For the first time since 1994, the women’s basketball championship game will be between two non-No. 1 seeds. Tonight’s game features a pair of No. 2 teams that each had to knock off back-to-back No. 1 squads in order to reach the final. Impressive. Far more so than the general reaction to the outcome of the semifinals: namely, that these results prove that there is (finally!) parity in women’s basketball.
No, no they do not.
Having seven of the top eight seeds reach the quarterfinals is not parity. It’s the status quo, and it fits with what we have seen for much of the past decade: the cream of the crop can knock each other off, but outside of the top schools, few have much of a chance. This year’s lone exception—No. 11 Gonzaga—was a low-seeded team whose run everyone and their mother saw coming. Three of ESPN’s four women’s basketball experts picked the Zags as their Cinderella choice; Tara VanDerveer pointed them out in her pre-tournament press conference.
And with good reason: if you have a superstar (Courtney Vandersloot) surrounded by a crop of above-average starters, you are generally going to find success. It’s a basic formula that works throughout all levels of basketball and for both men and women; the distinction is that such a compilation is harder to come by in the women’s game. There is a more limited pool of talent to choose from, and the big schools are pretty good at hoarding the best players. Whereas the men have excellent talent at the mid-major level—Shelvin Mack, Jimmer Fredette, Kawhi Leonard, Justin Harper and so on—their female counterparts are left looking for needles in the haystacks. Simply put, there aren’t enough Vandersloots to go around, and when you have one, it’s not hard to predict accomplishment, which the Zags had both before and after their run. Gonzaga’s low ranking was a result of being criminally underrated solely because it played in a weaker conference. It wasn’t because the team was lackluster until the tournament—the Zags entered March Madness with just four losses, two of which were to Final Four teams (Stanford and Notre Dame).
This, again, is not parity, even from a historical perspective. Though it’s been nearly 20 years since two non-No. 1s played for the title, it is routine to have teams without top billing reach the championship game. Last year was the first since 2003 to feature two No. 1s playing in the finals—during that six-season stretch, it was always a No. 1 against a lower-ranked squad. We were seven seconds away from seeing a similar scenario unfold in 2011.
Perhaps it is relative. Connecticut has had such a stranglehold on the sport for the past few seasons that seeing anyone, even a two-seed, in the championship game instead of the Huskies is reason enough to rejoice at the leveling of the playing field. It’s not an absurd idea, but it’s also no secret that the Huskies weren’t as strong this year as they were in their past campaigns—after losing to Stanford in December, their cloak of invincibility seemingly vanished. Geno Auriemma’s statements in light of that defeat said as much. And besides, even if UConn was as strong as it was in 2010, a defeat, particularly in the Final Four, does not demonstrate a seismic shift. It shows what we already know about March Madness: that even in a sport with clear divisions in talent, nearly anything can happen in a single game.
This is not a criticism of the sport—frankly, because there is such a division between the top-tier teams and everybody else, when two good-but-not-great squads match up, it can generally be counted on to be pretty even, which makes for more exciting games. It’s only when those squads come into contact with the top dogs that the underdog’s chances drop significantly. Women’s basketball is not at a place where it can replicate the bedlam seen in the men’s tournament. And that’s okay: it can get there. Gary Blair, coach of Texas A&M, recognized these ideas after downing Stanford on Sunday.
“Sometimes, you have to go through growing pains to get to where we want to be, parity, where people would be excited where a Butler and a VCU are playing for the national championship on the men’s side. We need that on the women’s side as well,” he said.
It’s no secret that women’s basketball is growing as a youth sport, and that talent pools are increasing as a result. Noting and continuing that progress is a worthwhile endeavor, one far better than preemptively declaring the arrival of parity to the game when that’s simply not the case.
Wyndam Makowsky thinks parity is great, but he’d still rather have a certain No. 1 team in the final. Commiserate at makowsky “at” stanford.edu.