The Arizona Republic spoke with former women’s college basketball head coach and assistant coach Carolyn Peck, now a women’s basketball analyst for ESPN, for her thoughts on the April 3-5 Women’s Final Four in Phoenix this week.
Peck will be in Phoenix this week for periodic appearances on ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” and will be covering the WNBA expansion draft on Friday, April 3, and the open practices the next day for the two teams in the NCAA championship game.
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Question: What makes these matchups (Texas vs. UCLA, UConn vs. South Carolina) so intriguing?
Answer: In the semifinals, you have the rematch of last year’s final between Connecticut and South Carolina. You’ve got Texas and UCLA, who met earlier this season; that was the only loss UCLA has had. So I think we’ve got the heavyweights meeting in Phoenix.
How would you say we arrived at these same four teams as last year? What does that say about these programs?
Peck: Number one, when you get a taste of what it’s like to get to the Final Four, you realize what it has taken to get there. As soon as your season ends, and if you didn’t finish as the champion, you want to do everything to correct or fine-tune what it takes for you to get back to the Final Four for an opportunity to compete for a national championship. I was able to go to the Final Four with Tennessee in ’95, when Connecticut ended up beating the Lady Vols. And I remember the conversation we had with Pat Summitt about what we needed to do in order to get back the next year, and I took that to heart in ’98 with my Purdue team. I knew what it was like to be at the Final Four. But in ’98 we lost to Louisiana Tech in the Elite Eight. … My mind went to, “How do we make sure that doesn’t happen again?” and putting a new season together in order to get to the Final Four. … They’ve had a taste of it now. They know what it takes to get there. The one thing you can put your finger on all four teams is they bring it on the defensive end, they’ve got stars, solid, talented players.
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With four No. 1 seeds, why is there less parity in the women’s game?
Peck: You still have great teams that could have gotten here that just fell short. … I think that there’s talent, and I think there’s a possibility, but I also think that how the brackets lined up, you have to compliment these teams for what they did throughout the season to put themselves in a position to be a top-four seed. These four teams have been dominant all season long. The parity is growing. The competition is going to continue to build. I just think that’s how things played out.
Are there a couple of things you’re looking forward to seeing in Phoenix with the games, the atmosphere, the players?
Peck: We’re going to have two great games on Friday. … It’s always an exciting environment because of the evolution of women’s basketball. Just the excitement around the event. It’s not just women, it’s men, it’s children, it’s everybody has gotten onto the women’s basketball train because it’s so exciting to watch. And it becomes a prelude or kickoff, because some of these players are going to be playing in the summer in the WNBA. So seeing how they shine on the brightest stage before they make that next jump.
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How have you seen the Women’s Final Four evolve to become more visible and more watched than ever?
Peck: Oh wow. Number one, the media coverage today is unmatched from what it was over 20 years ago, when we won the championship in ’99 (Purdue). All the talk shows are talking about it, all the radio pundits are talking about it. Everybody wants a piece and getting into the conversation. The arguments that you see on social media — who’s better, who should have been there — just that kind of excitement is something that I’m excited about because people are talking about women’s basketball. And they’re not talking about just one or two players. You’ve got a whole slew of players you can talk about. Lauren Betts, Azzi Fudd, Raven Johnson, Joyce Edwards, Kiki Rice, Rori Harmon, Madison Booker. There are so many stars.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: ESPN analyst talks rising interest in Women’s NCAA Tournament
