Not only were the male commentators wrong, but the women sitting on the ESPN panel chirping and chattering away missed the point entirely. The focus was not on the right point. Their focus was Geno’s behavior. They spent all their effort talking of “a rivalry between the two coaches.” Their focus should have been on why Dawn Staley had to be in defensive posture such that in her team’s victory blowing the previously undefeated U Conn streak out of the water and knocking them out of the finals, she had to exclaim, “Let me say this first—I am of integrity.”
That is a given. That she is of integrity should go without saying. I’ve been an Aggie women’s basketball fan for as many years as to qualify in the “beaten by South Carolina veterans club,” and yet I have the highest regard and respect for Coach Staley, also an Olympic Team Coach who led the USA to the Gold Medal. As a player she was a standout and today as a female leader and role model for young women, she excels.
Most importantly, Dawn Staley gives back again and again, quietly. Sometimes cameras follow her; other times they have no idea of her generosity behind the scenes. But she models a giver’s heart in everything she does. And she deserves better, most of all from her fellow female commentators, who are supposedly basketball veterans themselves. They responded to the theatrics of a loser, rather than give five minutes’ thought to the purposeful technique Geno Auriemma applied: “Suck all the air out of the room and all the attention out of the victory” with his behavior. Headlines carried his egregious behavior one day and his mea culpa forced apologia (written by a U Conn PR flack) after.
Can anyone name the individual members of the South Carolina team after that fantastic, hard-fought victory? Of course not. It was Geno-Geno-Geno 24/7 coverage. Again, the female talking heads blathered on, taking the bait. They were good at basketball, but they fell for the oldest trick in the book: distraction is the key to inaction. And yet, present-day coaching has reached a new heightened level of bad behavior, and it is not by the women coaches.
It is not fair that the mountain of praise is still heaped on the men who coach women’s basketball. Dawn Staley’s years of amazing coaching continued to be buried far down the paragraphs while the lead goes to “Vic Schaefer of Texas comforts a player in their loss.” The headline should have been “UCLA Head Coach Cori Close” cleans the clock of the Texas “Secretary of Defense” Vic Schaefer. Instead the caption reads: “Vic Schaefer post goes viral as he comforts a fifth-year player who lost in her final game.” Yawn.
Does anyone remember the game where Schaefer, formerly beloved at Texas A&M for his defensive strategy, took the team from Mississippi State to the Final Four by beating U Conn and ending their 111-game winning streak, winning 66-64 in overtime. Same outcome—winning streak ended, Geno didn’t go code blue. But Vic still messed up, and it mostly went unnoticed.
When the TEAM accomplished that victory and pulled out that win on Morgan William’s buzzer beater, Schaefer rushed out onto center court, along with the rest of the team. The first person he looked for to congratulate? “Itty Bitty” herself, Morgan Willam. The camera stayed fixed as he beamed and almost lifted her off the ground and held her tight. Also waiting for a hug was his own daughter, Blair Schaefer, who had contributed key 3-point shots and played the heck out of her father’s defense and outfoxed the previously undefeated U Conn team.
He could have let the team congratulate William first on the winning shot and hugged his own daughter first, but he chose to let the cameras find him seeking out William. Coaches are only human, but in national championships you can’t yell, “Cut, retake, let’s go again.”
When you seek the national title, it’s so easy to get trapped by the spotlights and bright lights of publicity. Yeah, it’s great when Matthew McConaughey posts a consolation message for “Uncle Vic,” but one day Matthew won’t be there to reassure him that he was once a great coach because the game of basketball coaching worship is both impermanent and mostly hype.
No question that all coaches “give back,” and are “great people” and many Aggies will rush to defend anyone they think has thrown mud on their beloved coach but remember, he didn’t wait a year to return to what could have been his realm to run at A&M. He chose to say “Praise the Lord and Hook ‘Em” when before his signature radio signoff, as he wore his Aggie ring, was “Praise the Lord and Gig ‘Em.” Save your arguments for the real problem: Dawn Staley deserves better.
I don’t have any answers, only good memories of civil behavior by grown adults from days before. Not all were civil, and classically through the years when I began watching the sport, it was “men behaving badly” as coaches who attracted ratings. And that was the game they played.
For so long, audiences at collegiate sporting events have been witnesses to the highest range of adult male conduct and misbehavior to fill volumes of sports publications through the years. Every time Bobby Knight threw a fit, or a chair, across an arena, someone wrote about it. Invariably the appeasing text followed that one surely couldn’t argue with his methods because he was a “winning coach.” Eventually his “bad-boy behavior” did him in and he lost his lofty perch. It would be years before the phoenix rose from the ashes and reappeared at Texas Tech.
So too are other legendary coaches who are constantly monitored with sidelines cameras focused on them, waiting for them to pitch a fit at some perceived wrong call or other flagrant error (in their not-so-humble opinion). To that end, the list of whiners and complainers is as long as their behavior is annoying.
John Calipari, Rick Pitino, and Dan Hurley are just three who come to mind as possessing the ability to instantly generate looks of gastrointestinal pain at their frustration and disgust over some call or other. They whine, yell, stamp their feet, and posture up and down the side of the court, putting on quite the show. And they are wearisome.
No question passion runs high, and times a call goes afoul. Watching your coach “lose it” with a referee when a star player fouls out will garner a technical. It’s designed purposefully to motivate the team to turn it around. For most, though, it’s pointless and wastes time. Have a complaint? Question the call, accept the ruling, and move on. It usually all comes out in the wash.
Over the years, as women entered the basketball head coaching field, an entirely different standard of behavior rules seemed to be cast across the elite group of women chosen to lead groups of women to victory. It’s been a long, hard journey trying to generate audiences commensurate with men’s sports, and TV coverage was never so good until the advent of Caitlin Clark. The WNBA was still “a great idea with many great games” before the spirit of competition became truly exciting enough to subscribe to the WNBA.
Back in the college world, it’s almost possible to name the “most memorable” of the women basketball coaches on two hands, for me at least. Kay Yow is famous, primarily for her brave battle against cancer for as long as she could, same as Jimmy V (Valvano), and Pat Summitt is forever Tennessee basketball, as identifiable as the never-ending strains of “Rocky Top” (which any member of the SEC has to suffer through annually at the tournaments).
Summitt had a unique way of coaching—she didn’t dress players down by name publicly. In the locker room when she was wired for CBS cameras, she referred to the players by jersey number: #23 is missing her assignment guarding her opponent and letting her slip by every time. Close the gap!” She didn’t demean the player, she addressed the issue. You hoped to hear, “Good job #12” and get on with it. Calmer coaches prevailed in many of the televised game. Brenda Frese of Maryland is the first I think of when it comes to passionate yet focused without losing her cool coach. Muffet McGraw of Notre Dame was very effective without hysterics or tantrums. Then came Kim Mulkey and her colorful designer fashion collection, which she would shed at will upon losing her temper at some player or perceived wrong call. She didn’t as much stamp her feet up and down the court but she surely did move like a blur and grimaced to signal her displeasure.
In contrast, when former Aggie head coach Gary Blair became exasperated because his team didn’t “understand the assignment,” or his myriad 1,000 possible play structures, he would remove his jacket and fling it behind him, airborne. It was up to medic Mike “Radar” Ricke to be alert to the jettison and catch it before it hit the ground and find it a soft landing. That happened once a game and I used to make bets of candy with my seatmates as to when it was coming. Did it produce results? Well, Blair did bring home the National Championship in 2011 so, there you have it. Justified clothing toss. Everybody loved Gary, no matter what. He loved those girls and he expected the best from them. The sign on his desk said so: “Gary Blair: Building Champions.”
Dawn Staley has been building champions for years. Her program shows it. Her record proves it, and she doesn’t have to declare that she is of integrity for anyone with a pulse to know it. She should not have been put in a position such that she had to defend herself, rather than take a moment to enjoy the thrill of victory. Before halftime, the camera and reruns were Geno complaining about “Dawn could call the referee names and make him make a call and he couldn’t get anywhere with them.” What game was he watching? That camera was on Dawn Staley just as much as it was on Geno Auriemma and she did no such thing.
Then at halftime, he whined about it again. At the end of the game, everyone knows what he did and he made up a reason to stalk off the court, leaving his team to be humiliated by his behavior. The looks on their faces of sheer embarrassment were heartbreaking to any fan of the game. It’s bad enough to lose but when your leader is a total jerk to the opposing team and you have to apologize for him? His coaching staff had to feel the stench of guilt around their necks for the behavior their leader showed.
To make it worse, the coverage the following day of Geno’s apology still eclipsed the victory in coaching by Dawn Staley and her team. The University of South Carolina is the true South, where women have been taught for centuries not to speak too loudly, not to shine too brightly, lest they eclipse and surpass someone else and make them feel badly. To be demur was preferred. It’s why Geno kept “winning the postgame coverage” every hour on the hour. It’s entirely unfair to the team.
When you saw the National Championship game between UCLA and South Carolina, you saw what it was like for two highly qualified female coaches to lead their teams through the contest. The game was tough and the competition was the finest until the end, when one victor began to emerge and pull away. UCLA won the day, and the national title, but Dawn Staley won the hearts of many high school players who are going to want to compete to play for her at South Carolina. Dawn Staley’s postgame comments about Cori Close and her team were absolutely first class all the way, and greatly appreciated by everyone.
UCLA has always enjoyed an amazing men’s team that is as synonymous with winning basketball as the name John Wooden is the unmistakable “Wizard of Westwood” with 10 national championships in a 12-year stretch. UCLA women’s coach Cori Close is an outstanding coach who had winning strategies against every opponent throughout the competition. She is another reason why March Madness is such an exciting time in the lives of college basketball fans.
It’s about time things changed. It’s past time for holding women coaches to different standards than their male counterparts. Clearly their salaries are not equal, unless they are fortunate enough to have benefactors, donors, or really good agents, few of which are around.
Change occurs slowly but it doesn’t have to be blocked by key women who are supposed to help promote, extend, and encourage the viewing of and support for women’s basketball. The WNBA draft occurs one week from today. Futures will be secured with various contract signings, and if the players are careful with their signing bonuses, they’ll be set for the future. The shelf life for a pro player, before retiring to TV announcing or coaching, is not that long.
Dawn Staley will be in the game to lead, guide, and direct women’s basketball for many years to come. With any luck, she will be shown the appropriate respect from the outset rather than be forced to defend herself against those who seek to tear her down. In the end, it doesn’t matter who is against her. Her players are for her, and when you know who you are, you’re a leader worth following. And no one can take that from you. [Photo source: Facebook photo]
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