Women's Basketball

A Winn-lose Situation for Golden Eagles
February 27, 2006

By Jack Bogaczyk
Sports Editor, Charleston Daily Mail

No one ever said life is fair. No one ever said the West Virginia Conference's rating system is, either.

In most conferences, no matter the NCAA classification, if two teams go 17-1 and tie for first place, a head-to-head winner gets the top seed for the tournament.

In the WVC, that's not how it always works. In the past two women's basketball seasons, there has been a pair of 17-1 finishers.

The University of Charleston has been there twice and come up short both times. A year ago, Fairmont State beat UC, and got the top WVC tournament seed.

This season? The Golden Eagles (25-2) won at Glenville State, but the Pioneers, ranked fourth nationally, got the top seed and regular-season title by 0.55 rating points.

In the WVC, it's not just how you play, but whom you play, within the WVC's scheduling pods. Get this: If any WVC "southern" team that UC played had beaten anyone from the northern or central pods, UC would have won the crown.

It was the closest race in WVC women's hoops history, but is that any way to decide a title?

Call it a Winn-lose situation.

Coach Sherry Winn's Golden Eagles (25-2) head into this week's conference tournament with a bye, the nation's No. 6 ranking, and the knowledge that getting to a second consecutive NCAA Elite Eight appearance might be easier than the math to figure out the arcane WVC system.

"We lost to Wheeling (Jesuit), so we just can't blame it on the conference rating system," UC senior guard Laura Kinsler said. "We had really high expectations this season. We still do."

Winn isn't quite as diplomatic, and if the Eagles needed motivation they don't it might be that UC has won only one (1998) of the last 13 WVC tournament titles.

"If it were me scheduling our conference games, I'd schedule all of the other good teams," Winn said. "We can't do that. Do I like the rating system? No.

"Whose fault is it we didn't finish first? It's ours. We lost a game we needed to win."

West Liberty's win over Jesuit on Saturday pushed UC up from the third seed to the second seed, and the Golden Eagles won't play until Wednesday night in the quarterfinals at the Charleston Civic Center.

They need five wins to tie the school record (30) for victories and have a certain NCAA bid but probably need to beat Glenville again to get the regional host role at Eddie King Gym.

Winn's team was supposed to be very good every starter back from a 29-5 team and it is. The Eagles can fly, as one of the fastest Division II teams you'll see. They are shooting almost 48 percent.

"That's a nice surprise," Winn said. "How many teams shoot 50 percent (UC has done it nine times) today? ... We're a better offensive team than defensive team, but our (ball) defense is our biggest improvement."

UC is a tough matchup because it guards opponents so well that it doesn't have to play much help defense. The Golden Eagles have more versatility than a year ago and more scoring options, too.

It's a team that's more than Charleston native and WVC Player of the Year Lisa Lee 18 points from the league's career scoring record and a bunch of role players.

"We're smarter on the court," said the 5-foot-10 Kinsler, a Parkersburg native who needs 43 points to reach 1,000 for her UC career. "We've matured a lot, too. We've learned to resolve conflicts better among ourselves.

"We know now that when there's a problem on the team, we don't have to run to Coach to resolve it."

That doesn't mean the Golden Eagles can rectify the WVC rating system to help UC in the future. With WVU Tech leaving the conference, the scheduling format will change.

The new plan still figures to leave Charleston with the shorts because the balance of power in WVC women's hoops tilts north otherwise (Glenville, Wheeling, West Liberty and Fairmont).

"It's like running a marathon, and you're at the start, and other people get to start at the 5-mile mark, and we've still got to catch them," Winn said. "The same points aren't available to us in the system."

Still, UC has 97 women's basketball victories in the last four seasons.

That's a number that will grow, and one that needs an exclamation point, and not decimal points.