By Gary Dzen
Sports Columnist

Planning what to write about in my column usually involves watching a lot of sports on TV and writing about the best thing I see. This weekend there was no shortage of topics.

Fourteen-year-old soccer phenom Freddy Adu made his professional debut for DC United on Saturday, and Serena Williams completed a successful comeback by winning her first tournament back from injury (and acting).

In addition, baseball’s real opening day took place on Sunday (not that Tampa Bay playing the Yankees in Japan didn’t completely capture my full interest), and opening day is clearly the best day of the season for a Red Sox fan like myself. Finally, the men’s and women’s Final Fours took place, and while the championship games were not completed by my deadline, there was still plenty of basketball to talk about.

So my dilemma was trying to choose from all of those topics, and I decided to go for a run to sort it all out. As I ran around the rain-soaked track on Sunday morning trying to decide, I was torn between two topics; so torn that I ran five miles before I was satisfied with what I came up with. Now, I have never run five miles in my life, so one of two things must have happened: either I came up with a brilliant answer, or I passed out trying to pass one of the senior citizens power-walking in lane one.

It turns out it was a little of both. The first topic on my mind was obvious: my beloved Connecticut Huskies had just beaten Duke on Saturday night and I was ecstatic. I endured bandwagon Duke fans’ constant taunts throughout the game, and would have liked nothing more than to write about how obnoxious Duke was and how happy I was that they lost. I would talk all about how picking Duke to win in March is like picking the Yankees to win after game one of the World Series, and no matter how much people wanted to, I didn’t want anyone jumping on the Connecticut bandwagon right now. We’ve done just fine without you, thanks.

However, my superstitions got the best of me (I’m wearing my lucky UConn shirt right now), and seeing that the championship game against Georgia Tech would occur after this article, I didn’t want to jinx my team.

So I decided to write about the women’s basketball Final Four. Now before you put the paper down, just hear me out. I’ve heard the macho comments about how girls can’t play nearly as well as guys and that it’s incredibly boring to watch. I agree on some level that from top to bottom the women’s NCAA is not as fun to watch and that the players in the men’s game can do more. However, I also think that the women’s game can be incredibly entertaining, especially the Final Four, and deserves more attention than it gets.

The classic argument I hear is that women can’t dunk, and so it’s boring. Well, just last week Candace Parker, a high school senior, won the high school slam dunk contest competing against the best male high school players in the nation. While her dunks may not have actually been the best, they were impressive, and prove that women are closing the gap athletically to men.

Another argument I hear from guys on campus is that, “I could beat these girls so easily.” Clearly these guys have never actually watched women’s college basketball. The example I take is Diana Taurasi, UConn’s All-American. She is a 6-2 point guard who can hit threes from well beyond NBA range and is incredibly creative around the basket. In addition, she is the best passer in the college game, male or female. I encourage every guy on campus to actually watch this girl play, and I think their opinion would be radically altered.

One area where I actually think the women’s game is better than the men’s is teamwork. UConn, Tennessee, Duke, and many other teams are excellent passing teams, and there are many more baskets scored on assists in the women’s game than the men’s. Watch any UConn game over the past 8 years or so and you will be watching some of the best quality basketball you have seen during that time.

Following the Connecticut team also brings some unexpected intrigue, much more so than the men’s tournament this year. Coach Geno Auriemma has said some outrageous things, calling Tennessee the evil empire long before the Yankees were ever known as that. In addition, star player Diana Taurasi is, for lack of a better word, a bad ass. She is extraordinarily cocky, but always backs it up.

Before the regional final Penn State’s fans taunted Taurasi during warm-ups. Her response? After a three-pointer during a Uconn run Taurasi blew a kiss to the Penn State section, and after the game she threw her Final Four hat to the Penn State fans to rub it in. She is an athlete in every sense of the word, and has the charisma to not only win games but to make it entertaining.

This year’s women’s Final Four has a lot of story lines worth talking about. The two dominant programs over the past 12 years or so have been Connecticut (29-4) and Tennessee (30-3), with UConn coming on strong over recent years, having made it to five straight Final Fours and winning the last two national championships. Minnesota (25-8) and LSU (27-7) are clearly underdogs this year, but all of the games should be close, with the clash of the titans taking place on Tuesday night when Tennessee meets UConn. Janel McCarville of Minnesota and Temeka Johnson of LSU will need to have big games to change that.

The men’s NCAA tournament is still the best sporting event in America, and I make no claim that the women’s game will challenge the men’s for popularity. The women’s game doesn’t have as much depth right now, and there are still only 10 teams that realistically have a chance of winning the championship every year. However, I do encourage that people give it a chance. They may find that they actually enjoy it, and might learn a thing or two about how to play the game.



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