Short tails from training camp

The Minnesota Lynx lost Wednesday 79-78 in overtime in a scrimmage against a men's team in its third day of training camp.

"Good job, ladies," a player told Charde Houston, Nicky Anosike and Shay Murphy while they were shooting free throws afterwards. The young man told me playing against the women was tough, and they played hard.

Lynx Coach Don Zierden afterwards seemed pleased, although he was concerned about some on-court decision-making down the stretch, such as recognizing time and score, and avoiding possible foul situations. This occurred with the second unit, which mainly composed of training camp players who probably will not be around once the season begins in mid-May, made some poor decisions, which allowed the men to hit the winning basket with one second remaining, erasing a one-point Lynx lead.

The first unit, which included Murphy, Anosike, Houston and Noelle Quinn actually defeated the men by three points, but the eventually winners asked for an extra session.

The team is having two-a-day practices every other day this week.

The show must go on

WNBA training camps are now open. If you don't recognize the majority of the players, it's all right.

Many players are still overseas, playing for their respective teams, either finishing up regular-season play, or beginning their post-season run. Several others, such as Swin Cash, Lisa Leslie and Katie Smith, are with the USA National Team.

This is the way of the WNBA at this time of year.

Eight players are missing the Minnesota Lynx training camp, including projected starters Seimone Augustus, Anna DeForge, and Nicole Ohlde. Lindsay Harding and this year's top pick Candice Wiggins, who had seven points and five assists in a win over Cuba, both are competing with the USA club. Harding added two points and four assists to help USA improve its record to 1-1.

Nonetheless, Minnesota Lynx Head Coach Don Zierden and his staff are preparing for the upcoming 2008 season with the 15 players who are in camp, including 2008 draftees Nkolika (Nicky) Anosike and Charde Houston, along with last year's draftees Eshaya (Shay) Murphy and Noelle Quinn.

If anything, it gives the rookies and such players as Murphy and Quinn, who started at point guard in place of Harding after she got injured last June, a good leg up on the veterans.

"As much as we miss the players that aren't here, you have to go with what you have," Zierden points out. "You got to play with what you have every day."

Zierden's plans haven't changed, he admits.

"Just like any other training camp, by the first exhibition game (against Connecticut on May 1), we want a certain number of things in," he continues. This also includes the Lynx's defensive philosophies and some parts of the offense. Defense, especially defending the post defense "was a big concern last year," adds Zierden. "These are two things that we really need to focus on for that first exhibition game.

"By that last (exhibition game on May 11) with Los Angeles, we just fine tune for the Detroit opener (on May 18)," he surmises.

When the other players, who most likely will be on the final roster, show up later, "It will be a game of catch-up for the veterans when they get here," says Zierden. "We're moving straight forward, whether all of our players are here or half of them are here."

As we say, that's the way in the WNBA.

Globetrotters as magical as ever

Growing up as a youngster, I always looked forward to whenever the Harlem Globetrotters would appear on ABC's Wide World of Sports -- boy, am I dating myself!

However, the longtime basketball team fell on hard times. The Globetrotters became irrelevant to many, who saw the players as nothing more than hoopin' clowns.

The basketball was overshadowed by the antics, says Fred "Curly" Neal, a key member of the Globetrotters for 22 seasons, appearing in over 6,000 games in 97 countries from 1963 to 1985.

A 23-point scorer at Johnson C. Smith (North Carolina) University, he was asked to assume the key ball handing duties, a role made famous by Marques Haynes. "One of the dribblers got hurt during the time we were getting ready to go overseas," he recalls. "I scarred up my kneecaps three or four times but I kept working on it, and I got better and better. I didn't want to be the same as Marques, so I got me a new routine."

He did -- Neal became legendary for his magical shooting and dribbling skills, along with his on-court antics that wowed the crowd.

"We always believed in our basketball, and comedy came second," Neal points out.

When Mannie Jackson took over ownership of the team several years ago, he put the Globetrotters on a new course of action. Jackson dusted off its seemingly tarnished image and restored its greatness.

The Globetrotters are better than ever.

"When I first joined the team, one of the first things I did was learn about the history of the organization," says Eugene "Wildkat" Edgerson, a five-year member. "The average person will say (that) the Harlem Globetrotters are from Harlem, New York, which is not the case. It started in 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, and played its first game in Harlem. That little tidbit really opens up your eyes."

The only player to appear in two Final Fours (1997 and 2001) for the University of Arizona, Edgerson, who holds both a bachelor and master's degrees in education, is called the team's gentle giant. The 6-foot-7 player is a favorite among both teammates and fans with his retro Afro style, work ethic, personality and energy.

"I am proud to be with something so positive," continues Edgerson.

The Globetrotters' current "Magic As Ever" world tour stops in Minneapolis for three shows this weekend. Minnesota Viking Pro Bowl defensive tackle Pat Williams will don the Globetrotters' red, white and blue colors and join the team during its widely popular football portion of the show. Williams also donated 100 tickets to Friday night's show at Target Center to the African American Adoption Agency, Minnesota's first full-service, non-profit adoption agency designed to move children of color from foster care to permanent families.

Also, Paul Allen, who does play-by-play on Viking radio broadcasts, will suit up and play for the Washington Generals, hoping to help the Globetrotters' main opponent snap their 37-plus year losing streak.

Neal, who now travels as the Globetrotters' "Ambassador of Goodwill," also will be there. "I hope to be around for a few more years," he proclaims.

(I wrote a feature on both Neal and Edgerson for this week's edition of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. Check it out at www.spokesman-recorder.com)

Imbalance coverage

Kansas won this year's men's college basketball national championship, defeating Memphis in overtime Monday in San Antonio.

I watched the exciting contest with the TV sound off and listened to Westwood One's radio broadcast. Kevin Kugler did the play-by-play, and analysts John Thompson, who was the first Black coach to win a national title in the 1980s at Georgetown, and Bill Rafferty expertly played off each other. They analyzed instead of second guessing, as CBS' insufferable duo of Jim Nantz and Billy Packer often do.

The only down point was the always annoying Jim Gray, who smooches his interview subject with expert precision.

Now one champion is crown -- I can't wait to watch the second one.

Yes, Virginia, there is another championship game. Tennessee and Stanford play Tuesday for the women's national title in St. Petersburg, Florida.

It's a shame that the Women's Final Four doesn't get as much fanfare as the men's. But this is to expected.

Sports Illustrated, for example, will devote reams of pages to the men's field in its annual March Madness issue, but barely a half-page for the women. USA Today and others will devote Texas-size space for the tournament brackets and team breakdowns, while scant mention is given to the women teams.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story on imbalanced coverage of men's and women's sports. Penn State University assistant professor Marie Hardin conducted a study for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and concluded that most editors, which are majority male, have a jaded view of women's sports. Many don't see the value of covering them, the study said.

In a June 2007 study, Hardin again reported that most newspapers carry little coverage of women's sports.

Endless babbling was done over this year's Final Four teams. The title game was analyzed to senseless proportions. Meanwhile, on Tuesday's women match-up, barely a peep is said.

Unlike the men's, there is no Dick Vitale for the women.

Tonight's telecast on ESPN, which could do a lot better as the home for the women's title game, will have Mike Patrick and Doris Burke as announcers. They are far better than Nantz and Packer. I rather listen to them than Westwood One's radio duo of Beth Mowins and Debbie Antonelli -- these two are horrible announcers. They treat the audience like kindergarten students as they explain every piece of the action.

Unlike the men's, there is no Greg Gumbel as studio host for the women. He always is rock solid, but Clark Kellogg too often overstates the obvious. Meanwhile, Rece Davis is basically a suck-up while Stacey Dales has her moments, but Kara Lawson must get over herself.

Unlike the men's, there won't be the late Luther Vandross serenading the women's champs afterwards. And don't expect ESPN Radio and Sporting News Radio spend the remainder of the night and the next day, talking about it, as they do for the men.

Another second-class attention given. This is an annual disappointment that women's hoops fans, which I proudly count myself as part of this group, that we have come to expect.

No shining moment here.

The real score, part II

Dr. Richard Lapchick released his graduation rates study for NCAA-bound men's teams on Monday. A similar report also was done for the women's NCAA teams, and was released Tuesday, the day after the selections were announced.

"Women have regularly been the best news academically in college sport," says Lapchick, who heads the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida. "Women basketball student-athletes do much better academically than men," he continues.

There are clear differences between this year's women teams and men's teams:

*61 women's teams (out of 65) graduate at least 60 percent of its players; the men only 31
*51 women's teams graduate at least 70 percent; 22 men teams have done the same
*Only one women's team (up from zero teams in 2007) graduated less than 40 percent of its players (Jackson State); there are 14 men's teams this year with a similar percentage of graduates

This shows a couple of things: female basketball players take their education more seriously than their male counterparts, and second, unlike the men, who too many bolt to the pros after one or two years, the women stay in school longer because there's no money out there for them to leave early for the WNBA.

However, as with the men, a gap does exist between Black and White female basketball players when it comes to graduating, albeit smaller.

White female basketball student-athletes graduate at 88 percent, only 72 percent of Black female basketball student-athletes graduate, Lapchick's report found. It's slightly better than a a year: a 16 percent disparity as opposed to 17 percent in 2007. For men, the disparity between Black and White players is 24 percent -- 25 percent a year ago.

Lapchick says this problem extends far beyond the colleges. "Too many urban schools are underfunded and cannot deliver the resources that would level the academic playing field," he explains. "Schools are recruiting many of our African-American basketball players from urban areas. This makes it far more difficult for student-athletes and students in general to be successful. In the meantime, admissions officers need to admit only students who can succeed academically."

But based on the two respective reports, too many schools care only about on-court wins and losses, and too little about classroom success. The age-old question always has been: Who's ultimately responsible -- the institution or the student-athlete, be he or she, for their education? A chicken or egg dilemma in too many cases, I'm afraid.

Using the available Graduation Success Rates (GSR) data, Lapchick discovered more distressing results:

-- 15 women's tournament teams (24 percent) and 22 men's tourney teams (34 percent) have graduation for Black basketball players that were at least 30 percent lower than their rates for White players. For the women, this is up two percent from last year; for the men, this is down from 49 percent in 2007
--22 women's teams (35 percent, down from 39 percent in 2007) and 28 men's teams (44 percent, down from 61 percent in 2007) have graduation rates for Black hoopsters that were at least 20 percent lower than their rates for their White counterparts

As we did for the men, let's briefly honor the best and the worst in women's teams.

Among this year's worst:

Arizona State: 33 percent Blacks/100 percent Whites
Iowa State: 0 percent Blacks/83 percent Whites
Xavier: 0 percent Blacks/86 percent Whites
UC-Santa Barbara: 0 percent Blacks/91 percent Whites
Minnesota: 56 percent Blacks/75 percent Whites

And this year's best:

Bucknell, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Robert Morris, Syracuse, Tennessee, Marist, Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt all graduate 100 percent of its players, both Black and White. San Diego also graduate 100 percent of its players, but they do not have any Blacks. It also should be noted that Jackson State, a Historically Black College, had no White players, but still only graduated 26 percent of its Black female players, and Montana, Utah and Wyoming had no Black basketball players for GSR purposes.

Finally, I love college hoops as much as anyone. But I also love Lapchick's annual reports because it put everything in its proper perspective. Success should be two-fold: in the classroom and on the court. Many schools have proven that it can be done, while too many have shown that there is an imbalance in their overall perspective.

The graduation gap between Blacks and Whites must get smaller, if not someday disappear. Then we can have June Jubilation along with March Madness.

The real score

Now the selections have been made. The brackets are now set. The annual moaning has subsided somewhat. This year's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Teams are ready for its win and keep going -- lose and go home, post-season.

I wonder if the so-called bracket experts, the babbling heads on ESPN, the multitude of college hoops followers who are frantically filling out tournament sheets for its annual tournament pools, ever think about the little known fact:

These players are student-athletes.

This fact is never overlooked by Dr. Richard Lapchick, who annually releases his "Keeping Score When It Counts" study on the NCAA men's basketball teams. Lapchick, the primary author of the study and director of the The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) and chairman of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at the University of Central Florida, looks at the invited schools' Graduation Success Rates (GSR). He compares the classroom performance for Black and White basketball student-athletes.

There still exist a significant disparity between the academic success between Black and White men's basketball players in major colleges: Lapchick calls this "deeply troubling." However, he reports, "The gaps are narrowing slightly."

This year's report, released on Moaning Monday, the day after Selection Sunday, showed that 41 teams (64 percent) graduated at least half of its basketball players, which is the same total in 2007. Additionally, 31 teams (48 percent) graduated at least 60 percent, a four-percent drop from a year ago, and 22 teams (34 percent) graduated at least 70 percent, down from 37 percent in 2007. Only 14 teams graduated less than 40 percent (22 percent, up from 19 percent a year ago).

"The GSR, developed in late 2005, provides a more accurate picture of the success student-athletes have in the classroom at NCAA member institutions," says Lapchick.

But the Black-White disparity still exists, Lapchick reminds us:

--61 percent of the teams (33 schools) graduated 70 percent or more of their White players, while only 30 percent (19 schools) graduated 70 percent or more of their Black players. This is a 31 percent gap -- it was 38 percent last year.

--70 percent (38 schools) graduated 60 percent or more of their White players, while only 37 percent of the schools (23) graduated a likewise percentage of Blacks -- a 33 percent gap, down three percent from last year's study

--83 percent (45 schools) graduated 50 percent or more of their White student-athletes, but only 57 percent (36 schools) did the same for their Black student-athletes -- a 26 percent gap. It was 41 percent last year.

"Race remains a continuing academic issue, reflected in the remaining substantial gaps between graduation rates for White and African-American student-athletes shown above," notes Lapchick

While people go ga-ga over who going where, what high seed a school got, and what RPI or win-lost record a team has, let's look at some of this year's teams' standings in regards to graduating its players.

Among the worst:
Arizona, 10th seed in the West -- graduated 100 percent of its White players; 0 percent of its Black players
Drake, 5th seed in the West -- 67 percent of its White players graduated; 0 percent for the Black players
Kentucky, 11th seed--East: All its White players graduated; only 9 percent of its Black players did

The following schools: Connecticut, Coppin State, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Mississippi Valley State, Temple, UMBC, Villanova and Winthrop had a zero percent White graduation rate because they had no White players. Gonzaga's zero percent Black graduation rate is due to the fact that it had no Black players.

Among the best:
Davidson, 10th seed, Midwest: 100 percent Blacks graduated; 50 percent Whites graduated
Notre Dame, 5th seed, East: 100 percent Blacks and Whites graduated
Western Kentucky, 12th seed, West: The only school who graduated all of its players, regardless of race

"If we were to choose a Top Ten for Graduation Success Rates," claims Lapchick, "these schools would be there: Butler, Davidson, Marquette, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Purdue, San Diego, Villanova, Western Kentucky and Xavier. The Final Four would include Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue and Western Kentucky."

Unfortunately, the knuckleheads at CBS and ESPN don't care about this. They won't spend endless hours debating this, as they did about why so-and-so team didn't get in, and why someone else was sent out west or east or wherever. Lapchick's information won't see the light of day among those making out their brackets, or any breath used in their discussions on who will win this year's national championship.

This is the real score, the real world.

Let the games begin.

If you want to see the entire report, go to www.bus.ucf.edu/sport

One more to go

It seems only fitting that the final regular season week of the Big Ten women's basketball campaign would get to this -- six teams still in contention for the title, a conference race closer than ever before this late in the year.

Ohio State was sitting atop at the start of the week, then lost a later-learned controversial overtime game to Indiana. The Buckeyes, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana and Michigan all have two games this week -- Purdue only has one, when they play Illinois on Sunday.

The Gophers, now 10-7 after defeating visiting Indiana 69-54 Thursday, had to win both their games because they isn't in the best standing as far as Big Ten tournament tie-breakers are concerned.

"We sat down with the team (earlier this week and told them), this is where we are and what we have to do," notes Minnesota Coach Pam Borton. "Our destiny is in our hands."

Borton's players took her advice to heart. Emily Fox's jumper with 12:15 remaining in the first half, broke a 12-12 tie and began a 6-0 run to take the lead for good. A later 11-0 run, which featured six points from reserve center Zoe Harper, gave the Gophers some breathing room heading into halftime. Their 39-23 halftime lead was U-M's largest advantage over an opponent this season.

"Zoey stepped up and played a big role tonight," Minnesota senior forward Leslie Knight says of the sophomore Harper's first half performance.

"That was key for us," Borton says. "(It) gave everyone a lot of confidence."

After their big win Monday, the Hoosiers (16-13, 9-8) couldn't buy a vowel, let alone a basket. Indiana went dry from the field for the last seven minutes of the first half, and almost five minutes after intermission, scoring only four points from the free throw line. The Gophers held Indiana to 15 of 51 shooting (just over 29 percent), a season-low for an opponent this season.

"They had a great defense," admits Indiana Coach Felisha Legette-Jack, "but our kids didn't shoot the ball well either."

Minnesota wanted to stop IU from getting into the paint, Borton points out. At the beginning of the contest, the Hoosiers were doing just that. But then the Gophers switched defenses and those same shots soon dried up.

"Their guards are very tough off the dribble," explains the Gopher coach. "Our plan was to give them one shot and shut down the lane. We did a great job in our 2-3 zone."

The junior Fox led Minnesota with 20 points, her 26th double figure effort this season -- she also done this in all U-M's 15 home games. Knight added 19. Jamie Braun paced Indiana with 16 points, and Kim Roberson had 10. These were the only players on either team that reached double figures.

The win Thursday was Borton's 200th career victory. More importantly, it puts the Gophers in sole possession of fourth place, breaking out of a three-way tie with Indiana and Michigan, who also lost that night -- a 69-67 defeat at Wisconsin. If they stay in their current position, Minnesota is assured a first-round bye.

Minnesota (19-10, 10-7) travels to Michigan Sunday in its final regular season game before the tournament next week in Indianapolis.

"It definitely will be a tough game," says Fox on the Gophers-Wolverines match-up.

But it's only one more to go.