Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN doesn’t think so, but he’d pay to watch:
No D-I men’s program with a roster of players on full scholly would get beat by the UConn women. But I’d pay to watch the game. I’d pay to watch Maya Moore, UConn’s electric senior forward, run through the layup line.
Adam Walsh, the head coach of Centenary — the worst D1 school based on Jeff Sagarin’s ratings, due to its transition from D1 to D3 — thinks his team (which only has four scholarship players) would be able to beat the UConn women, but admits it could be tough.
I played D3 ball from 1991-1996 at UW-Platteville for (now Wisconsin head coach) Bo Ryan. We won a National Championship in my junior year and our team consisted mostly of players who had a few D2 scholarship offers but instead elected to play in a great program under a great coach.
We wouldn’t have lost to a women’s team…any women’s team, other than maybe a team of WNBA all-stars, and even that would have been a stretch. In pickup games, I’ve played against very good female players and they’re fine as placeholders, but a team of women wouldn’t have been able to compete against us physically. We went 6-5, 6-8 and 6-8 across our front line. Defensively, we led the nation in points allowed. Our point guard was the D3 player of the year and was good enough to get a tryout with the Milwaukee Bucks. We went 31-0 that season and beat three or four scholarship D2 teams along the way, so maybe that’s not the best comparison.
Or maybe it is… If the best D3 team in the country can beat the top D1 women’s team, what does that say about the state of women’s basketball or the amount of television exposure it gets on the various ESPN channels? A hypothetical contest between UConn and Centenary (or any other men’s team, for that matter) might answer a lot of questions. Would you rather see the UConn and Duke women play in a half empty arena or a battle between two of the top D3 teams in the country in a sweaty, jam-packed 3,000-seat fieldhouse? ESPN has that choice every season, and they continue to choose the former.
