Some well deserved recognition for Kay Yow

On November 19 at Madison Square Garden, the late Kay Yow (N.C. State women's basketball coach) will be recognized with the Lapchick Character Award. The award recognizes coaches who have shown the character traits and coaching skills of the Hall of Fame coach, Joe Lapchick. Coach Yow will be recognized along with John Thompason (former Georgetown coach) and Jack Curran. Coach Curran coaches at New York City's Archbishop Molloy High School where he has won more then 900 games, won five New York City Championships and has helped 500 students go onto receive scholarships to play college basketball. All three are deserving of this recognition.

This marks the second year these awards have been given out. The first year the recipients were: Pat Summitt, Dean Smith and Lou Carnesecca.

Coming in January 2010
ESPN will host the first women's basketball college GameDay. The event will take place prior to the Notre Dame/UCONN game in Storrs, Connecticut on January 16th. While I really like the idea and feel it's horribly OVERDUE, my concern is that they will not advertise enough and say the ratings were bad. Then they can say "hey, we tried but not luck." Media drives everything, let's get the media going about how good the show will be and not treat it like a side show.

WNBA News
If the playoffs started today:
West
(1) Mercury vs (4) San Antonio
(2) Storm vs (3) Sparks

East
(1) Fever vs (4) Mystics
(2) Dream vs (3) Sun

Since they are not starting today and there are 8 games left, here is a quick break down:
West

• Mercury-3 Home, 4 Road. They have the best road record in the WNBA (8-5) so they will stay on top.
• Storm-4 Home, 4 Road. 10-3 at home, better then the Mercury but are 5-8 on the road. They have a winning streak of 2 games but it doesn't matter. Sparks might just take over 2nd place because...
• Sparks-6 Home, 2 Road. Winning streak of 5, are 7-4 at home. And they have their two X factors back: Parker and Leslie.
• Silver Stars-4 Home, 3 Road. They were in the title game last year but will barely hang on to 4th place in the West. They are just over .500 playing at home.

East

• Fever-4 Home, 4 Road. Best home record in the league, 12-1. They'll win the division by 7 games.
• Dream-2 Home, 6 Road. 4-7 on the road, uh oh. Dream will hang onto 2nd place...barely. Most of the team members have been in this position before and heck, Angel McCoughtry just had some bigtime NCAA tournament games.
• Sun-3 Home, 5 Road. Their 4-8 Road record is what keeps them in 3rd place. They have Detroit, New York, Chicago, Connecticut and Washington to contend with (in no particular order).
• Mystics-3 Home, 4 Road. 8-6 @ Home, 5-6 Road....hmm. They are playing in New York and personally I see the Liberty (and Shock) as party spoilers. Chicago sneaks up and takes 4th place from the Mystics because the Mystics just can't finish games! (I'm telling you, it's too many Duke players!)

Should be an exciting finish to the season!