Hold on Sheryl -- time for a reality check.
The women's USA National Team may be 47-0 against some of the best teams in the world (and some way-over-their-head college clubs), but when Sheryl Swoopes claimed that she and her hoopin' buddies could make the NCAA Sweet 16 -- for men -- jaws dropped faster than a Dawn Staley steal.
Swoopes set that new standard for female trash talk in a nationwide conference call May 30 in response to a question about what level she thought the National Team would play at against men. The received wisdom is that most men's Division I college teams would just be too big, too strong, too fast, too quick and run too well for even the best women's team, and probably a lot of Division II teams as well.
Hey, some old male Netheads have played against some pretty good women, and the old guys do just fine. Put them out against the same level of males, though, and reality quickly asserts itself.
Let's get one thing straight, though: Sheryl can play with just about anybody, and skill-wise, these women can pretty much do it all (except maybe rebound -- just ask Tara VanDerveer). But a 6-5 center won"t take you very far in the NCAA, and in fact will not bode well in most boys high school state championships, and that's what the U.S. women have.
Sheryl can undoubtedly whip 99 percent of the male hoopsters in America one-on-one, but that other 1 percent is playing Division I basketball.
The Sweet Sixteen? In a phrase, no chance. Maybe 16 wins in a season, but not in the Big East. Maybe the Big West -- but maybe not.
Of course, then the whole question of whether comparisons with the guys make any sense in the first place is bound to be raised -- but if it must be, Sheryl should try to figure out who on her team would guard Shareef Abdul-Rahim from Cal, say, or Tim Duncan of Wake Forest -- because neither of those clubs were there at the end of the NCAA men's Big Dance.
Some coaches scream "Box out!" Others yell "Screen off!"
Lots of times they just curse because an opposing player has just gotten an offensive rebound, stuck the ball back in the basket and gotten fouled in the process.
The Main Nethead was once at a clinic when a coach asked Pat Summitt about how she made sure her team boxed off. She said she hadn't figured it out yet and if anyone had any ideas, she"d like to hear them.
So one guy raised his hand and said any girl on his team that didn't screen off immediately came out of the game, and that seemed to work for him.
Pat just shook her head. "We'd just rotate," she said -- and the crowd of coaches laughed in sad agreement.
VanDerveer doesn't have that option because she doesn't have that many big people to run in and out of there, and there's no way she can take Lisa Leslie out of the game for long against the big teams at the Olympics. So, like any coach, all she can do is try to get her message across -- and if it takes some screaming and yelling, then we've got a feeling the players might want to invest in some kind of volume control.
The rebounding totals in Australia, especially on the offensive boards, were enough to make any coach tremble, but especially one who's looking at facing 6-10 Chinese center Xiang and all the big bodies the Russians are going to toss around.
Forty-seven up and none down is pretty nice, but that and a dollar will get you a lousy cup of coffee in Atlanta -- if the U.S. team doesn't do a better job on the boards, a whole nation will screaming "Box out!" Or maybe 'screen off." Or, most likely, words the FCC doesn't like too much.
In the open court, the U.S. wins by 20 -- or maybe 30. In the half court, the U.S. wins by five -- or maybe not at all.
It's real simple: Slow down the running game, control the tempo and pound the boards, and a very quiet crowd might file out in the Georgia heat.
But nobody will beat the Americans if they can't handle the ball and keep their composure under intense pressure, because turnovers mean transition and transition means an easy basket.
There a lot of reasons the United States should be thinking about where to put those gold medals, but does anybody remember the Detroit Red Wings? They had a pretty good run before the playoffs too, but when it got right down to it, all those wins didn't mean a thing.
If we ever bet on sports (which 25 years in the biz has taught us never to do) we'd bet on the Americans -- but we wouldn't bet the rent.
