Those Baylor women

[Peruna88]

. . . spent good money to get the right coach for their team. SMU could do the same. . .

So, are you saying that Rhonda is not the right coach?

[Buddha]

Rhonda is a terrific coach. When she gets some more talent to go with this year's youngsters, the wins will start to add up.

[Sam I Am]

Michigan State and Baylor have shown that the right coach can turn around a school in five years and make the final four. Those schools were lucky enough to hire a great coach, not just a good coach. SMU has a good coach who can produce winning teams if not championships. As I have also said, the school has to spend money on the program to include getting top assistant coaches, travel money, etc.

[True Colors]

I've learned from reading this board that it takes juco's and partial qualifiers to win, not coaching. Baylor must have alot of both.

Baylor had one transfer starter(Chelsea Whitaker), and one JUCO reserve(Latyoa Wyatt). Every other player on the team went to Baylor straight out of high school.

TC

[The XtC]

TC, he was being facetious. The juco remark was a little sarcastic jab at another poster on this board.

I think alot of you are underestimating the effect of the Big 12, and conference affiliation, overall. Its not so much the revenue, as it is the exposure. The Big 12 has one of the best TV packages for womens ball, and they have several schools that draw extremely well for womens basketball. Texas Tech, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas have all been to the Final Four in womens basketball. Its a power league. Amongst the media, and recruits, its percieve be the big time, the big stage. The WAC, on the other hand, is a wasteland. Mens basketball in the current WAC barely gets any media attention, womens bball is almost completely ignored.

Compare Baylors rise to the slide of La. Tech over the same time period. Leon Barmore wanted to retire, he wanted to leave Tech, primarily because Tech was joining the WAC. The guy absolutely hates to fly, and now his road trips were almost all going to be through the air. They would be playing conference games thousands of miles away from their recruiting base (Texas, Louisiana, southern Arkansas). And they would be playing in total obscurity in places that drew no crowds for womens ball, and in a conference with absolutely no TV exposure for womens basketball. He wanted to retire, and Tech offered his job to Kim Mulkey, his top assistant and a former La. Tech All-American. She said no. She turned down her alma mater, a perennial power house with 3 national titles, 10 Final Fours, never out of the Top-25, and instead took a job at a school that had never been to the NCAA tournament, and was only 7-20 the year before she took over. Why? The same reasons that Barmore wanted out, Tech was about slip into obscurity, and at least Baylor had a chance to play on the big stage, if they did well. No one wanted the job, Tech couldnt find anyone to replace him, so Barmore had to come back out of retirement.

Tech was still respectable this year, but they fell out of the top-25, and were only an 11 seed in the NCAA tournament. It was the first time they were the underdogs in the first round, and the first time they were knocked out in the first round.

Baylor had decent talent when Mulkey took over, not great, but decent. The previous coach was a good recruiter, but her teams had sometimes underachieved. When Baylor signed the Blackmon sisters (package deal not dissimilar to SMU signing the Hopkins brothers) most observers knew it wouldnt take long for them to reach the top-25.

When the SWC broke up, SMU had a 15 game winning streak against the Lady Bears. We were completely dominating the series, and Baylor refused to continue playing us after the conference broke up. At that time the Lady Mustangs were making the NCAA tournament consistently, and Baylor had just been to the NIT once. But when they went to the NIT, when they finally had a semi-successful season, they sold out the Ferrell Center for their NIT games. When they did well, their fans turned out to support them, they didnt wait until they got a little better, or won a championship, or blah, blah blah (insert your favorite excuse here.) They supported their program, and it thrived. Thats the real difference between here, and there.

[SoCal_Pony]

Thanks X for the insightful post.

Given your above assessment, how do you think the pending move to C-USA will impact our FB and BB (men’s and women’s) teams?

[True Colors]

When a team is participating in a power league(like Big 12 women's basketball), virtually everything is magnified. That applies to both success and failure.

If you are a great team like Tennessee, LSU, Baylor, Stanford, etc., then it will vault you completely up to the top of the national scene.

However, if you start to falter even a little bit, then the powerhouses will gobble you up, and maybe even take you off the map altogether. Look at Oklahoma and Colorado. OU almost didn't make it to the NCAA at all because they had to play Kansas State, Iowa State, plus Tech twice, Baylor twice, and Texas three times. The once proud CU program has been reduced to rubble because their strength of schedule is SO overwhelming.

TC