Geno: Women’s tourney need to remain its own entity

7:21 PM ET Pete ThamelESPN HOUSTON– UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma is attending his first males’s

Final Four since 1981, when he took place to live in the host city of Philadelphia and had a ticket. He remembered going on the exact same day that President Ronald Reagan was shot.His return to the event more than four decades later reaffirmed his viewpoint that the males’s and females’s Final Fours should never ever be integrated. This has actually been a conversation topic because gender equity issues occurred during the 2021 NCAA tournaments and it included an official suggestion of integrating the guys’s and females’s Final Fours.”The Houston Astros are the safeguarding World Series champions,”Auriemma informed ESPN at NRG Arena on Sunday. “Nobody cares [

here] They don’t even know they exist. The Lakers and Rockets [using Sunday] and these things. The Last Four swallows all of it up, like whales consume winnows. If we were to be put in this environment as a ladies’s tournament, we would lose everything that’s occurring in Dallas today.” Auriemma said that having the women’s Final 4 in a various venue than the men’s isn’t a sign of the caliber of the games being less compelling.”

What you’re seeing [this weekend] is that if you have your own special item it works, due to the fact that it’s an alternative,”Auriemma said. “It’s not something that’s inferior. It’s an option. [If you do not like it], then don’t turn the game on. However six million people turn it on. It’s an option. It’s a various watching choice. “Editor’s Picks 2 Associated While Auriemma spoke outside UConn’s men’s practice Saturday at NRG Arena

, the ladies’s NCAA last was being played

in Dallas. It marked the first time in 14 years that Auriemma didn’t have a team in the Final Four, and he’s thrilled to see the sport have a galvanizing minute. Even if his Huskies weren’t involved.” Before the ladies’s World Cup Final in the Rose Bowl, how many people in America believed that was something that was going

to be must-see television?”he asked.” How about nobody? Look what one competition did to galvanize the entire country behind females’s soccer. So it takes a moment like that, a competition like that.”Auriemma included that the sport requires to be focused on profiting from the momentum, which included six million audiences on ESPN for the semifinal game between South Carolina and Iowa. (The females’s last, which saw LSU beat Iowa 102-85, was on ABC for the very first time, and the appearance on broadcast tv could improve scores. )Auriemma pointed out that the minute Iowa star Caitlin Clark was having this weekend, in spite of losing in the last, didn’t go undetected by his star guard, Paige Bueckers. As a freshman, Bueckers won several national player of the year awards after averaging 20 points and 5.7 assists per game. She missed out on time due to the fact that of an injury as a sophomore and did not play at all this season after tearing her ACL over the summer.Auriemma forecasted one way to profit from the momentum was for Bueckers to deal with Iowa’s Clark, who averaged 27.7 points per game this year, in the title game.” Next year, if it’s those two in the last,”

Auriemma said,”it won’t be 6 million, it’ll be 10 million.”After Clark scored 41 points in both the Elite Eight and the national semifinal, Auriemma stated his middle daughter, Alysa, brought up a precise example of Clark’s talent and style.Auriemma stated: “My daughter stated,’She’s Pete Maravich

.’And I believed,’You understand what? She’s ideal. She’s Pete Maravich with the 3-point line.’She has free rein to take any shot, anytime, from anywhere, and she believes that it’s going in.

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