RE: When was WBB an elite program?

Posted on: March 21, 2023 at 22:47:03 CT

You're right, CT. We've never been elite. We were very good a few times. I'd say maybe six seasons you could call us very good -- mostly under Rutherford -- and at least under her, we either won or finished second in the conference several times. I thought that Stein was a good coach but she couldn't recruit. People say that Sophie was a "generational" player, but she couldn't do it all by herself. There just wasn't enough talent depth around her. The best player in MO when she was recruited was a St. Louis-area girl who went to UConn. If not for the family connections, we wouldn't have had Sophie or Cierra Porter. I used to be surprised that the program wasn't better because it was one of the few women's teams to be good when college WBB started. But even then, the sport wasn't widely popular in Columbia because the men's program took off, and even now you may get only a few thousand fans per game. The state doesn't produce a lot of elite talent, and most of what it does produce goes elsewhere. South Carolina didn't become dominant until it hired Dawn Staley -- a former all-America, Olympian and pro -- to be the head coach. And even with a national championship to her credit, she still had to fight to make as much money as the less-successful men's coach. Hiring someone like Staley is what it takes, unless you get very lucky and find lightning in a bottle with someone.