A Few Shining Moments

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TigerBlog wasn't sure which team he was rooting for in the women's basketball NCAA championship game yesterday.

He's followed LSU coach Kim Mulkey's career since she was one of the first great women's basketball players, and now here she was on the verge of doing a Bill Tierney-type thing. 

Then there was Iowa's Caitlin Clark. She was just unbelievable to watch the entire season, but especially during this run to the championship game. It wasn't just her ability to score, though that was off the charts. It's also her court vision and the crispness of her passing.

In the end, even with some, er, questionable referring decisions, it would seem the better team won. LSU won its first NCAA women's basketball championship as it defeated Iowa 102-85, despite 30 points from the foul-troubled Clark, who was also hit with a ridiculous technical foul late in the third quarter.

For Mulkey, who was in tears in the final minute (and who was lucky that she didn't get a T of her own several times during the game), it was her fourth NCAA title, after she won three at Baylor. This was Year 2 at LSU for her, and she won the national championship with a team that had finished ranked nationally only twice since 2008, which happened to be the final year of a five-year Final Four run for the Tigers.

Here are some similarities between Mulkey and Tierney:

* took over a program that had never been in the NCAA tournament before and won multiple NCAA championships (Tierney won six men's lacrosse titles at Princeton)
* took over a second program that also had never won an NCAA title and won there (Tierney did so at Denver)

That's impressive stuff. 

Before the women's game began, TigerBlog did have one concern. What if Clark scored more than 58 in the game?

Princeton's Bill Bradley holds the NCAA Final Four record of 58 points in game, something he did in the 1965 consolation game against Wichita State. That record has stood for 58 years now, and it'll continue to be Bradley's unless someone in the San Diego State-UConn men's game tonight goes for at least 59.

Clark had back-to-back 40-point games prior to the final, including a 41-point night in the semifinal win over defending champion South Carolina. Bradley had 11 games in his career of at least 40 points, but only once did he do so in back-to-back games, and those were against Columbia and Cornell his senior year.

Bradley's name still all over the NCAA tournament record book. Bradley averaged 30.2 points per game for his Princeton career as a whole, but in NCAA tournament games he raised his level, averaging 33.7, with 303 in nine career NCAA games. In fact, his average in non-NCAA games was only 29.7.

The 33.7 points per game rank second in NCAA tournament history among players who have played in at least six games. Notre Dame's Austin Carr is first, at 41.3, which includes a 61-point outing in the 1970 first round against Ohio. It's the only point total that has ever topped Bradley's 58.

You know who's third and fourth on the career list? Oscar Robertson and Jerry West. If you're too young to know who they were, then you need to do a little research.

The college basketball season ends tonight with the men's final. It's a highly unlikely matchup, and it could be a good game. TB has nothing for or against either team; he just hopes it's a good one.

Even if it's not, though, it doesn't matter. The 2023 NCAA men's tournament belonged to three teams, none of whom is playing tonight.

The first almost was, only Florida Atlantic fell on a buzzer-beater against San Diego State Saturday. The second was FDU, which took down mighty Purdue, becoming only the second No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 on the men's side.

And the other? 

That would be Princeton, whose run to the Sweet 16 will be remembered long after any details of the Final Four are forgotten. 

You'll see plenty of the Tigers tonight on "One Shining Moment."

After all, they had quite a few of them all by themselves. This is April, and the championship game.

FAU, FDU and, yes, Princeton all owned March.