Rutgers in NCAA Women's Basketball Final

Rutgers coach C. Vivian Stringer yells to her team during the first half of the women's semifinal basketball game against Louisiana State at the Final Four Sunday, April 1, 2007, in Cleveland.(AP Photo/Mark Duncan)
Rutgers over LSU in the first semi-final, 59-35.

The ESPN announcers kept talking about sainted Bob Starkey and what a great job he's done taking over for Pokey Chatman at LSU, but that he doesn't want to be a head coach. However, they never mentioned the fact that his lack of desire to be a head coach was killing LSU in this game. Tale of the tape: Rutgers had two great head coaches (C. Vivian Stringer and Marianne Stanley, her assistant) and LSU had a head coach who didn't ever want to be a head coach. It shows in the final score.

NYTimes had a nice profile of Marianne Stanley this week. But how do they miss the most important part of her coaching history? She's the coach who got fired (by USC) for daring to ask to be paid equally to the men's coach. Women coaches never forget it. When she can't get a head job in the game, great coaches like Tara VanDerveer and C. Vivian Stringer hired her as their assistant. The New York Times ignores women's basketball 99% of the time; maybe they just don't have a reporter on staff who knows the game well enough to know this essential fact.