More on Toni Smith at ESPN.com. Dan Patrick has a fairly uninteresting point here; Ralph Wiley is more sypathetic.

On to the pros... obviously, some big changes coming this year. Things are a little shaky. Bob Corvin thinks the league is going to die. I'm not so sure. I think the affiliation with the NBA was a necessary evil at the beginning. It's the right thing now to change the model. I wish the Connecticut team would have been in Hartford, but whatever. Mohegan rocks, anyway. Clay Callum has here a little more upbeat assessment.

Looks like they are finally getting down to negotiating a contract. See here. So... I guess we just have to take it one year at a time. Maybe we just all need to get out and go to more games?

Now that I have the basic technical stuff worked out... on to other topics. The biggest story of the year in the college game is Duke-UConn. Their first match-up was a good game -- both teams (especially Duke) were pretty nervous, but still some great play. And the biggest sub-story of the year is the Wade Trophy race: should it be Taurasi or Beard?

Nancy Lieberman says here that she thinks it's a very close race, but Taurasi has the edge right now. I think that's probably right. But I'm not sure I agree with Nancy's reasons. Nancy says Taurasi is better because she is playing with a bunch of young and inexperienced players. It's true that UConn's team is young, but are the players around Taurasi worse than the players around Beard? In other words, if Duke and UConn played without Beard and Taurasi, who would win? No way to know, but I think UConn would have the edge. They are young, but it's amazing how far they've come already this year. That was the really story of the UConn win over Duke -- UConn on Febrary 1 was a much better team than it was in November. Strother, Turner, Moore, Battle, and the rest have already turned into great young players. Credit their amazing basketball talent, and also credit Geno's coaching.

That's why, of late, Diana hasn't been pulling down as many points -- she doesn't need to, because she can rely on the others (plus, she's taken it easy lately on minutes to rest sore legs).

Still, I think that as of right now, D deserves the Wade. In large part, simply because she won on February 1. Beard made an amazing, almost single-handed comeback near the end.... but really, from the looks of it, there was no way Taurasi was gonna lose that game. She's good enough to control the outcome against the other top teams and other top players. She is the best player in the country.

But in the end, this really won't be settled till March Madness is over...

blogging rules. I'm an expert already...

This is our first post. We're hoping to create a weblog for people who want to keep up with women's hoops. We are technologically illiterate, so it will take us sometime to figure out how the heck to make this work.

The biggest women's hoops story the last couple days seems to be Toni Smith's flag protest at Manhattanville. It's been all over SportCenter and in the major papers. Regardless of what you think of her actions, it's pretty amazing that a single player and a school most had never heard of can get so much press. The New York times article is here. Coach Geno apparently doesn't like it. See here.