Category: Basketball

On this day in 1969, West Chester State College – under the umbrella of the Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics for Women – won the first national championship in women’s basketball.

The Golden Rams defeated Western Carolina, 65-39, in front of 2,000 fans in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with Pat Ferguson scoring a game-high 20 points. The competition was organized by West Chester coach and assistant professor of health and physical education Carol Eckman, now known as the “mother of  the collegiate women’s basketball national championship.”

Humble beginnings?

Quite.

The game barely rated more than a few lines in newspapers, with the Philadelphia Inquirer burying a six-paragraph report (under the headline West Chester Wins Title In Girls’ Tourney) on page 12 of its sports section.

But while all sports evolve to varying degrees, what women’s roundball fans saw then and what they see now are wildly different games altogether.

West Chester claimed the crown by playing six-on-six basketball, a style that featured three forwards and three guards. But get this – only forwards were allowed to shoot the ball and had to stay in the frontcourt while the guards stayed in the backcourt. In other words, forwards played only offense while guards played strictly defense.

Yet while Title IX (passed in 1972) was a catalyst for making women’s basketball more like the men’s game – five-on-five, full court, shot clock, etc. – the NCAA didn’t sponsor a women’s national championship game until 1982. Up to that point, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (which grew from the CIAW) coordinated events before dissolving in 1983.

The NCAA voted to sponsor a women’s hoops championship in January, 1981, at its 75^th annual convention (surviving a legal challenge from the AIAW), and the inaugural NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament field was announced on March 6, 1982. Louisiana Tech was named the top seed in the 32-team bracket.

The first tourney game was held on March 12, 1982, when Penn State hosted Clemson. The homestanding Nittany Lions won big, 96-75, with a crowd of 2,553 witnessing history.

Louisiana Tech, which claimed the AIAW title the previous season, went on to win the championship thanks to a 76-62 conquest of Cheyney State (current LSU coach Kim Mulkey was a member of the Lady Techsters and made the All-Tournament Team), and women’s hoops has only grown from there.

And I’m glad, because I’m a big fan and have been for years.

Aside from the fact that I enjoy the sport in general, women’s basketball – especially elite women’s basketball – has always impressed me due to the fundamental aspect of it. While the men’s game is often played above the rim, the women rely more on sharp shooting and defense. If you want to learn about how the game is supposed to be played from a technique standpoint, a good women’s matchup is the best teaching tool.

In fact, when I look back on my sports writing career, some of my favorite moments involved covering women’s basketball. During the decade I worked in South Carolina, one of my beats was Anderson University, a Division II school.

The Trojans were a perennial powerhouse and regulars in the annual DII regionals. Man, they were fun to watch, playing aggressive “D” while launching – and landing – bombs from beyond the arc.

And I also got to write about the University of South Carolina, just as Dawn Staley was building a dynasty in Columbia.

Watching the Gamecocks play meant at times I was watching near perfection.

So, I’m thrilled at how far the game has come. Not only do many NCAA teams play before packed houses, but they feature incredible athletes.

The leading candidate for Player of the Year this season is JuJu Watkins, who averaged 24.6 points per game for Southern Cal during the 2024-25 regular season. She’ll lead her team against UNC Greensboro today.

Other members of the Associated Press First Team All-American team are Paige Bueckers, UConn; Lauren Betts, UCLA; Hannah Hidalgo, Notre Dame; and Madison Booker, Texas.

All of them, by the way, are playing in the NCAA Tournament.

Hidalgo had 24 points in the Fighting Irish’s 106-54 romp over Stephen F. Austin on Friday, while Betts tallied 14 points to lead the Bruins to a decisive 84-46 victory over Southern in oprning round play.

If you’re a fan of college basketball, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. You’ll see some blowouts to go along with a few startling upsets, and learn to appreciate teams you hadn’t even thought about until now.

And thanks to pioneers like Carol Eckman, the Big Dance is coed.

Today at 6 p.m. ET, the field for the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament will be announced, officially bringing the joy of March Madness to 68 schools.

At 9:30 p.m., the National Invitation Tournament will reveal its bracket – one chock full of teams bitterly disappointed that they failed to make the Big Dance.

There is no confusion about the hierarchy of postseason tourneys in modern college hoops: if you aren’t in the competition that ultimately crowns a national champion, every matchup is a consolation game.

Of course, there was a time when the NIT was the premiere event in amateur basketball, playing all its games at Madison Square Garden in New York with the tourney winner considered America’s top collegiate team for the season. It began in 1938, predating the NCAA tourney by a year.

But the competition sponsored by the sport’s governing body became the alpha by the 1960s, and by 1969 the NCAA Tournament was clearly the main event of collegiate basketball, featuring 25 participants.

The NIT, on the other hand, had just 16 schools in its field.

Yet, while the senior tournament was no longer the star attraction, it still carried a measure of prestige. And in 1970, the Marquette Warriors actually turned down an NCAA bid in favor of an NIT berth.

Marquette (23-3) was ranked No. 8 in the Associated Press poll when the 1969-70 regular season ended, and on February 24, 1970, the school was one of 10 programs to receive at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.

The others were Jacksonville, Notre Dame, St. Bonaventure, New Mexico State, Houston, Utah State, Villanova, Niagara and Long Beach State. Fifteen conference champions earned automatic bids.

However, the NCAA Selection Committee placed Marquette in the Midwest Regional, which was being played in Fort Worth, Texas. Warrior coach Al McGuire declined the invite because he thought his team deserved to play closer to home in the Mideast Regional, contested in Dayton, Ohio. They were the third highest-ranked independent school named to the field.

“I am very disappointed,” McGuire told AP. “Our heart was set on going to the NCAA.”

McGuire said he talked to NCAA officials and told them Marquette deserved the Mideast Region berth regardless of whether teams were picked based on strength of schedule, records or rankings.

“We belong in Dayton, Ohio,” McGuire said. “That’s all there is to it. I can’t see their thinking.”

Tom Scott, Davidson athletic director and chairman of the NCAA Selection Committee, said he was sorry Marquette decided to opt out.

“Our selection committee ranks the teams in each region and Marquette was third in the Mideast, behind both Notre Dame and Jacksonville,” Scott explained in a United Press International story. “We have only two at-large berths in the Mideast and so the third team is the ‘swing’ team – the team we can, according to the (rule book), move to another regional.

“Our purpose is to select the 10 independent teams we consider the best in the country and we certainly feel Marquette is one of those teams.”

Based on Scott’s logic the decision made perfect sense, but McGuire wasn’t having it. His team had been in the Mideast Regional the previous two seasons, and his 1969-70 squad had a better record than either of those teams.

“I’m disgusted,” he said. “We take basketball seriously here. Maybe it was something between me and the committee … I don’t know. They speak out of both sides of their mouth. First, they speak about schedules, then records. We can’t do any better than we did. What do we have to do – 23-0?”

The Warriors’ leading scorer – junior guard Dean Meminger – backed his coach.

“You must stand up against the establishment,” Meminger said in a February 25 UPI article. “You can’t let people walk over you. What the committee did was a total contradiction.

“My heart was set on going to the NCAA because I wanted to play against the best.”

While Dayton was quickly named as Marquette’s replacement in the NCAA Tourney, the Warriors just as quickly accepted an NIT bid.

McGuire’s team opened with an 83-63 victory over Utah.

“There is a certain electricity about the NIT,” McGuire told Newsday’s George Usher. “It turns New York into a small town – a Madison, Wisconsin – but a lot of so-called dreams are put in the background. I’m just tickled pink the NIT is alive and took us in.”

Marquette thumped LSU (and “Pistol Pete” Maravich), 101-79, in the semi-finals, limiting Maravich to 20 points – 27 points below his average.

And the Warriors claimed the NIT Championship with a 65-53 win over St. John’s on March 21, their twelfth consecutive victory.

“I felt we could win the NCAA, but I’m happy to win any championship,” McGuire said. “I’ve never won one anywhere.”

The same night of the NIT finals, the UCLA Bruins claimed their fourth consecutive national championship with an 80-69 victory over Jacksonville. The Dolphins, by the way, won the Mideast Regional.

The 1969-70 season was the last time an NCAA Tournament invitee had the option of trading down to the NIT. Starting with the 1970-71 campaign, any school receiving an NCAA bid was required to accept it.

Incidentally, Marquette was selected as an at-large team in the 1977 NCAA Tournament and – you guessed it – sent to the Midwest Regional.

In McGuire’s last game before retiring, the Warriors defeated North Carolina, 67-59, to claim his only national championship and – to date – the school’s lone NCAA men’s basketball crown.

You already know that I’m a gimmick guy, meaning I love a good sports rule innovation – especially one that makes fans of the status quo uncomfortable.

And this is the time of the year when I always go to the NBA G League website to find out what tweaks they have for the upcoming season.

In 2024-25 the only changes in the developmental circuit involve end of period “heaves” and expanded coach’s challenge.

If a player chunks one from the cheap seats at the end of the quarter and misses, it’ll be charged to the team and won’t go against his shooting percentage. It has to come within the final three seconds of the first three periods, and must be 36 feet from the basket or beyond.

And as for the coach’s challenge, the only called infractions that won’t be subject to review will be technical fouls, unsportsmanlike acts and flagrant fouls. 

I don’t have strong feelings about those changes one way or another – my main concern was making sure the free throw rule was still in place. The one implemented by the G League starting with the 2019-20 campaign is the best in the roundball business, in my opinion.

A single free throw is worth one, two or three points when a player goes to the line following any foul that would result in one, two or three free throws under standard NBA rules (it doesn’t apply during the last two minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime).

Not only does this speed up the game, but I think it’s a fair way of making the punishment fit the crime, so to speak. If a guy was fouled while shooting a three, let his lone charity toss replicate that number of points.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look at some of the other modifications free throws have undergone through the years.

One of my favorites (and a controversial one) is an oldie but a goodie, courtesy of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

From 1939 to 1952, the NCAA utilized a rule that allowed a team to decline free throws and, instead, retain possession of the ball and inbound it from halfcourt. And in the case of a team being awarded a two-shot foul, it could opt to shoot the first free throw and then decline the second in favor of possession.

The rule was proposed in March, 1939, by Marquette coach W.S. Chandler but ultimately fell out of favor and nixed by NCAA coaches during their March, 1952, meeting.

I’ve always been intrigued by this alternative. Instead of the “Hack-a-Shaq” approach that puts a poor free throw shooter on the line, the opposing defense will simply have to force a turnover if the fouled team retains possession. Then again, it didn’t stop them from fouling during its 14-year run (especially since the inbound play came from halfcourt), so this rule was hardly perfect.

Starting with the 1954-55 season, the NBA had a “three to make two” free throw rule. This was applied during shooting fouls, flagrant fouls and backcourt fouls when a club was over the team limit. In the 1960s there was also a “two to make one rule” that went onto effect after a player was fouled followed a made field goal.

I liked those fine, although both were canned before the 1981-82 season. The stated reason was they were extending the length of the games (which they did).

So, what would my free throw “fix” be if I ran a league?

It’s far too drastic to ever be considered, but I’d just eliminate free throws altogether.

If a player is fouled while shooting, he or she is awarded the points (two or three) they would’ve scored on a made basket. And in an “and one” situation, they automatically get the one.

As for fouls during a bonus situation, instead of a one-and-one, the offense is credited with one point and retains possession.

Yeah, I know … that’s too far outside the box and would result in freakish scoring stats. But it’s still what I’d do because as I wrote at the outset, I’m a gimmick guy.

Fortunately for basketball fans everywhere, I’ll never run a league, so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

That being the case, I’ll just keep hoping that one day the G League free throw rule becomes universal.