Swish Appeal has 2012 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Kingston Bracket Preview: Who Can Challenge The Connecticut Huskies?
At Hoop Feed it’s: Dishin’ on the Brackets: Kingston Region and Dishin’ on the Brackets: Raleigh Region and the 3/15/12 Podcast: Come dancing with the annual NCAA tournament roundtable which includes Mel, Dough, LaChina, Jayda, Angela Taylor, Wendy Parker and Orin “the DWHoops King” Day
At ESPN, Mechelle chatted today…yesterday… geez, traveling and time sure is confusing. Here’s the wrap.
Terri: Bill Plaschke of the LA Times was on Around the Horn on ESPN the other day and he came down hard on the women’s selection committee for their mind-boggling draws for the tournament. He pointed out how Stanford was a No. 1 seed but had to go all the way to Virginia to play Hampton. Do you think if the media shines a spotlight on the committee’s ineptitude they will ever do a better or more logical job of putting together the bracket?
Mechelle Voepel: I wonder how much Bill understands about the history and background of the committee and the different challenges that the women face with their bracket. I’ve been writing about the committee/bracket for 16 years for ESPN.com, and I actually think they do a better job now than they did in the early 2000s. But to some degree, as long as there are pre-determined sites, their hands will be tied. It makes putting together the bracket that much tougher when you add in that element. There were only so many options of places to send Stanford, and they opted to ship the Cardinal far away but have them on a neutral court. Pre-determined sites do not increase attendance, they make it easier for TV to televise all the games. I think having top-16 seeds host is still the best answer for attendance and for fair distribution on the bracket. But I don’t know that we’ll ever go back to that. So every year, there are these problems. The committee, no matter what they say, can’t solve the puzzle they are presented without making some decisions that seem ridiculous to the average person who doesn’t closely follow the sport. For that matter, they sometimes seem ridiculous to those who *do* closely follow it.
From Julia Savacoo at the W, or is it ESPN women’s basketball page? there’s a video. Khadijah Rushdan has will to succeed
Not much else new on the ESPN site. Heck, even the headlines are several days old…. well, actually, when I check the “required to be used by announcers twitter feed hashtag” I found a ton of stuff. Why isn’t the main page defaulting to a Tourney page. Where IS the link to the Tourney page? Oh, I found it... waaaaaay down below. Oh, and look, it’s sneakily put in the upper right hand corner. That’ll get people’s attention! I am glad they put Rebecca’s face where it belonged.
Anyhoo, go check out the stuff that’s up:
- Voepel: Year later, teams still chasing Baylor
- Analysis: Des Moines » Fresno »
- Analysis: Kingston » Raleigh »
- Voepel: Stricklen seeks consistency »
- Hays: BYU’s Steed worth the wait »
- Fagan: How teams will try to stop Griner »
- Hays: All the pieces in place for Princeton »
- Hays: Delle Donne finds way back home »
- Student-athlete blogs »
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