If you haven’t seen it, Mark Schwarz of ESPN interviewed former hoops standout Elena Delle Donne for an “Outside the Lines” piece for Dec. 28 and wrote an accompanying story for ESPN.com about her decision this past summer to leave basketball and UConn. I also wrote a column for ESPN.com that mentioned two [...]
Archive for December, 2008
What’s love got to do with it?
Posted in Women's basketball on December 28, 2008 | 8 Comments »
A Holly Jolly Final Four
Posted in Television, Women's basketball on December 25, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Driving to St. Louis on Christmas Eve, I heard Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas” on the radio three times. It’s a song that always reminds me of the 1998 Women’s Final Four. Before I get to why … here’s a little background. (Or a lot.)
The event was in Kansas City that year. I’d been working [...]
ODU from an expert’s point of view, and poll-a-rama
Posted in Women's basketball on December 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
My close pal since college, Mike Holtzclaw, has followed the Old Dominion women for many years. His wife, Vicki Friedman, is the longtime ODU women’s beat writer for the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk. Mike has covered sports and entertainment for the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., and he offers this take on ODU’s recent [...]
Lions were perfect, will Huskies be the same?
Posted in Uncategorized on December 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Saturday night in sub-zero Omaha, Penn State’s women’s volleyball team finished a perfect season and, for the second year in a row, won the NCAA title.
The Nittany Lions had four first-team All-Americans and lost just two sets all season – both coming in Thursday night’s amazing 3-2 semifinal win against Nebraska. For ESPN.com, I wrote [...]
Devils pull it out of the fire
Posted in Women's basketball on December 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Twice this week, the Pac-10 had a chance to knock off Duke and earn points for a league that has struggled getting wins against marquee opponents. But it didn’t happen either time.
Tuesday, Duke held off visiting Stanford 56-52 in a “battle” of who made the least of many miscues between the two. Then [...]
Meanwhile in Omaha …
Posted in Uncategorized on December 19, 2008 | 3 Comments »
How about the volleyball Final Four – two high-quality matches that went the distance … with the latter leaving several thousand heartbroken Huskers fans.
I’ll be going to the championship match _ between Penn State and Stanford _ on Saturday to cover it for ESPN.com, and I have a feeling a lot of those sad Nebraska [...]
Blue + Cardinal = mess
Posted in Women's basketball on December 17, 2008 | 8 Comments »
Duke was host to Stanford on Tuesday, a game on ESPN that certainly appeared promising. It just didn’t turn out that way. That’s putting it mildly.
By the time the Cardinal had finished clanking free throws (12 of 27), both teams had made the 3-point shot look like scaling Everest (a combined 7 of 32) and [...]
Some lingering UT-UT thoughts
Posted in Jumbo Dozen, Women's basketball on December 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Sunday was Texas’ day. A time for Longhorns’ fans to celebrate a 73-59 victory over Tennessee that, to them, has no “yeah, but” attached to it.
Admittedly, to others, there’s some of that “yeah, but Tennessee is so young,” … “yeah, but the game was in Austin (and did we mention Tennessee is so young?)” [...]
This week’s poll breakdown, and a plug for the Jacks
Posted in Jumbo Dozen, Women's basketball on December 15, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Here’s my Associated Press poll ballot for Dec. 14:
1. Connecticut, 2. North Carolina, 3. Texas A&M, 4. Texas, 5. Stanford, 6. Baylor, 7. Tennessee, 8. Oklahoma, 9. Duke, 10. Louisville, 11. Auburn, 12.Notre Dame, 13. Maryland, 14. Cal, 15. Rutgers, 16. Virginia, 17. Georgia Tech, 18. Ohio State, 19. Pittsburgh, 20. Vanderbilt, 21. Old Dominion, 22. South Dakota [...]
Has Georgia jumped the shark?
Posted in Television, Women's basketball on December 11, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Recently while writing about Ohio State for ESPN.com, I made a reference to “The Facts of Life” … which after a series of Internet clicks led me over to “Jump the Shark.” Just because I wanted to see when most viewers thought “Facts” jumped. (I wish I had better reasons for staying up all night, [...]
