The Never-ending College basketball season thread

And the why for all of them?

I’m far from an expert in women’s basketball, so I won’t even argue with you. I just want to hear why you think all of those people were better than she is. Also, do you really think it makes sense to compare her with people who played 15-20 years ago?

She’s a career 27-7-8 on 47/38/86 shooting.

Catchings, by comparison, was 17-8-3 on 51/33/77.

Taurasi was 16-5-5 on 48/39/81.

Like, I get that stats aren’t everything, but if I look all of these people up, is even one of them going to come close to matching her statistically? I get that they all have WNBA careers you can reference, but doing so doesn’t really make sense when all we have to compare against is college.

Oh, and it’s not hard to understand why people want to root for someone like Clark instead of someone like Griner. One is 6 feet tall, and the other is 6’9. People root for people they can relate to. It’s one of the reasons so many people rooted for Steph over LeBron during their title fights. One is a physical specimen the likes of which we’ve never seen, and the other is just a guy, physically.

 

You're just tap dancing all the possible reasons except the one you don't want to acknowledge staring at you in your face.

In any event, those other players are better because they are more complete players. They took teams to multiple championships in college (outside of Catchings) and controlled the game on both ends doing so. Parker won an MVP in the Final Four with a separated shoulder, her shooting shoulder. She was also a 6-5 forward who could play and guard all 5 positions. Clark is a great offensive player, a scorer, but she's horrendous defensively. Someone like Holdsclaw was the go to player on a national title team as a freshman and her sophomore title is more impressive than Clark's run with an average Iowa squad. Chamique was there in my time at UT and I still don't know if I've seen a better player than her, though perhaps Taurasi or Parker. Catchings was a force and possibly gets a second ring if she doesn't tear up her knee. I even played against Catchings in the HPER one day. She was like a panther, exceptionally quick.

I like Clark and her game is great, but there's also a bit of a recency bias here and tournament overexuberance from two really amazing games she played in the E8 and FF. There's a decent collection of players I'd pick before her to win a tournament.

 

I said I wouldn’t argue, so I won’t, despite seeing everything but your defensive argument as flawed and weak. But even that argument (that they were better defenders), while serving your claim of there being plenty of better players than her, doesn’t help your argument that people didn’t tune in as much because they were black. Nobody turns on a a women’s basketball game to watch defense.

I’m not sure how it can be recency bias and tournament overexuberance when her career numbers are literally better than every single person you listed (I’m assuming this is true, since I asked and you didn’t say anything). It seems like you’re going out of your way to not give her credit for her accomplishments. She was second in the country in scoring this year while also leading the country in APG. And she took what you yourself referred to as an “average” Iowa team to the title game, while the other women you mentioned were likely surrounded by blue chips, based on where they went to school.

Are you sure you’re not just assuming she’s worse than those people you listed because she’s white?

 

Also, am I the only one weirded out by the sentence, “She was like a panther, exceptionally quick.”?

 

What? You asked who I thought was better than her and I told you why, now you change what you're asking.

[uck fay] it, I'm not going down this rabbit hole with you, just to argue for argument's sake and then have you create ever changing goal lines to cross.

Also, Taurasi is white. Again, as always, you want to argue away the idea race might be an issue and do every single time, but the hard reality is that it is.

 

Why? Did you play against her? I did. That's how I could describe her, very quick, smooth, and sleek athlete, far different than any other female athlete I went up against at UT.

 

I like it.

 

Well, Italian. 21st century white, 19th century non-white. Switching to the Axis powers in world War 2 seemed to raise their ranking for the race realists. Like how the Japanese are just so darn industrious, meanwhile south Korea is an industrial world leader in tech and industrial boy band production.

 

if it makes anybody feel better, her being white still didn’t compel me to watch it

 

The important thing is that UConn-Tennessee in 2002 had more viewers. Thank you for your service.

 

As I mentioned, if people will stop being pc and just be honest it’s a lot easier on everyone and people can just move on.
To say the semifinal and final game viewership had nothing to do with a white girl putting up 40 and shooting from the logo is the opposite of what I’m talking about.

 

This is true. I did my master's thesis (which was nominally about an Indian boarding school) on the concept of whiteness at the turn of the 20th century. Matthew Frye Jacobson's book Whiteness of a Different Color is the best on the topic and does a great job of how Irish and Italians "became" white in America.

 

Nm

 

I feel like he is agreeing that it was a factor

 

Oh, my bad, then, Ssmiff. Must be a little too early for me to be fully alert. I'll delete.

 

not sure why people can’t be honest. Again, doesn’t mean you hate anybody else. Doesn’t mean you are a racist. It means you are human and somebody who looks similar to you is doing things we seldom see so you tune in to watch.
Similar to the Abby track star from Ky. People really think her being white and successful in events dominated by black runners had nothing to do with her popularity?

 

I think you are right but I don't like it. I don't think it is good that it is this way

 

You are trying to butter me up with a track reference. I agree about the perception of Steiner and I absolutely love everything about her as a runner.

 

it’s human nature.

 

What are you talking about? No one is moving any goal post. I asked one question in that entire post, and it was a facetious in nature.

You're the one making 2 claims:

1. That the reason the sport and Clark are getting this attention is because Clark is white

2. That other women's basketball players have been better than Clark but have not gotten the same attention.

You brought up Taurasi, not me. You included another white woman in the list you created to back up claim 2, and in doing so, basically argued against the point you made in claim 1. You can't say "Taurasi didn't bring the viewership despite being better than Clark" and then also claim that "Clark is only getting the viewership because she's white." By that logic, Taurasi should have gotten the viewership too... but you've already claimed she didn't.

Your argument caves in on itself.