Norfolk coaches: Commitment to women’s hoops brought improvement

By HANK KURZ Jr.
AP Sports Writer
Published: March 24, 2008

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) - Looking for a sign that women’s college basketball is growing?
Consider the second round games slated for Tuesday night in Norfolk, with four longtime coaches of history-rich programs fighting for two spots in the regionals.
Andy Landers of Georgia is probably the biggest underdog, and in 29 years with the Bulldogs he has won 707 games and lead them to 25 NCAA tournaments, 10 regional semifinals and five Final Fours.
The Bulldogs (23-9) are seeded eighth in the New Orleans Regional, and to reach their sixth regional semifinal in a row, they’ll have to beat top-seed North Carolina.
Before the Tar Heels-Bulldogs matchup, state rivals Virginia and Old Dominion will meet for a spot in the Greensboro Regional.
Landers thinks some of the perennial powers may be cyclical, but that programs with commitments to women’s basketball like Tennessee, Connecticut, North Carolina and Duke will always be near the top, and several like his own will always be very close.
But that doesn’t make being seeded eighth any easier.
“Does it bother you?” he said Monday. “Oh yeah. Do you look out there and go, `Hey, that’s our turf?’ Yeah. And in my mind tomorrow, that’s a piece of this game.”
On the other side, North Carolina is playing as a No. 1 seed for the fourth time in a row, but coach Sylvia Hatchell still sees the field catching up.
“You look now and it used to be that with the top teams, there was a definite separation,” she said. “I think now you’ve got a lot of good teams. Even like the 11th and 12th seeds, as you saw yesterday. I think the parity is a lot better.”
But while newly emerging programs are a good development that highlight the increasing popularity of women’s basketball, that growth also means competition for everything has also increased, from exposure and support to the players themselves.
When he started at Georgia, Landers said, he spent the first week of school out on the road visiting high school coaches. He was summoned into the athletic director’s office when he returned and was told another coach had complained he was cheating.
“That’s not cheating,” he responded. “It’s called recruiting.”
Now, it’s what keeps the powerhouses powerful, and creates new ones.
Tasha Humphrey is a four-time all-Southeastern Conference first team selection for the Bulldogs, and she has seen the number of school options for top players expanding greatly since the days of a few schools have their pick of the talent first.
“Everybody can’t go to the same four schools, so the talent is spreading out and making programs become better and more dynamic,” Humphrey, a Georgia native, said.
More and more schools are embracing women’s basketball, her coach said.
“There’s more good players, more good coaches, and most importantly, there’s more schools that want to see success in their women’s basketball program, Landers said. “We’re only going to be as successful as our institutions are committed to us being.”
In the early game, Virginia is seeded fourth, ODU fifth, and both are among the leader in number of NCAA tournament appearances.
“I think it says a great deal about the growth of women’s basketball in general, the fact that you have Carolina playing Georgia in the second round,” Virginia coach Debbie Ryan, in her 31st season with the Cavaliers and 22nd NCAA tournament, said.
“Two storied coaches, two very, very legendary coaches against each other. I just think it speaks volumes about where we’ve come from and where we’re headed.”
Old Dominion won three national championships before the game really caught on, and coach Wendy Larry has been a longtime proponent of ever-increasing exposure. She said she celebrates being surprised by the scores she sees in the morning newspaper.
“Five years ago, if you took a bracket when you have 32 teams, I bet I could pick 80 percent of the winners,” Larry said. “You could just go through a bracket and anticipate who was going to win. Now, it could be a coin toss on 80 percent.”
And that, she said, is what people who love the game have always wanted.