Theory Time

After writing my blog yesterday about the WVU women’s basketball game against UConn I was reminded of a theory I have about women’s college basketball in general.

I theorize that you can take the NCAA Division III women’s national champions and pit them against a Division I women’s team ranked between number 5 and lower (by lower I mean 6, 7, 8 etc.) and I think it would be a very competitive game, and it might even be a win for the D-III team.

The difference between the great D-I players and the great D-III players is not as big of a gap as you may think, certainly not as wide as on the men’s side. See, the best of the best high school players all go to a handful of D-I programs, like UConn and Tennessee, and the rest of the programs in the country get good players but not the huge difference makers like the elite programs, and the difference between the quality player at a middle of the rankings D-I program and an elite D-III program is not that great.

Now I am not saying that any D-III program can beat a D-I program, far from it, I know how bad some D-III teams can be, but I have also coached against the D-III national champions and I have witnessed the type of well run offenses and accurate shooting that would allow a D-III team to compete with a D-I program.

The biggest problem the D-III school would have would be guarding the post of a D-I team. 6’6” girls don’t go to D-III schools, and the match-ups in the post would be the biggest problem. Guard wise and forward wise it would be pretty close, and the post problem could be solved with the implementation of a zone, rather than leaving the post players one-on-one.

Offensively, a great shooting D-III team would/should be fine on the offensive end of the floor, a motion offense, or something that would pull the post out from the basket would work well and would free up the middle of the floor for cuts to the basket.

All in all the difference is not that great, and on the right night I really feel that it could be a pretty good match-up. Now lately the big talent is starting to go to other schools (like Duke, UNC, Maryland, Ohio State and Rutgers) so more teams are competitive at a high level, and soon I believe that my theory will have no merit as more good players go to more teams, but as of right now I still believe in my theory . . . now if there was any way I could prove it.