in need of action,
please post your women's pick in this thread. 4pm seems like a long way from now
please post your women's pick in this thread. 4pm seems like a long way from now
women's bball
- Thread starter sleybon
- Start date
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Delaware women put university in rare spotlight
University of Delaware athletic teams have been playing games for more than a century.
With few exceptions they?ve done so rather anonymously, with most of their triumphs enjoyed and defeats cursed by few besides those involved.
The football team began to earn some national distinction in the 1940s at what was then simply termed the ?small-college? level, and that sport would put tiny Delaware on the national athletic map.
The Blue Hens have won six national titles in football ? the first in 1946, the most recent in 2003 ? with plenty of other close calls. Their home games are the state?s prime sports attractions.
Other Blue Hen teams have earned great distinction. Delaware went to baseball?s College World Series in 1970 and men?s lacrosse?s reached the NCAA tournament Final Four in 2007, when the Blue Hens played Johns Hopkins at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore before a crowd of 52,004.
In 2011, the often-disregarded UD men?s soccer team won a first-round NCAA Tournament game at Virginia, a five-time NCAA champion.
At the dawn of women?s sports in the 1970s, Delaware became a national power in field hockey. Then the Hens won three straight national titles in women?s lacrosse, the third coming in NCAA Division I in 1983.
Then along came Elena Delle Donne and the 2012-13 Delaware women?s basketball team to give all those previous UD accomplishments stiff competition when it comes to fanfare.
Tuesday?s 78-69 victory over North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA Women?s Basketball Tournament created as much buzz as any UD athletic achievement. The fact it took place in front of a boisterous home sellout crowd at the Carpenter Center certainly raised its profile.
That night #DELLEware was trending locally on the popular social network site Twitter. The effort by Delle Donne and her teammates was among the lead stories on ESPN?s ?SportsCenter? the next morning, always a measure of nationwide appeal.
Blue Hens coach Tina Martin, in the blissful afterglow of the victory, suggested ?This is without question, I would think, the greatest victory in Delaware sports history, in our sports history.?
That can be debated by Blue Hens fans at their tailgate parties when football season starts Aug. 29. And, according to ESPN data, Delaware?s 2003, 2007 and 2011 NCAA football title game appearances each drew significantly greater TV audiences than Tuesday?s women?s basketball telecast.
But the Blue Hens? accomplishments certainly warrant inclusion in any best-of UD discussion.
Now 32-3 with 27 straight wins, the Blue Hens attempt to continue their dream season today at noon (ESPN) in the NCAA tournament?s Sweet 16 against Kentucky at Webster Bank Arena.
?I was at the game Tuesday night and I can?t remember having the goosebumps that I had at that game,? said Newark native and UD fan John Cawley, ?and that covers 40-plus years of many big football games, the Mike Brey era in men?s basketball. ... This has just been so phenomenal.?
In football, Delaware competes at the second level, the NCAA?s Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA), but it is built to do so. Delaware path to prominence in lacrosse is aided by the fact the sport, despite massive growth, is still limited to 61 Division I men?s teams and 92 Division I women?s teams, mostly in the East.
There are 345 NCAA Division I women?s basketball teams, more than three times the amount of FCS football teams. And Delaware, as a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, is not regularly able to compete with schools like North Carolina from the ACC and Kentucky from the SEC.
?They?ve got five high school McDonald?s All-Americans,? Martin said of Kentucky. ?I like to say I have five kids who eat at McDonald?s.?
The exception is Delle Donne, a first-team All-American who, with a talented surrounding cast, has been able to lift Delaware to unprecedented heights.
?This has been an awesome journey and it brings us here now and I?m going to enjoy it every step of the way,? Delle Donne said.
Basketball and conferences
More grand accomplishments are in UD?s reach.
New Orleans is the site of the Final Four, a spot Delaware could never truly dream of landing before the last couple years.
?I joked with Tina the other night, the way this is lining up, we beat the Big 12, we beat the ACC,? athletic director Eric Ziady said. ?We?ve got a shot at the SEC and the Big East coming up. If we can just get to New Orleans and get a Pac-12 school in there, we?ll be all set. We?ll wipe out the entire top five.?
Two men?s programs from Delaware?s conference, the Colonial Athletic Association, reached that hallowed Final Four destination ? George Mason in 2006 and VCU in 2011. Both later parlayed those into moves to a higher-profile league for basketball, the Atlantic 10, with VCU moving this year and Mason following next year.
With the constant movement of schools to different leagues that has taken place lately, Ziady was asked if the success of the women?s basketball team could have a similar affect for Delaware. It should be noted that neither Mason nor VCU plays football. Delaware rejected a move to the Atlantic 10 in the early 1990s because, while it was beneficial for basketball, it wasn?t for other sports.
?We?re very cognizant of the things that are out there and the things that could develop over time,? Ziady said, ?but we?re not rushing into something because it pleases someone that there?s activity. Activity doesn?t mean success or it doesn?t mean advancement.?
Two FCS football powers, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State, announced last week they?re planning a move to the FBS Sun Belt Conference.
?When you get back to that equation of what are you ?moving up? to, you have to really look at what you?re moving up to,? said Ziady, hired as Delaware AD in November after a long stint at ACC member Boston College. ?We?re not [receiving] offers from the ACC or the Big Ten. Everybody?s emailing me about what Georgia Southern and Appalachian State are doing. That?s not moving up. It?s a designation that signifies you?re moving up but you?re not moving up.??
The Atlantic 10, which had 16 members this season, is losing Butler and Xavier to the revamped Big East, Temple to the unnamed conference of former Big East football schools, and Charlotte to Conference USA. With other defections possible, it may seek other additions.
The CAA will have nine full members next year with the departures of George Mason, Old Dominion and Georgia State and the addition of the College of Charleston. Albany and Stony Brook are coming in for football only.
?We?re proud members in the Colonial Athletic Association and are working with the Colonial schools to strengthen our conference as best we can,? Ziady said.
University of Delaware athletic teams have been playing games for more than a century.
With few exceptions they?ve done so rather anonymously, with most of their triumphs enjoyed and defeats cursed by few besides those involved.
The football team began to earn some national distinction in the 1940s at what was then simply termed the ?small-college? level, and that sport would put tiny Delaware on the national athletic map.
The Blue Hens have won six national titles in football ? the first in 1946, the most recent in 2003 ? with plenty of other close calls. Their home games are the state?s prime sports attractions.
Other Blue Hen teams have earned great distinction. Delaware went to baseball?s College World Series in 1970 and men?s lacrosse?s reached the NCAA tournament Final Four in 2007, when the Blue Hens played Johns Hopkins at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore before a crowd of 52,004.
In 2011, the often-disregarded UD men?s soccer team won a first-round NCAA Tournament game at Virginia, a five-time NCAA champion.
At the dawn of women?s sports in the 1970s, Delaware became a national power in field hockey. Then the Hens won three straight national titles in women?s lacrosse, the third coming in NCAA Division I in 1983.
Then along came Elena Delle Donne and the 2012-13 Delaware women?s basketball team to give all those previous UD accomplishments stiff competition when it comes to fanfare.
Tuesday?s 78-69 victory over North Carolina in the second round of the NCAA Women?s Basketball Tournament created as much buzz as any UD athletic achievement. The fact it took place in front of a boisterous home sellout crowd at the Carpenter Center certainly raised its profile.
That night #DELLEware was trending locally on the popular social network site Twitter. The effort by Delle Donne and her teammates was among the lead stories on ESPN?s ?SportsCenter? the next morning, always a measure of nationwide appeal.
Blue Hens coach Tina Martin, in the blissful afterglow of the victory, suggested ?This is without question, I would think, the greatest victory in Delaware sports history, in our sports history.?
That can be debated by Blue Hens fans at their tailgate parties when football season starts Aug. 29. And, according to ESPN data, Delaware?s 2003, 2007 and 2011 NCAA football title game appearances each drew significantly greater TV audiences than Tuesday?s women?s basketball telecast.
But the Blue Hens? accomplishments certainly warrant inclusion in any best-of UD discussion.
Now 32-3 with 27 straight wins, the Blue Hens attempt to continue their dream season today at noon (ESPN) in the NCAA tournament?s Sweet 16 against Kentucky at Webster Bank Arena.
?I was at the game Tuesday night and I can?t remember having the goosebumps that I had at that game,? said Newark native and UD fan John Cawley, ?and that covers 40-plus years of many big football games, the Mike Brey era in men?s basketball. ... This has just been so phenomenal.?
In football, Delaware competes at the second level, the NCAA?s Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA), but it is built to do so. Delaware path to prominence in lacrosse is aided by the fact the sport, despite massive growth, is still limited to 61 Division I men?s teams and 92 Division I women?s teams, mostly in the East.
There are 345 NCAA Division I women?s basketball teams, more than three times the amount of FCS football teams. And Delaware, as a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, is not regularly able to compete with schools like North Carolina from the ACC and Kentucky from the SEC.
?They?ve got five high school McDonald?s All-Americans,? Martin said of Kentucky. ?I like to say I have five kids who eat at McDonald?s.?
The exception is Delle Donne, a first-team All-American who, with a talented surrounding cast, has been able to lift Delaware to unprecedented heights.
?This has been an awesome journey and it brings us here now and I?m going to enjoy it every step of the way,? Delle Donne said.
Basketball and conferences
More grand accomplishments are in UD?s reach.
New Orleans is the site of the Final Four, a spot Delaware could never truly dream of landing before the last couple years.
?I joked with Tina the other night, the way this is lining up, we beat the Big 12, we beat the ACC,? athletic director Eric Ziady said. ?We?ve got a shot at the SEC and the Big East coming up. If we can just get to New Orleans and get a Pac-12 school in there, we?ll be all set. We?ll wipe out the entire top five.?
Two men?s programs from Delaware?s conference, the Colonial Athletic Association, reached that hallowed Final Four destination ? George Mason in 2006 and VCU in 2011. Both later parlayed those into moves to a higher-profile league for basketball, the Atlantic 10, with VCU moving this year and Mason following next year.
With the constant movement of schools to different leagues that has taken place lately, Ziady was asked if the success of the women?s basketball team could have a similar affect for Delaware. It should be noted that neither Mason nor VCU plays football. Delaware rejected a move to the Atlantic 10 in the early 1990s because, while it was beneficial for basketball, it wasn?t for other sports.
?We?re very cognizant of the things that are out there and the things that could develop over time,? Ziady said, ?but we?re not rushing into something because it pleases someone that there?s activity. Activity doesn?t mean success or it doesn?t mean advancement.?
Two FCS football powers, Georgia Southern and Appalachian State, announced last week they?re planning a move to the FBS Sun Belt Conference.
?When you get back to that equation of what are you ?moving up? to, you have to really look at what you?re moving up to,? said Ziady, hired as Delaware AD in November after a long stint at ACC member Boston College. ?We?re not [receiving] offers from the ACC or the Big Ten. Everybody?s emailing me about what Georgia Southern and Appalachian State are doing. That?s not moving up. It?s a designation that signifies you?re moving up but you?re not moving up.??
The Atlantic 10, which had 16 members this season, is losing Butler and Xavier to the revamped Big East, Temple to the unnamed conference of former Big East football schools, and Charlotte to Conference USA. With other defections possible, it may seek other additions.
The CAA will have nine full members next year with the departures of George Mason, Old Dominion and Georgia State and the addition of the College of Charleston. Albany and Stony Brook are coming in for football only.
?We?re proud members in the Colonial Athletic Association and are working with the Colonial schools to strengthen our conference as best we can,? Ziady said.
in need of action,
please post your women's pick in this thread. 4pm seems like a long way from now
early action play, play the over NYI/Pitt NHL game.
