WBB news - Printable Version
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RE: WBB news - McKenwood - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 02:56 PM)stopandpop Wrote:Great background.(05-05-2026, 01:41 PM)BillBradley Wrote: I really don't agree with what Stephanie White said. Personally, I think all the discussions about how unfair things have become, money can buy championships, teams will be poisoned with all the roster changes and "mercenaries" etc. aren't really true at all. Before all the changes, there were constant complaints about unfair it was to recruit against the top brand schools (Duke, Kansas, Kentucky mens basketball, UConn womens basketball, top SEC and B10 football, etc.), they had all the advantages, best facilities, the rich were just getting richer and everyone else was living off their scraps. So we have completely forgotten about all those issues because now the players are getting paid?
Fast forward to today, and for every UCLA womens team who spent a lot of NIL money and won, I can name tons of teams who spent a lot of money and failed miserably. The championship football team from Indiana spent nowhere close to the amount of money as the Ohio States of the world (of which there are many). It is simply not true that you can just buy championships. There is so much more to it.
We just all watched (well, at least I did because I still really enjoy watching) a team from High Point (from the mighty Big South) upset a team that went 14-6 in the B10. Nebraska made it to the Sweet 16 and they'd never even won a game in the tourney before this year. Vanderbilt has somehow found a way to be MORE competitive in basketball and football. I guess I could be wrong, but I really doubt those things happened because they outspent their competition.
As for White's line of "Now the game is drifting into a marketplace where the highest bidder wins, not the most committed team. If this continues, what once was a brotherhood of passion will become nothing more than a business fueled by money, not meaning." This year's NCAA mens basketball champion Michigan completely refutes that. There was no better example, IMO, of a brotherhood of passion. That was an incredibly committed team and Dusty May did a phenomenal job of bringing them together. They were one of the most unselfish teams I've ever seen and one of the better examples of a team that was truly committed to one another than we've seen in quite some time. AI also tells me that Louisville, Tennesse, Texas, Florida, Duke, Indiana, and Miami all were in the top tier of NIL basketball spending and not a single one of them even made the Final Four. What White said is popular and convenient, but it's wrong.
I think the main problem is that people aren't able to separate the money aspect from the love of the game and the hard work of the players. She makes it sound like you can only have either 1) Pro players getting paid OR 2) Brotherhood and commitment. I think you can have great teams/brotherhoods/sisterhoods AND get paid at the same time. The game is alive and well.
While the money to be had in NIL represents a significant seismic shift (along with the portal and expanded eligibility) in college sports, I agree with much of what you say that there are other ways to succeed, especially when it comes to women's college basketball.
I want to clarify a couple of things about 2 teams you mentioned: Vanderbilt and UCLA. Both schools I am familiar with, especially Vanderbilt.
When Shea Ralph was hired as the new head coach of Vanderbilt, she shared her mission on where she wanted to take the program and what it would take to get there- and she got commitments from the top leadership of Vanderbilt (to give her the support she needed) to compete at the highest levels of women's basketball while living up to its high academic standards. Notice Ralph's mission was amazingly close to that of KP's and J. Donahoe's- "compete for national championships" and "be a force in national women's basketball". The difference? Shea Ralph knew how to coach women's basketball and knew how to become elite. Shea had a very specific development plan for Vandy and while it took a few seasons to get there, this past season they went 29-5 and 13-3 in the SEC and Ralph was named national coach of the year. In a strange irony, Shea learned her 'chops' from Geno at UCONN, but unlike KP who spent all those seasons with Tara, the lessons to be successful were never learned. The other irony. Other's on this board have quoted Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White and her comments about all that is wrong in college sports. This is the same Stephanie White who failed miserably as the former head coach of Vandy! She attempted to use a pro offense and it blew up on the court.
As for UCLA, Cori Close was always a good coach, but for years the Bruins rarely made a splash when it came to winning the Conference and advancing in the NCAA. About four years ago, Cori made a decision about where she wanted to take UCLA. She went back to her many meetings with John Wooden and she took on the mantel of "competitive greatness" (a cornerstone from Wooden's Pyramid of Success). Her new mission leap-frogged from just being elite to winning the national championship and she began assembling a group of players (she believed) would get the team there. Yes, there were transfers and NIL, but what distinguished UCLA from the great majority of other good teams was Cori's insistence of 'continuous improvement', down to the smallest detail. Mostly, she helped imbed a mind-set among her players that was crystalized during the weeks after UCLA's Final Four loss to UCONN, that 'they cannot be denied.' And they weren't.
Two teams; two coaches (besides UCONN and South Carolina), who have shown it's still possible to be successful in the women's game - despite what's going on.
Stanford's constraints are all self-inflicted. The excuses ring hollow. In this new world order Vanderbilt has thrived and made MBB, WBB and football all very successful.
RE: WBB news - Spiny_Norman - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 03:39 PM)McKenwood Wrote: Great background.
Stanford's constraints are all self-inflicted. The excuses ring hollow. In this new world order Vanderbilt has thrived and made MBB, WBB and football all very successful.
I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
RE: WBB news - BostonCard - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 04:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
Is it?
https://medium.com/@philhirschkorn/duke-basketball-competes-for-another-mens-national-title-while-the-team-s-graduation-rate-falls-7ebd54d3a76b
BC
RE: WBB news - TonyLima - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 05:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote:Interesting. Thanks.(05-05-2026, 04:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
Is it?
https://medium.com/@philhirschkorn/duke-basketball-competes-for-another-mens-national-title-while-the-team-s-graduation-rate-falls-7ebd54d3a76b
BC
RE: WBB news - StanUSwagU - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 05:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote:(05-05-2026, 04:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
Is it?
https://medium.com/@philhirschkorn/duke-basketball-competes-for-another-mens-national-title-while-the-team-s-graduation-rate-falls-7ebd54d3a76b
BC
IMO not sure GSR should be the metric of academic success, which is why the above article is, to be candid, less than revelatory.
RE: WBB news - jacket3ree - 05-05-2026
A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.
Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.
RE: WBB news - StanUSwagU - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 06:45 PM)jacket3ree Wrote: A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.
Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.
Hi Jacket3ree,
1. Hope all is well.
2. Regarding above, darn it, you always say what I am trying to say, but more eloquently ! You GaTech folks are too good ! :o)
RE: WBB news - jacket3ree - 05-05-2026
I went to Tech when the six-year graduation rate for all students was about 60% and the four-year rate was less than half of that. For some reason 25% sticks in my head. Not a degree mill that I recall. Among all the drinking of whisky clear, I remember it being a complete academic grind. I just looked it up. The average student GPA of my era almost uniformly across disciplines whether architecture, engineering, management, and science/liberal studies was 2.5. It also snowed a lot and we had steep hills to negotiate on the way to class that reversed grade when we went home.
Tech is so soft now. The four year graduation rate has almost doubled (call it 45%) and the six-year rate is 85%. The average undergraduate GPA is 3.3! So what, everyone is on the Dean's List now? They probably have free ice cream stands at every corner and flattened the entire campus for convenience too.
But (true story), we still had Saturday classes when I started in '81. I had chemistry lab Saturday at 8:00 in Lyman Hall, which sits right under the west stands of what was Grant Field. (Now Bobby Dodd Stadium at historic Korean car company sponsor field or whatever it is called.) I marched one year in band (long enough to learned they frowned on bringing in a flask to get blackout drunk, which was the only way to watch Tech football at the time) and we had those 12:30 and 1:00 games. So wake up early in my West Campus dorm, hike across campus to lab for 90 minutes and then run back to the band room on West Campus (basically across the street from my dorm), dress, and march back across campus to the stadium for the pregame. Then walk back home after yet another loss.
Anyway, athletic GSR doesn't say a ton about the academic rigor at any institution at any point in time.
And if you think that's rough, talk to my dad. GT BCE '59.
RE: WBB news - StanUSwagU - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 07:24 PM)jacket3ree Wrote: I went to Tech when the six-year graduation rate for all students was about 60% and the four-year rate was less than half of that. For some reason 25% sticks in my head. Not a degree mill that I recall. Among all the drinking of whisky clear, I remember it being a complete academic grind. I just looked it up. The average student GPA of my era almost uniformly across disciplines whether architecture, engineering, management, and science/liberal studies was 2.5. It also snowed a lot and we had steep hills to negotiate on the way to class that reversed grade when we went home.
Tech is so soft now. The four year graduation rate has almost doubled (call it 45%) and the six-year rate is 85%. The average undergraduate GPA is 3.3! So what, everyone is on the Dean's List now? They probably have free ice cream stands at every corner and flattened the entire campus for convenience too.
But (true story), we still had Saturday classes when I started in '81. I had chemistry lab Saturday at 8:00 in Lyman Hall, which sits right under the west stands of what was Grant Field. (Now Bobby Dodd Stadium at historic Korean car company sponsor field or whatever it is called.) I marched one year in band (long enough to learned they frowned on bringing in a flask to get blackout drunk, which was the only way to watch Tech football at the time) and we had those 12:30 and 1:00 games. So wake up early in my West Campus dorm, hike across campus to lab for 90 minutes and then run back to the band room on West Campus (basically across the street from my dorm), dress, and march back across campus to the stadium for the pregame. Then walk back home after yet another loss.
Anyway, athletic GSR doesn't say a ton about the academic rigor at any institution at any point in time.
And if you think that's rough, talk to my dad. GT BCE '59.
Hi Jacket3ree,
1. Thanks for sharing those anecdotes & 'short history' of GaTech back in the day.
2. I had a friend graduate from Tech in the mid 1990s in Mechanical Engineering, dude was the kind that in junior high school was building his own 'go cart racing engines' & knew his way around a machine-shop at the age of 14.
3. We thought being Californians (and not really hip to GaTech at the time), it was odd to want to go to 'hicksville' for College. But his folks were from Atlanta, and turns out 5 years later, I knew why he chose GaTech.
4. I think a lot of Calif High Schoolers would be surprised if they took visits to GaTech; Its definitely not 'hicksville'.
RE: WBB news - BostonCard - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 06:45 PM)jacket3ree Wrote: A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.
Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.
The bar for GSR is ridiculously low. A player who leaves the school in good standing doesn’t count against GSR, and it’s a six year graduation timeline. A player who left the school to the NBA but was on track to graduate wouldn’t hurt the GSR, so Cooper Flagg probably wouldn’t hurt their GSR unless he was so checked out from school that he was not making academic progress. Which, maybe (though I haven’t read anything that says he was a dummy).
That it doesn’t matter is different than “Duke shows you can have athletic success and academic success” (unless the OP was excluding athletes from that). No doubt Duke is a great school. But also no doubt that for men’s college basketball, in particular, the school has been willing to stretch its standards so that athletic success does seem to have compromised academic success for the athletes. As you point out, the other students still get a very well regarded university, and get to enjoy a winning basketball team to boot, so I don’t begrudge them their choice, but we should not pretend that there was no compromise.
BC
RE: WBB news - Spiny_Norman - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 05:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote:(05-05-2026, 04:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
Is it?
https://medium.com/@philhirschkorn/duke-basketball-competes-for-another-mens-national-title-while-the-team-s-graduation-rate-falls-7ebd54d3a76b
BC
My point was more for the success of the Duke football and women's basketball programs, both of which had some recent runs of mediocre results but which now are the ACC standard bearers.
Duke men's basketball is a different animal, I certainly do agree.
RE: WBB news - BostonCard - 05-05-2026
(05-05-2026, 10:32 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote:(05-05-2026, 05:14 PM)BostonCard Wrote:(05-05-2026, 04:27 PM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: I'll add that Duke is the current ACC champion in football and women's basketball as well as men's basketball. Athletic success and academic success is possible in this environment.
Is it?
https://medium.com/@philhirschkorn/duke-basketball-competes-for-another-mens-national-title-while-the-team-s-graduation-rate-falls-7ebd54d3a76b
BC
My point was more for the success of the Duke football and women's basketball programs, both of which had some recent runs of mediocre results but which now are the ACC standard bearers.
Duke men's basketball is a different animal, I certainly do agree.
WBB had the second worst GSR of all sports; the worst for a women’s sport, and while miles better than MBB, it was still nothing to write home about.
Football did seem to manage a good GSR along with on the field success.
BC
RE: WBB news - StanUSwagU - 05-07-2026
(05-05-2026, 09:45 PM)BostonCard Wrote:(05-05-2026, 06:45 PM)jacket3ree Wrote: A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.
Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.
The bar for GSR is ridiculously low. A player who leaves the school in good standing doesn’t count against GSR, and it’s a six year graduation timeline. A player who left the school to the NBA but was on track to graduate wouldn’t hurt the GSR, so Cooper Flagg probably wouldn’t hurt their GSR unless he was so checked out from school that he was not making academic progress. Which, maybe (though I haven’t read anything that says he was a dummy).
That it doesn’t matter is different than “Duke shows you can have athletic success and academic success” (unless the OP was excluding athletes from that). No doubt Duke is a great school. But also no doubt that for men’s college basketball, in particular, the school has been willing to stretch its standards so that athletic success does seem to have compromised academic success for the athletes. As you point out, the other students still get a very well regarded university, and get to enjoy a winning basketball team to boot, so I don’t begrudge them their choice, but we should not pretend that there was no compromise.
BC
************
Hi BC,
1. Hope all is well.
2. Regarding your statement:
"As you point out, the other students still get a very well regarded university, and get to enjoy a winning basketball team to boot, so I don’t begrudge them their choice, but we should not pretend that there was no compromise."
....depending on how you conceptualize 'admissions or university standards' it may not be a 'compromise', but rather an improvement or modernization away from 'arbitrary, anachronistic, non value-added standards' ...the way modern Universities no longer require knowledge of Latin as a requirement for admission & graduation the way Universities did in the 1400s in Europe; Of course in Confucian Academies in Asia in the 1400s, Latin was not a 'required academic standard' either, as one might surmise ...which is a long way of saying different & changing standards is commonplace across time and geographic locale, and is better interpreted as 'modernization' rather than 'compromise'.
3. And as I have been saying for many years now, it wouldnt be a waste of time for Stanford University to study 'Duke University' for MBB and 'NotreDame University' for Football.
RE: WBB news - BostonCard - 05-07-2026
The issue is less the standards going in; as is oft mentioned Stanford (and Duke) could fill an entire class with qualified people they’ve rejected, so there is a lot of leeway there. Rather, it is the product coming out. If a substantial proportion of your team can’t even stay on track to graduate in six years and can’t leave the university in good academic standing, then what are you doing? Standards surely do change, but come on, if you can’t get a gentleman’s C in a minimum number of units to maintain academic progress, what are you even doing in the school.
BC
RE: WBB news - Card10Fan - 05-15-2026
https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/15/stanford-womens-basketball-toxic-culture/
Article from Marissa who worked for the Chronicle for some time. I’m frankly really glad this was published. Confirms a lot of what has been discussed w/Paye staff the past few months.
RE: WBB news - SkiBum80 - 05-15-2026
(05-15-2026, 06:48 AM)Card10Fan Wrote: https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/15/stanford-womens-basketball-toxic-culture/
Article from Marissa who worked for the Chronicle for some time. I’m frankly really glad this was published. Confirms a lot of what has been discussed w/Paye staff the past few months.
I thought we had 3 transfers in from portal, and 12 players on roster, not 1 transfer and 10 players as in article?
RE: WBB news - BobK - 05-15-2026
Only one announced by Stanford thus far
RE: WBB news - JohnR34231 - 05-15-2026
(05-15-2026, 08:14 AM)BobK Wrote: Only one announced by Stanford thus far
I thought we had DeVries and Sotelo. Did one of them change their mind?
76lsjumb - 76lsjumb - 05-15-2026
(05-15-2026, 06:48 AM)Card10Fan Wrote: https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/15/stanford-womens-basketball-toxic-culture/
Article from Marissa who worked for the Chronicle for some time. I’m frankly really glad this was published. Confirms a lot of what has been discussed w/Paye staff the past few months.
Ouch. Funny, I don’t remember anything along these lines being mentioned during the Webinar a few weeks back. :-). That must have been a REALLY awkward hour or so for Kyle Smith…
RE: 76lsjumb - 81alum - 05-15-2026
I've been deeply disturbed by all of these reports but attempting to be objective, and I realize that coaching almost always involves some disgruntlement. But this article cements the deal. It is obvious--that for whatever reason--Paye's approach is not working for our athletes. It is odd to me that someone who has been a Stanford WBB player would have such trouble understanding how to relate to our student athletes. There must have been a generational shift in attitudes and communication styles.
Frankly, I wonder if this is a shift that will occur in coaching more generally. The old-style coach as authoritarian leader who can brook no dissent is over in an era when the players are professionals who have lots of options. Coaxing the most out of our athletes will take more empathy. Willl the coach as psychologist replace the coach as military commander?
Of course the best coaches have in the past been both. But Pat, Geno, and Tara were not the touchy-feely kind that Cori is. Kate is far from the touchy-feely kind either. Early on there were those on this board who feared that Kate would not be tough enough. Perhaps she has been too tough.
The biggest mystery to me though is not how this happened, but why administration decided not to intervene, and much earlier. Hard to imagine the situation improving when this story is available for recruits and potential transfers to read.
Just after I posted I remember something from a chalk talk early on. Not sure it was this year, but it was after Kate took over. Someone (and it was not Kate) said something about expecting more from athletes now that they were being paid. I took it to mean that they might be treated more like professionals and less like college students. Perhaps this was the philosophy that was adopted, and perhaps it backfired and was perceived as too cold blooded or harsh?
It could be that professionalizing the sport created sharply different expectations--that coaches felt they could demand more, but that athletes felt they no longer had to put up with harsh treatment.