Posted in Women's sports on April 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Brenda VanLengen is out of town today, Friday, April 30, so I will be doing her “She’s Got Game” on-line radio show. I’ll be talking with former Kansas basketball player Nakia Sanford of the Mystics, whose Jayhawk career I covered. I’ll also have some guests on to discuss swimming and golf.
You can listen to the show at 1 p.m. Central time here. If you have any questions for me or comments, send them to mvoepel123@yahoo.
Posted in Women's basketball on April 27, 2010 | 1 Comment »
If you follow baseball at all, you might have noticed some obscene scores involving the Pittsburgh Pirates recently.
Scores such as 20-0 and 17-3. They’ve been part of a seven-game skid in which the Pirates have been outscored 72-12. This is the kind of pounding I can relate to on a “competitive” level … because it reminds me of the softball team I was on in grade school, a misfit squad for which the term “mercy rule” might have been invented.
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Posted in Women's sports, Women's basketball on April 23, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Three depressing stories recently have caught my attention … and, hey, isn’t that a great lead-in to make you want to read the rest of this blog entry?
In each case, they are “depressing” for some different reasons, but all have been filling my mind the last few days. They are:
*-The USA Swimming sexual-predator problem, and how that relates to hoops.
*-The Oregon State mass tranfer/bigger picture in the Pac-10 issue.
*-The announced retirement of golfer Lorena Ochoa from the LPGA.
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Posted in Women's basketball on April 20, 2010 | 18 Comments »
COLUMBIA, Mo. _ New Missouri coach Robin Pingeton and the rest of her staff will likely feel in a bit of limbo for a while. While they moved into their offices here right away, many family members remain back home Bloomington-Normal, Ill.
Spouses still have jobs there, while children are still in school or daycare. Some of the staff’s family, like that of assistant Randy Norton, will be staying in Illinois for another year while one of his daughters finishes out high school.
It’s a drive of four and a half hours between the old home and the new one. Along the way, an hour and a half northeast of Columbia, is Bowling Green, Mo. That’s where the prep senior who was just named Miss Missouri Basketball _ heavily recruited 6-foot-3 forward Anne Marie Hartung _ is from. She grew up on a farm there, and her mother, Sharon, played basketball at Missouri.
But where is Anne Marie going to play? At Texas. That’s right. She’s a born-and-raised Missouri farm kid whose mother was a Tigers player. Yet she didn’t choose Mizzou.
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Posted in Women's basketball on April 17, 2010 | 1 Comment »
COLUMBIA, Mo. _ Robin Pingeton is wearing a long-sleeved gold T-shirt with “Mizzou” on it … just a few week ago, of course, all her casual athletic gear would have been in the Illinois State hues of red, white or black.
But that’s how it works in the coaching business: When you take a new job, you must instantly “become” that new school because that’s now your identity and what you are selling to recruits.
In the Missouri women’s basketball offices, now populated mostly by the newcomers, there are two framed jerseys representing the best of the Tigers’ past. Pingeton, MU coach now for a week, can’t possibly be expected to know these women. She and her staff are still getting to know the current Tigers who’ll play for them next season.
But I know who the former wearers of those jerseys are. The old-timey (the 1980s is old times!) sleeved, collared jerseys are still strangely familiar to me, the Nos. 33 and 42 never forgotten. Joni Davis finished her career in 1985, Renee Kelly in 1987. They are 1-2 in career scoring for Missouri, and Kelly is the program’s leading rebounder, with Davis fourth on that list.
Posted in Women's basketball on April 16, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I went to Columbia, Mo., yesterday to chat with Robin Pingeton, and yes, we did talk about the various issues that have been discussed on this blog. Will have a lot more on that that just a little later. Also hope to catch up with new Colorado coach Linda Lappe this afternoon.
It is interesting that with the addition of Pingeton and Lappe, the Big 12 now has four coaches who are natives of Iowa, with them joining Iowa State’s Bill Fennelly and Nebraska’s Connie Yori.
Yori played high school hoops when the girls’ game was still all six-on-six in Iowa. Pingeton’s prep career was in the bridge between six-on-six and five-on-five, while Lappe played after all schools had gone five-on-five.
Posted in Women's basketball on April 13, 2010 | 26 Comments »
Had a long chat with former Buffs coach Ceal Barry on the decision to hire her former player, Linda Lappe, as Colorado’s new head coach. Barry made a lot of positive points about Lappe. But Barry also was realistic about how some people will react to such a youthful coach _ she is 30 _ getting her first shot at Division I after not being a head coach at that level before. Barry’s sense of optimism, though, was very strong.
“I’ve lived here 27 years, and I sent an e-mail out to a large group of people I know about a new season-ticket offer,” Barry said. “And immediately all these people said, ‘I’m in.’ I’m getting all these e-mails back, and it’s because of the respect they had for Linda. The excitement of our community for this _ everybody here gets it. They get who she is and what she stands for.
“I know outside of here, people may look at this and say, ‘What are they doing?’ But they don’t know Linda. All I say is, ‘Give her a chance.’ “
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Posted in Women's basketball on April 12, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Updated: There are two new coaches in the North Division of the Big 12, with Robin Pingeton taking over at Missouri (she was formally announced at a press conference Thursday), and Linda Lappe named Colorado’s new coach at a press briefing this morning in Boulder.
Pingeton comes from Illinois State; Lappe, who is a former Buffs player, from Division II Metro State.
I am trying to take some deep breaths and sort out my thoughts on these two hires. Actually, I was up most of the night writing those thoughts, but I don’t want to publish all that just yet without a little more time to ponder the situations. If that gives you some indication my reaction to both is not exactly positive, that’s a correct guess.
Yet, I don’t want to just unload negativity, because that serves no purpose. I have some real questions about both of these coaching choices and want to be fair, but firm, about how I present those. Will have more to say, much more, a bit later.
I do want to take time to “plug” something: broadcaster Brenda VanLengen does a twice-weekly women’s sports radio show here in Kansas City _ it’s called, “She’s Got Game” _ and has been gracious to have me as one of her regular guests. The show is Mondays and Fridays at 1 p.m., and you can listen live or on replay at this site.
Posted in Women's basketball on April 9, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I wasn’t very long into Thursday’s WNBA draft before the reality of this year’s senior class was right there in our faces. We could talk during the season about this or that person being somebody who “could help” a WNBA team, or how if she worked hard on her game and went overseas maybe someday she could crack a WNBA roster.
Then, the draft started … and fairly soon, teams were picking people whom you thought, “Hmm … I wonder if she really can help them?”
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Posted in Women's basketball on April 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Sorry, we get a little punch-drunk tired at this time of year. But …. we have this thing on ESPN.com about ranking the the “perfect” teams. For whatever reason, when I wrote up my little bit for this, I thought I was just ranking UConn teams, not all perfect teams.
I put UConn 2002 first, UConn 2009 second and UConn 2010 third. But if I was ranking all the perfect teams of the NCAA era, I would rank Tennessee 1998 second, then the UConn teams of 2009 and 2010.
The ’98 Vols were 39-0 and led by Chamique Holdsclaw and Tamika Catchings, of course. And they had a very deep bench, plus Kellie Jolly running the show.
Anyway, I also saw _ in person _ the 1986 perfect Texas team. As I’ve written before, they blew me away. It was a glimpse of what real, big-time college basketball looked like. And if anyone thinks that that group would just get blown off the court by any of the more recent vintages of perfection, I think they’re wrong.
Yes, the athleticism has changed in the last 24 years, no doubt. But that was an awfully good Longhorns team, and perhaps the deepest of all the unbeatens, even more so that ’98 Tennessee.
