with in 2010: breathless play-by-play and the intricacies of the dime defense.

Cosell, however, knew that most football fans were casual fans, and that was his unstated aim. He wasn't going to bore you with football esoterica. He was more interested in the stories of the players than the strategy and tactics of the sport. He figured that his viewers weren't football experts, so why turn the show into a digression on coaching strategy? The hardcore fans hated Cosell, they absolutely despised him. He didn't know the game as well as Dandy Don Meredith, who was going to give you the real football knowledge.

But when Cosell was in the booth, Monday Night Football was one of the highest rated programs on TV. People related to him. They might have loved him, or they might have hated him, but they were never neutral - and they tuned in, religiously. Maybe the WNBA should follow the Cosell philosophy, and not the Madden one.

(* * *)

According to the Clarion-Ledger.com and the University of Mississippi sports website, Ole Miss graduate Shawn Goff has received an invitation to the 2010 Atlanta Dream training camp.

Goff graduated from Ole Miss in 2009, and headed overseas to play in Sweden. I am unable to find out how well she did, but I believe she played for Swedish team Margo or Kinna Mark.

From the Ole Miss website:

A four-year letterwinner at Ole Miss, Goff finished her career as one of the all-time greats to ever wear an Ole Miss uniform. The Tallahassee, Fla., native ranks 18th all-time at Ole Miss in scoring after pouring in 1,179 career points. She finished her senior season eighth in the SEC with 13.8 points per game and tallied 23 games in which she scored in double figures.

Goff also ended her career with 702 rebounds and is one of only 10 players in school history with over 1,000 points and 700 boards. She paced the Rebels and ranked ninth in the SEC with 6.6 rebounds per game as a senior.

Another player, Chandi Jones out of the University of Houston, was invited to the Dream's training camp, according to the Houston Roundball Review:

Chandi Jones, the greatest player in the history of the University of Houston's women's basketball program, has signed a training camp contract with the WNBA's Atlanta Dream.Jones, 5-10, is not yet listed on the Dream's roster but has turned in her paperwork to the Dream.

Jones finished her collegiate career as the all-time leading scorer in UH and C-USA history with 2,692 points; and her number 13 jersey was retired by UH on February 5, 2005.

Jones was drafted 8th overall in the 2004 WNBA Draft by the Phoenix Mercury.

Jones played with the Detroit Shock in 2004 and part of 2005 before she ended up with Minnesota, finishing her career there in 2006. She was a teammate of Sancho Lyttle when they both played for the University of Houston.

Tatum Brown also makes an appearance in the Dream's training camp. Brown, a 6-4, 178 pound forward, graduated from Arizona in 2000. She has never played for the WNBA, but has remained active in international basketball

Brown has played in Israel (where she was once detained by the tough Israeli airport security), the Rwandan women's national team, France and Turkey. I know that she's been at least in camp for the Cleveland Rockers in 2002 and played at one time for the Houston Stealth in the old National Women's Basketball League, as well as the traveling Houston Jaguars team.

Good luck to all of the above. With a tough Atlanta Dream team, it's going to be hard to earn a spot on the roster.



(* * *)

If you've heard of the Women's Blue Chip Basketball League (WBCBL) - a semi-pro league that plays a season concurrent with the WNBAs - they (theoretically) have some competition.

An organization called the Women's United States Basketball League (WUSBL) which will be headquartered in Atlanta, GA and which will have twelve franchises in the southeast United States, a geographical region that has historically been a poor climate for women's basketball. According to the press release, the goal is that the league would play a 28-game schedule. The teams will hopefully be placed in Atlanta, Augusta, Birmingham, Louisville, West Virginia, Chattanooga, Charleston, Charlotte, Columbia, Richmond, Savannah, and Jacksonville.

So is this league going to happen? I don't know. No one knows. According to the same press release, the initial goal was to start a men's basketball league - the USBL - but "...some American men's lower level basketball leagues have given a black eye to the sport by the failure to operate good companies, the flax we received from vendors and arenas, we wanted to rent was ridiculous." Furthermore, it doesn't cost any money to send a press release - but starting a league is another matter entirely. Supposedly, on May 8th and May 15th there will be WUSBA women's tryouts held in Louisville, KY - interested readers can chase down their own information.

I do believe that that if the WUSBL is ever realized, such a structure would be better than the one the WBCBL is currently is using - one with approximately fifty teams and seemingly little information about any of them. There are very basic things that a league has to do in order to be stable. There has to be financially secure leadership. There must be corporate support. Travel schedules have to be finalized. Players have to be paid, and they have to be able to depend that they will get paid, even if it's just $300 per week. And finally, there must be a threshhold where some teams will be accepted and others will be turned away.

Is the WUSBL good news? Yes. The WUSBL is good news even if it never plays a game, because it promotes the idea that there is money to be made - at some level - in women's professional basketball. In many cases in sports history, expansion is not voluntary - it is forced. The traditional pattern goes as follows:

1. New league springs up because the old league doesn't meet the demand for the sport.

2. New league becomes popular and begins attempting to compete with the old league by offering players higher salaries.

3. Salaries go up in both leagues. Players benefit.

4. Both sides conclude they're paying too much in salaries - the owners in the leagues conclude they have more in common with each other than not.

5. The leagues merge.


Of course, WUSBL salaries would have to get a lot higher than $300 per week and a meal voucher at Golden Corral. But then again, stranger things have happened. Major leagues get started by a bunch of crazy people with money - sometimes, more money than sense - and before you know, it snowballs into something big. The goal of the WUSBL is to be the "triple-A" of the WNBA - a big ambition - but great oaks grow from small acorns.

(* * *)

According to OurSportsCentral.com, the Atlanta Dream is going to be hosting open practices at high schools in the Central Georgia Area. The program is called "Take the Show on the Road" and it will be presented by Nfinity, which produces basketball and cheerleading shoes.

"Take the Show on the Road is a great opportunity for our team to interact with communities up close while providing them a unique and fun platform to raise significant funds for their school programs," said Dream President and COO Toby Wyman.

Fans who attend Take the Show on the Road get an inside look at the team's practice from start to finish and enjoy interactive elements including autographs, Q&A with players, giveaways, prizes and more! Nfinity will be on site during the Take the Show on the Road events with shoes on display and a booth for sales.

For those of you who can't get to a game - but who can get to a local high school - then who knows? You might be seeing the Dream up close and personal.

(* * *)

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.

Two numbers follow, separated by slashes. The first number is the rating, which is the percentage of all televisions (in use or not) tuned to the game. The second number is the share, which is the percentage of all televisions in use tuned to the game.

All times are Central Time:

7:00 pm: 0.6/1.1

7:15 pm: 0.6/1.1

7:30 pm: 1.3/2.2

7.45 pm: 1.9/3.0

8:00 pm: 2.2/3.4

8:15 pm: 2.3/3.4

8:30 pm: 3.1/4.5

8:45 pm: 4.4/6.2

9:00 pm: 3.7/5.7

9:15 pm: 4.8/7.3


I was astonished to say the least. My expectations were reversed in the results. Viewership was low during the pre-game hoopla from 7 pm to 7:30 pm, and as the game progressed, the ratings slowly increased. By the end of the game, 7 percent of all active television sets in Houston were either watching the finale or taping it.

Of course, there are a lot of explanations for the data pattern. Maybe most viewers watched "American Idol" first before joining the game in progress. Maybe the numbers reflect Houston's traditional love of women's basketball. In any case, it looks like in Houston...they liked what they were seeing.



(* * *)

Basketball is still taking place in Europe in a lot of countries, so a rundown on where some of our Atlanta Dream players are:

Russia

Some photos from the first Ekaterinburg-Spartak Moscow game - where Ekaterinburg won 70-62 - can be found here. There are at least a couple of photos of Kelly Miller here.

Ekaterinburg 87, Spartak 79. In Game Two of the best-of-five series, Ekaterinburg wins again, with accusations of dubious home-team refereeing helping out Ekaterinburg.

The game film is here. Photos of the game are here. (Kelly Miller gets about three pictures.)

EKA: Parker 43, Abrosimova 13, Stepanova 10, Pondexter 10, Gruda 4, Nolan 2
SPA: Bird 20, Taurasi 14, Jekabsone 12, Fowles 4, McCarville 2
Kelly Miler: 5 points, 2-for-4 shooting, 3 assists, 22 minutes played

Ekaterinburg 73, Spartak Moscow 67. In front of a home crowd of 6000 fans, Ekaterinburg completes the amazing sweep of Spartak Moscow and wins the Russia Superleague A Championship.

Photos of the game are here.

EKA: Parker 25, Pondexter 12, Gruda 11, Nolan 11, Abrosimova 2
SPA: Taurasi 17, Fowles 15, Bird 12, McCarville 10, Jekabsone 0
Kelly Miller: 3 points, 1-for-3 shooting, 1 assist, 3 rebounds, 16 minutes played

Spain

Ros Casares 78, Perfumerias 69. In the sixth match between these two teams this year (regular season, Euroleague, Copa de la Reina), a good second quarter gives Ros Casares the first game in the best-of-three LFB Finals series.

ROS: Snell 24, Milton-Jones 23, Palau Altes 12
PER: De Mondt 13, Domingues Fernandez 11, Torrens 11
Erika de Souza: 13 points for Ros Casares, 10 rebounds, 6-for-11 shooting, 29 minutes played
Sancho Lyttle: 19 points for Perfumerias, 12 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals, 35 minutes played

Ros Casares 82, Perfumerias 78 (OT). Ros Casares gets the Game Two win in overtime and the Spanish League season comes to an end as the best-of-three finals season is swept by El Ros. Amaya Valdemoro of Ros Casares put it away with a 3-pointer with 16 seconds remaining in the overtime as Perfumerias simply ran out of oomph.

PER: Sánchez 15, Torrens 14 (Willingham 2)
ROS: Snell 21, Milton-Jones 17 (Valdemoro 6, Aguilar 3, Montañana 2)
Sancho Lyttle: 29 points, 10-for-17 shooting, 14 rebounds, 5 offensive rebounds, 39 minutes played
Erika de Souza: 16 points, 8-for-15 shooting, 13 rebounds, 6 offensive rebounds, 43 minutes played, fouled out

LFB2: Encino 68, Burgos 54. Top team Burgos has been struggling with its second straight loss and falls into a tie with 23-5 Extrugasa at the end of the regular season. Burgos moves into the second of two four-player groups that will play a round-robin to determine which teams get promoted to the LFB.

ENC: Gomez Iglesias 18, Herrera Arevalo 17, Roddy 14 (Pollini 0)
BUG: Lozana Adan 16, Cabrera Arguello 9, Jorge Portela 8
Demetress Adams: 4 points, 2-for-4 shooting, 8 rebounds, 3 turnovers, 25 minutes played

Turkey

Galatasaray 73, Tarsus 64. Galatasaray wins their quarterfinals series with Tarsus 3-0 (one win automatically assigned to the higher seed). Tarsus had the lead at halftime, but the second half was all Galatasaray. Galataasaray advances to play Mersin and Ivory Latta in the semifinals.

TAR: Black 14, Erdogan 14, January 11 (Lennox 9)
GAL: Catchings 27, Douglas 11, Young 11
Yelena Leuchanka: 9 points, 3-for-5 shooting, 7 rebounds, 24 minutes played


Galatasaray 74, Mersin 63. Sophia Young scored 25 points to give Galatasaray Game One of the best-of-five semifinals series.

MER: Turner 15, Larkins 14, Ivegin 9, Latta 9 (Scott 3)
GAL: Young 25, Catchings 13 (Douglas 4)
Yelena Leuchanka: 11 points, 5-for-6 shooting, 8 rebounds, 4 steals, 22 minutes played

McCoughtry's Complaint: "No Cream Cheese"

Angel McCoughtry, Shalee Lehning, Brittainey Raven and Chanel Mokango all make appearances in the latest Atlanta Dream video. McCoughtry speaks about taking a leadership role and whipping the rookies into shape, while Lehning plays good cop to McCoughtry's tough cop.

The video link is right here.

The 2010 Atlanta Dream motto: "No cream cheese!"

Jennifer Lacy Released by Dream

No news from the Dream front office. The only news is one lone sentence on the WNBA website's transaction page.

The Atlanta Dream released Jennifer Lacy.

Wow. I didn't see that coming for a number of unstated reasons. Lacy played two years in Phoenix, and then came to the Atlanta Dream with the expansion draft in 2008. She played two years in Atlanta. In the first year, Lacy started in 22 games, but none in the second year. Over time, her minutes dropped from 18 per game in 2008 to 11 per game in 2009.

The first year with the Dream, she averaged 5.7 points per game. The second year, she averaged 3.0.

What happens next will be very, very interesting. Let's wish Jennifer Lacy the best of luck and hope that she can catch on with some other team.

April 2010: Training Camp Picture Goodness

Today is April 25th. Training Camp. The first picture out of training camp this morning is from this Twitpic. The pic is pretty big, so I can't post the entire pic without shrinking it significantly.

So for you detectives out there, maybe you can tell me which players are there? These two smaller pics are cropped out of the larger one:





UPDATE: More training camp pics posted by the Atlanta Dream on Facebook:

Meadors addresses the assembled players.
Calisthenics time!
Time to play.
McCoughtry hits the iron.

Digest 02-2010

* 2010 WNBA Preseason Review
* Good Ratings for a Bad Game
* Bing Search Engine to Sponsor Seattle Storm
* Laura Harper vs. Turkey
* Updates on the Sherida Triggs Case in Germany
* Mel Greenberg Retires
* Angel McCoughtry Makes the AJC
* This Week's Games

Tomorrow, training camp for the WNBA begins. At least, it begins in Atlanta, your mileage may very. With a flood of players in camp - some teams list as many as twenty "campers" the last time I looked - the 2010 WNBA season is very close to its debut and it's time to start thinking about where teams will end up when the dust has settled.

Predicting is a fun game, but this early in the year predictions shouldn't be taken very seriously. Nobodies have breakout years; superstars get injured. Players with atypically excellent seasons "regress to the mean", or return to their average output. All kinds of unexpected things happen - players can get arrested, have deaths in the family, etc. and a team's win or loss record can hinge on the presence of absense of a player for even a single game. Teams build up winning streaks and ride on momentum; teams suffer losing streaks and seem trapped by self-induced mental pressures.

One statistician put it best when he said that pre-season predictions were "an attempt to predict the past."

The win-loss records projected for each team are based on Adjusted Win Scores for the entire training camp roster - for rookies, the score is based on the average rookie-year AWS for their draft position. (Why Adjusted Win Score? Because it has the highest correlation with winning games.) For each player on the training camp roster, a simple attempt was made to project their 2010 production based on the previous two or three years of play. Even so, it seems that with every new trade or training camp roster acquisition, the numbers change daily. Furthermore, for players who have missed years due to injuries, I've had to make best guesses - after a few attempts, the effort is less hard science and more the reading of entrails.

With new acquisitions, with people entering and exiting camp, my picks are changing almost daily. Ask me in a week, and the numbers could be completely different.

New York Liberty

Projection: 19-15

This year's Liberty will be better than last year's Liberty: how could they not be? Furthermore, they have Anne Donovan at the helm - for one year, anyway, before she takes off for Seton Hall. However, I had New York floating around fourth place in the Eastern Conference unless they could somehow saw Janel McCarville in half and make two players out of her.

Janel McCarville. Nicole Powell. Cappie Pondexter from Phoenix. And now, they've just added Taj McWilliams, who might be the missing piece that New York has been looking for, providing rebounding power and the undefinable "mental toughness". Granted, Taj McWilliams's palm started glowing red a long time ago, but McWilliams has figured out some secret of beating the clock. With that group of players, could the New York Liberty pull the next "worst to first" in WNBA history? There's definitely a core of players that could carry any WNBA team a long distance. Those four players are about the equal of the Bird/Jackson combo in Seattle, if one is thinking of a threshhold of talent that is enough to guarantee a WNBA playoff appearance based on a few players. New York has enough to get to the playoffs and there's not going to be much difference between the #4 spot and the #1 spot in the East.

There is the outside possibility - a weak one - that Kia Vaughn could turn it around after a disappointing rookie season. I wouldn't bet money on that, though. Furthermore, New York has a very weak bench, meaning that the playoff hopes of the Liberty depend on four women, one of which is one of the oldest players in the W. However, if you're going to make the prediction game interesting, you can't follow conventional wisdom. If they don't win the regular season, a playoff spot somewhere shouldn't be surprising.

Indiana Fever

Projection: 18-16

Last year, the Fever proved that what they needed wasn't Tamika Catchings or Tully Bevilaqua. What the Fever needed was Lin Dunn, the coach who should have been named Coach of the Year last year. Dunn is Indiana's secret weapon, and the perfect folksy coach for a city that is desperate for a basketball championship of any kind.

I don't think that the Fever are going to sneak up on anyone this year, and Chicago still has that potential for the big breakout year. I also don't think that the Fever are that deep beyond their starting rotation. But think about it: Catchings, Bevilaqua, Douglas, Sutton-Brown - those are the kind of players a coach would want to have and Lin Dunn can do a lot with good players. 18-16 doesn't sound like much of a finish, but the West is pretty damned strong and Indiana is likely to regress. Even with the regression expect the Fever to make it to the conference championship - and possibly, another WNBA Finals.

Chicago Sky

Projection: 18-16

The Sky is an ensemble piece that could be even better than expected if Sylvia Fowles decides to show up for an entire season. Fowles has been amazing the last couple of years, and that's when she was healthy enough to play, but now the surrounding cast for Fowles and Jia Perkins looks even more interesting.

The amazing three-way trade between Phoenix, New York and Chicago in 2010 ended up putting Shameka Christon in a Chicago Sky uni. Will she be the equivalent ofCandice Dupree? No. Will she be a decent acquisition? Yes. Another interesting acquisition is Courtney Paris, who played quite well for the Monarchs when she did play - Paris was a project that was brought along slowly and we could see even more of Paris this year.

I suspect that everyone's eyes will be on Epipphany Prince, the Rutgers player who forewent her final year at Rutgers to play in Europe for a year. Doing well in Turkey won't impress anyone, but Prince is a young player with a lot of upside. Cathrine Kraayeveld will be a good addition, and maybe Tamera Young will finally turn it around this year.

The X-factor in this equation is Steven Key. Key seems incapable of keeping the same five players on the floor for more than a few minutes at a time, and he might spoil the 2010 Chicago Sky's chemistry. I'm sure he knows he can't have another season of disappointment - his job might depend on it - but the fact is that this team can achieve if it's coached well. I'm depending on Big Syl to finally play 30+ games and possibly lead the Sky to home field advantage in a weak Eastern Conference.

Atlanta Dream

Projection: 15-19

The success of the Atlanta Dream rests on the backs of three players: Sancho Lyttle, Erika de Souza, and Angel McCoughtry.

The rest of the league finally recognize how good Lyttle and de Souza are, and they'll be ready - but even prepared, I think that either one or both will end up in a (theoretical) All-Star uniform. The problem is that both Lyttle and de Souza have played a lot of Euroball and you have to wonder how fresh those players are. Marynell Meadors doesn't seem to be worried, but I think everyone else is.

A couple of X-Factors are Chamique Holdsclaw and Shalee Lehning. We were treated to a few brief flashes of brilliance from The Claw last year at Philips Arena, but if Holdsclaw struggles with injuries again many are going to conclude that the Claw is done. (Good thing McCoughtry can step into that role.) Lehning suffered a serious shoulder injury at the end of last season and you have to worry if she can come back. The well-deserved knock on Lehning is that Lehning Can't Score, but the team seems to respond well to Lehning playing quarterback.

Who would I look for outside the obvious? Maybe Armintie Price. However, I think that the Dream are destined to regress to the mean in 2010.

Connecticut Sun

Projection: 11-23

Mike Thibault has won a few coaching awards, and now we're going to learn whether he's a genius or we're just kidding ourselves: he has purchased the proverbial pig in a poke. It's a good thing that the Sun are attached to the Mohegan, because Thibault went straight to the roulette table and went all in.

Either Tina Charles is going to be a great player in the WNBA, or she isn't. Either she's going to capture that UConn Huskies chemistry with Renee Montgomery, or she isn't. Either Anete Jekabsone-Zogota will adjust to the W, or she won't. If the little ball lands in the slot, Thibault walks away with a pile of loot. But giving up Lindsey Whalen for that? Realllllly? I'll probably be proven wrong, but I suspect that Thibault is going to walk out of the casino with nothing but a barrel and suspenders.

Washington Mystics

Projection: 11-23

"Oh Pet, why are you so hard on the Mystics?" Hey, last year I projected the Mystics to win, what, six games? It made Washington management so angry (I wish) that they headed to the playoffs just to spite me. Mystics fans, maybe another prediction of bottom-dwelling will guarantee extra playoff success.

One X-Factor for the Mystics: Jacinta Monroe. My suspicion is that Monroe is going to be quite good. With Alana Beard out for the season, everyone else is going to have to crank it up a notch and I think that Monroe is capable of the increased responsibility.

I look at everything else though - Matee Ajavon, Nikki Blue, Nakia Sanford - and I just end up shaking my head. (How come Sanford hasn't learned to hit a free throw?) Last year's playoff appearance is a testimony to Julie Plank's skills as a coach, but you usually don't go wrong betting on a sub-par year for Washington. They have Katie Smith, but a team can't rest on one player and unless Marissa Coleman wakes up, it will be a disappointing season.



Phoenix Mercury

Projection: 24-10

For those who hoped that Phoenix would lose a step with the subtraction of Cappie Pondexter and the loss of cap space, my answer is that you're probably wrong. This is a team that has won two of the last three WNBA championships, and they have Diana and you don't.

I mean...good Lord. Do I have to take the Almighty's name in vain again? Good Lord! Diana Taurasi. Penny Taylor, theoretically for a whole year. Candice Dupree, (theoretically) happy in Phoenix. DeWanna Bonner, who could have been Rookie of the Year Last Year? Tell me, WNBA, how are you going to stop all of that?

I'm not saying that we should just mail the trophy to Phoenix and all go out to the bumper car track - the West is stacked this year. Minnesota and Seattle haven't gone anywhere, and they will fight. But last year, Phoenix showed the world how the women's game should be played - high scoring and high skilled. With Tangela Smith and Temeka Johnson ready to pick up any slack, Phoenix is a team ready to repeat. They might be a little thin in the bench, but Phoenix has so many weapons that I can't see them not repeating, unless Diana Taurasi can't find a designated driver.

Minnesota Lynx

Projection: 24-10

Oh, Minnesota Lynx. How you burned me last year when I projected a WNBA Finals appearance. And I am not the only one you've burned - you've been burning the faithful in Minneapolis for many, many years now.

Do you remember the story of that really talented kid in high school who you thought was going to be president, and you learn that ten years later she's a waitress at the Burger Barn out on Route Seven? That, my friends, is the story of the Lynx written large. It is a team with a crapload of potential that never gets it together. A room full of explosives, and no one with a match for miles around.

If you can't win games with Nicky Anosike - a pleasant surprise with a stellar season in 2009 - and with Lindsey Whalen and Rebekah Brunson, then what the hell are you doing in the WNBA? If you're not winning games, then you're stealing money. If Seimone Augustus can get her health together, you have a group that can rival the Phoenix Mercury.

The problem is that the Mercury have passion, and the Lynx...well, I don't know what the Lynx have. No one knows, not even the Lynx. (Answer "Rashanda McCants" and I'll clock you.) But hope springs eternal. This year will be the year that the Lynx finally get it together and mock everyone else, and I'll believe that until we're eight games in and the Lynx are resting at 2-6.

Seattle Storm

Projection: 20-14

As long as the Storm have Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird, they will contend for a playoff position. Hey, if a WNBA team just had either of those players, they'd contend. Having both guarantees that the Storm will always be scribbled in somewhere in the post-season.

What keeps the Storm from the top, though? The first thing is an absence of really dominant players beyond those two. Le'Coe Willingham and Tanisha Smith are no slouches, but who else will pick up the team? Loree Moore might prosper being in Seattle. Camille Little looks slim and trim and might get the WNBA to stand up and take notice.

Another problem is that coach Brian Agler likes to give his starters a lot of minutes - I think last year he depended on the same seven players game after game after game. The advantage is that staying away from the bench keeps your best on the floor a lot; the disadvantage is the wear and tear. I predict that somewhere along the way, someone on the Storm will get hurt, and that will keep Seattle out of home field advantage in the first round.

San Antonio Silver Stars

Projection: 19-15

Usually, when you're a new coach, what you get are a bunch of talentless bums - those bums are the reason why the old coach isn't hanging around. For new head coach Sandy Brondello, she can't say that the cupboard was bare when she took the job - but the West is very competitive and San Antonio is left to try to put something together beyond Sophia Young and Becky Hammon.

One X-Factor will be the arrival of Michelle Snow to the Silver Stars. Snow has been one of those players that has been a disappointment, and Atlanta basically let Snow go away for nothing. Then again, maybe Meadors and Snow were a volatile combination, as Meadors trusts her players about as much as Steven Key does. Snow should shine, and without Ann Wauters, she'd better shine.

Beyond Snow, who else? Maybe Roneeka Hodges. Maybe Edwige Lawson-Wade will have a great season. Other than that I don't see the Silver Stars moving beyond fourth place in the West.

Los Angeles Sparks

Projection: 16-18

There will be a lesson learned here - Lisa Leslie is very hard to replace and the era when both Leslie and Parker roamed the courts together is over. Parker is still the superstar of the Sparks, but I look at the rest of the team and I just don't see very much there.

Tina Thompson? Age is already catching up with her. Betty Lennox? A locker room breakdown waiting to happen. Shannon Bobbitt? Yes, exactly. Tisha Penicherio might be the greatest disher of anyone to play in the W, but she's not going to be a replacement for Lisa Leslie.

If Los Angeles is going to contend against the teams listed above them, Parker is going to have to have a season like her 2008 tilt. Then, of course, the Lynx could melt down again and that would boost the Sparks into another post-season appearance. Los Angeles is not better than the Mercury and really, if they're better than the Storm or the Silver Stars, it's not by much.

Tulsa Shock

Projection: 9-25

Poor Tulsa. When they got the Shock to jump over from Detroit, I'm sure that Cameron and Box thought they might bring a title to Tulsa in their very first season. No one thought much of Detroit last year, but they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals on sheer momentum.

How much can change in a year! Deanna Nolan has gone AWOL and odds are, she's decided she's rather have rubles than dollars. Katie Smith has gone to Washington. Cheryl Ford? Will Cheryl Ford play this year?

That leaves Tulsa depending on Plenette Pierson's injured shoulder and not much else. Nolan Richardson is a great coach, but he isn't God, and I think you'd need a God-like coach to make something out of the collection of spare parts (Marion Jones!) that has been assembled under the glorious name of the Shock. Essentially, Richardson is coaching an expansion team and they're going to play like an expansion team. I suspect that anyone on that roster could get cut before the year is over - Richardson might even walk away from the disaster in the making. There's just too little talent in Tulsa for too tough a division. Now if Tulsa had remained in the East....


(* * *)

Over the last couple of weeks, women's basketball fandom has basked in the post-season glow of the 2010 NCAA Championship. It was almost a dream matchup - in one corner were the Connecticut Huskies, which were shooting for a second consecutive undefeated season. In the other corner were the Stanford Cardinal, a challenger which only had one loss to blemish their own record...and that loss was to Connecticut, a team they were leading at halftime in their previous matchup.

The ratings for the finals game on ESPN were at 2.7. You might not think much of a 2.7 rating if you know anything about television ratings, but for a women's basketball game it's a great rating. The rating was 29 percent above the previous year's Connecticut-Louisville finals matchup. After months of ignorant writing by clueless sportswriters that Connecticut's dominance of the women's game was bad for the sport - a criticism rarely hurled at the John Wooden UCLA Bruins or the Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls - women's basketball advocates could show that if Connecticut dominance was hurting anything, it certainly wasn't hurting the television ratings.

I overheard the men at my day job - men who keep up with all sorts of macho sports like football - mention the game in passing. The game was clearly on their radar, and they were at least aware of its existence, if nothing else. But before women's basketball fans jump to the conclusion that women's basketball is ready to enter a new era based on those ratings, let me pose a question in response: what kind of game did those new viewers see?

The game they saw, frankly, was a mess. Connecticut won the game by shooting 32.8 percent from the floor, a staggeringly low number by anyone's standards. Stanford's shooting was 26.5 percent, even worse. The Cardinal's shooting percentage was so low that their 3-point shooting (36.4 percent) eclipsed their shooting from close range. Jayne Appel, Stanford's prize player, went 0-for-12 during the game and probably cost herself a chance at being picked #2 in the WNBA draft.

Add to that the fact that Stanford committed 20 personal fouls and sent the Huskies to the line 22 times, where Connecticut proceeded to hit exactly nine of those free throws. Maya Moore, possibly the best college player in the country, went 2-for-5 from the free throw line. Tina Charles, the #1 pick in the WNBA draft, went 1-for-5. The Huskies only shot 40.9 percent from the free throw line. (Stanford's 75 percent free throw percentage might seem impressive...but the Cardinal only went to the line three times.) In Dean Oliver's Four Factors, the Huskies certainly had the Free Throws Attempted stat wrapped up. And there was definitely a lot of rebounding, due to a lot of missed shots.

When sportswriters - who are usually males that don't watch women's sports - deign to report on a women's game, they tend to frame games differently than a match between two men's teams. When reporting a men's game, games are won because one team was better than the other team - yes, Disco Tech went 0-for-5 during the last couple of minutes because Gotham U applied its famous killer defense: those boys at Tech tried, but couldn't break the wall. Whereas if this were a women's game, the conclusion drawn would be a different one, namely that Disco Tech got the yips and Gotham U merely took advantage of Tech's ineptitude. Reporters look at men's games through one frame and women's games through another.

However, I don't think you can look at those percentages in Connecticut-Stanford II and conclude that this was a game of thrilling defense. Neither team turned the ball over that much, so no one was having their pockets picked. When I think of a team that got the short end of a defensive struggle, I think of 35 percent shooting as "low shooting caused by defensive pressure". When both teams can't reach 35 percent, my conclusion is simply ineptitude and sloppy play on both sides.

So what would have a casual viewer have seen if he or she had tuned in to watch the two greatest women's basketball teams in the country?

* A horrible shooting game where neither team could find the basket for long stretches of time.
* One of the supposedly best players in the country (Appel) not hitting a single shot.
* Super-duper most-elite-of-all Connecticut racking up a grand total of 12 points in the first half....
* ...but Stanford only had 20 first half points. Furthermore, they held the Huskies to approximately 25 percent shooting in the first half...and lost.

The game at times threatened to degenerate into the type of game played by junior high girls in any local middle school across the country. There was a lot of furious running around but very little basketball being played. To sum up: the game stunk.

What would a casual viewer conclude? Probably that there might be a lot of smoke sent up by women's basketball advocates regarding this game, but very little fire in the final product. Given an argument between a clueless college sportswriter who claims that women's basketball is just an affirmative action sports product consisting of gangly women that can't shoot and a women's basketball advocate that states that women's basketball is a thrilling spectacle where elite clashes are action packed thrillfests...the casual viewer might end up siding with the former if this was that viewer's only look at the women's game.

All right. Put down your guns. I agree with the women's basketball advocates and not the clueless sportswriters. In 99 out of a 100 matches, Connecticut-Stanford would be a thrillfest, but every now and then you get a disappointment of a title game. Anyone who watched the Phoenix-Indiana 2009 WNBA Finals or who sees a Spartak Moscow-Ekaterinburg match - like the one today - knows that the women's game can be flat-out amazing to watch. Besides, not every NBA Game 7 or Super Bowl matchup is a Game For The Ages; we shouldn't expect that to be true of the Women's NCAA Finals either.

Ratings interest me to a certain degree - they indicate the amount of interest there was in an event at the time of the event. Clearly, even though the jockocracy attempted to claim that Connecticut's excellence was bad for the game, people wanted to tune in and see what all this hubbub about Connecticut was about. That's good - a team playing at a high standard of excellence will attract viewers no matter what the sport. However, every advocate of the women's game knows that we have to take the long view. We have to treasure our triumphs, but not be complacent. So my question is this: if the only women's basketball game you saw in 2010 was Connecticut-Stanford II, what would be the chances that you'd come back next year to see another one?

(* * *)

I didn't believe there was a force on earth that could get me to use Bing's search engine. I admit it. I'm a snob. But now, you can bet I'll be using "Bing" and using it a lot. Why?

Bing will now be a jersey sponsor of the Seattle Storm. By "jersey sponsor" we mean that Bing will appear on the front of Seattle Storm jerseys. Seattle joins Phoenix (LifeLock) and Los Angeles (Farmers Insurance) in gaining a sponsorship for their jerseys.

To say that this is merely interesting news is an understatement. It's wonderful news. With WNBA teams operating on both thin operating budgets and thin profit margins, a jersey sponsorship deal can guarantee the existence of a WNBA team for as long as the deal is in place.

Furthermore, Bing is the biggest sponsor of a jersey so far, with all the power of Microsoft's endless zillions behind it. Bing is a sponsor that everyone knows. It would be the equivalent of Coca-Cola sponsoring the Atlanta Dream. With all due respect, Lifelock has many detractors (but not in women's basketball) and as for Farmers Insurance, no one has heard of it on the east coast. Bing - so far - is the biggest name out there in women's basketball.

I'll say this to Microsoft: you can bet I'll be paying attention to Microsoft products and to the Bing search engine for as long as this deal lasts. Congratulations to the Seattle Storm for snaring such a high-profile sponsor. And the logo looks great, too!

(* * *)


Recently, the arbitrator from FIBA - the governing body of international basketball - delivered a final judgment in a tribunal pitting Laura Harper against her Turkish club, Besitkas. Harper was a forward for Sacramento for the last two years and will be playing for San Antonio in the 2010 season. It was a joint complaint filed by Harper and her agents against Besitkas.

Here's the entire decision of the arbitration. The issues of complaint:

* That Harper was owed two round trips from Istanbul to any American city during the season.
* That her agents were owed $20,000, and one round-trip ticket to Istanbul.
* That her payments for the 2008-09 season were as follows: $20K, $20K, $15K, $15K, and $15K. All of those payments were approximately one month late, and the final payment was never made.

After that, player and agents and club had their spats. The agents said that Harper would go back to Turkey but she'd come straight back home if she wasn't paid. The culb said that she returned several days late and missed practices. Furthermore, she was "absent from her domicile" several times after 11:30 pm. (Do pro players have a curfew in Turkey? Really?)

Harper gave a notice of termination to the club. The club filed with FIBA for arbitration. The arbitrator filed in favor of Harper - she had a right to terminate because the club had been late for 30 days with a payment. Furthermore, the club had admitted it was late in paying Harper, so that was that. Looking at the document, I can't figure out why the club thought they could win the arbitration.

All in all, it's a very interesting look at the entire issue of salary. If Besitkas had paid Harper - and they had to pay Harper in the end, anyway - she earned $85,000 during the 2008-09 season in Turkey. I found another judgment by Besitkas on behalf of Alexis Hornbuckle - Besitkas owed Hornbuckle $130,000 for 2008-09. (That judgment is very interesting, with some more details of life overseas, about bug-infested apartments and vehicles provided by the club that break down.)

Harper (and Hornbuckle) have two years of experience. During the seasons above in question - they were rookies. As a #4 pick, Hornbuckle could see her WNBA salary start at $44K and end at $56K after three years. As a #10 pick, Harper's WNBA salary would range from $36K to $46K. The most any player can see in salary according to the 2008 collective bargaining agreement was $102K; who knows what that was lowered to after negotiations this year? And when you're naming players who could qualify for max salary (now or someday) you think of Diana Taurasi and Lauren Jackson, not Alexis Hornbuckle and Laura Harper.

And yet, those players were pulling down $85K and $130K respectively. In Turkey! As rookies!! Can you imagine what the Spaniards would have paid those players if they were good enough to play in the Liga Femenina? What the Poles would have paid them if they were in the PLKK? What the Russians would have paid them in Superleague A? (I shudder to think what Epipphany Prince is earning now.)

The WNBA simply can't compete with that kind of cash. If Turkish clubs are throwing around six figure salaries now, with free lodging and club cars provided, with round trip tickets - for rookies - then imagine what Euroleague contenders are offering. All I can say is this: be glad that players are playing in the W. Be glad that the majority of American roundballers aren't pulling a Deanna Nolan and remaining overseas. The women's pro basketball world is split between the haves and the have nots...and it looks like we're the have-nots.

(* * *)

I posted earlier about the case of Sherida Triggs, an American player in Germany who is facing prosecution for assualt after two injuries suffered by opposing players at her hands during regular season play.

According to MZ-web.de, the judge assigned to the case has been reassigned to another court - and there is no replacement judge.

If it were me, I'd just never come back to Germany - Triggs is supposed to be playing for the Atlanta Battlecats of the Women's Blue Chip Basketball League this season. Of course, I don't know if Triggs would be eligible to play anywhere else under FIBA rules the following season if that happened. If I find out more, I'll let you know.

(* * *)

In women's basketball, reporter Mel Greenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer is retiring.

What can you say about Mel Greenberg if you follow women's basketball? Greenberg was following women's basketball before anyone either loved or hated it. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association's media award is named after Greenberg. (Yes, Mel Greenberg has won his own award.) He was a women's basketball reporter for 39 years at the Inquirer and covered virtually every women's basketball finals back to the old AIAW days.

He has covered the WBA, the AIAW, the NCAA, the Olympics, the ABL and the WNBA. He was the first reporter ever inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. Some new fans might not know this story, but Greenberg put together the first women's college basketball poll for the Associated Press. Greenberg would call every coach - personally - on weekends to get votes, and in those first polls Greenberg had to do a lot of calling to get basic information about teams - there was no national news service, and definitely not one for women's basketball.

You know...Mel's not dead yet. Hopefully, he'll blog or do some stuff for free, and we hope The Godfather still attends those NCAA Finals games. You can never keep a Hall of Famer down.

(* * *)

Angel McCoughtry writes an article for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with the help of Michelle Hiskey. She reports on her positive experience with the Good Angels Kosice team in Slovakia.

Among other facts:

* McCoughtry was originally supposed to play in China.
* At least for the Good Angels, there is a strong fan base: "They always have sellout crowds, and the support system is great. If you lose, they make you feel as though you just won by 30 points. And if you win they celebrate as if you just won a championship."
* It was very odd for McCoughtry to go to a place where there were no black people.

"In that part of Europe, there are no people of color. People would stare at me, and sometimes I would feel weird. When I was driving, I saw a black guy on a bus and we stared at each other, I almost had an accident.

I went to the mall and left my cellphone in a store. I didn’t realize it until I went to meet Candice in the theatre. Candice had my phone. A storekeeper had said to her, “Another girl like you left this in the store.” She thought we knew each other because we were both black.

* Hair care was also a real problem:

t was a disaster for my hair. I had to wear it in a bushy ponytail. They have no hair products for my type of hair, only a perm for the soccer players who like to straighten their hair. They had to order it, so instead I waited until I went home for a visit to get my hair permed. When I came back to Kosice they said, “Who are you?” I laughed and said, “I got my hair done."

* The summation:

Living overseas made me more disciplined and humble. I didn’t have a clothes dryer and had to wring out and put my clothes on a heater to dry. I don’t ever want to take what I have for granted. I don’t want to complain. I am blessed. I have a lot.

(* * *)

And here we go with this week's games: most national leagues are deep into the post-season.

Russia

Ekaterinburg 70, Spartak Moscow 62. Ekaterinburg surprised home team Spartak to take a 1-0 lead in the best of five Russia Superleague finals.
The game can also been seen in its entirety at this link. Look for Kelly Miller about three minutes left in the first quarter playing in the white Spartak Moscow uniform.

EKA: Parker 19, Bibrzycka 12, Stepanova 12, Pondexter 9, Gruda 8, Nolan 5, Abrosimova 0
SPA: Fowles 22, Taurasi 13, Bird 8, Korstin 5, Jekabsone 4, McCarville 4
Kelly Miller: 2 points, 1-for-2 shooting, 2 rebounds, 8 minutes played

Spain

Ros Casares 79, Zaragoza 52. Ros Casares sweeps the best-of-three series two games to none and will play Perfumerias in the finals. The best-of-three finals will take place April 24th-April 29th-May 1st.

ZAR: Cuidariene 11, Pascua Suarez 11, Feaster 10
ROS: Milton-Jones 10, Vesala 6 (Valdemoro 15, Montanana 8)
Erika de Souza: 19 points, 8-for-10 shooting, 1-for-1 in 3-point shooting, 7 rebounds, 21 minutes played

Turkey

Galatasaray 82, Tarsus 61. Galatasaray, the higher ranked team, gets an automatic 1-0 advantage in this bizarre best-of-five format, and by winning their first game against Tarsus goes up 2-0. They can advance over the weekend with one more win over Tarsus.

GAL: Douglas 23, Catchings 17, Young 15
TAR: Black 13, Lennox 11, Siyahdemir 8, Zeren 8 (January 5)
Yelena Leuchanka: 7 points, 1-for-5 shooting, 5-for-5 free throw shooting, 2 rebounds, 18 minutes played