There was a big stink after the South Carolina game with Staley saying media was unfair to her team because of "the color of their skin" and the style of their play and she implied media people thought they were "thugs, and monkeys".
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/gamecocks-coach-dawn-staley-pushes-back-style-play-critics-following-loss-iowa-were-not-thugs
Then LSU players then started claiming that Iowa "disrespected" South Carolina by packing in a zone and not guarding the perimeter shooters and they were now all going to "take it personally".
Fast forward to the title game and everybody talking about race and it started to become a Black/White subplot.
Somehow the NCAA then assigns three African American refs to the game knowing full well it was a tense situation already. Put the refs under a microscope in a no win situation,and they did not handle it well; and then Mulkey played them like a fiddle and walked all over them. Mulkey is a killer and HOF player and coach.
The NCAA blew it. It took away from the great shooting game by LSU, and a good tournament.
A lot of casual woman's BB fans tuned in and saw a shitshow of bullshit allowed and a game that turned into a variation of a summer AAU game reffed by hacks and tilted for a home host of the tourney team.
Except it was the national title game. It hurt the game.
The "disrespect" narrative was really weird to me, especially as it relates to packing it in on SC. First of all, it worked - had them way off their game in the first half, and the girl they sagged off didn't even look to shoot.
But then in the second half she made three 3's and shot them out of it! I don't understand remotely what disrespect is there. It looked like a pretty solid strategy to me, which they stuck with until the other team forced them out of it. That's just basketball.
I watched a number of women's tournament games, my first time really following it, and I gotta say those girls are fucking good man, they can play. Clark's a killer, Reese is great, Aaliyah Boston is a beast. I was impressed by the women's game overall.
That said, it really sucks that the narrative last night is about the refs and the Reese thing. I thought the Reese thing was ugly, regardless of race - if a men's player does that tonight my guess is there'll be a fight - and the arguments saying "Clark did the same thing earlier in the tournament" are incredibly disingenuous. And the refs were fucking terrible last night. That said, the narrative from last night SHOULD'VE been that LSU was just unguardable, hit everything all night. They were fantastic.
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