Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Rutgers Disappointment
C. Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers Women's Basketball coach, is one of the most successful coaches never to have won a national championship. John Calipari at Kentucky removed himself from that list this year. Among active Div 1 coaches she's the winning-est.
The 2011-12 Rutgers Scarlet Knights, a team stocked with players who arrived with gaudy high school reps, was knocked out in the first round of the WNCAA. They played erratically all season, went 2-6 against ranked opponents (Lost to St. John's before Red Storm were ranked), 22-10 overall. They were expected to be better. Not Notre Dame or UConn better, or Baylor or Stanford better, but maybe better than Tennessee, Miami, St. John's & Georgetown. A Sweet 16 or Elite 8 team. They had five game mid-season losing streak.
Rutgers went to the Championship Game in 2007 led by an All-American, Cappie Pondexter. Stringer has been looking for another Cappie ever since. But none of her highly-rated recruits develops into a true "go-to" leader. There's a flaw somewhere, in Stringer's recruiting judgment, in how she develops young players. She has another potentially great freshman class for 2012-13. But Rutgers fans are running out of patience. The Big East is changing over the next few years; Syracuse, West Virginia & Pitt, three schools quitting the BE, are not the consistent powers in the women's game they are in the men's. UConn, Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. John's aren't going away.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The 2011-12 Rutgers Scarlet Knights, a team stocked with players who arrived with gaudy high school reps, was knocked out in the first round of the WNCAA. They played erratically all season, went 2-6 against ranked opponents (Lost to St. John's before Red Storm were ranked), 22-10 overall. They were expected to be better. Not Notre Dame or UConn better, or Baylor or Stanford better, but maybe better than Tennessee, Miami, St. John's & Georgetown. A Sweet 16 or Elite 8 team. They had five game mid-season losing streak.
Rutgers went to the Championship Game in 2007 led by an All-American, Cappie Pondexter. Stringer has been looking for another Cappie ever since. But none of her highly-rated recruits develops into a true "go-to" leader. There's a flaw somewhere, in Stringer's recruiting judgment, in how she develops young players. She has another potentially great freshman class for 2012-13. But Rutgers fans are running out of patience. The Big East is changing over the next few years; Syracuse, West Virginia & Pitt, three schools quitting the BE, are not the consistent powers in the women's game they are in the men's. UConn, Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. John's aren't going away.
Labels: New Jersey, Rutgers, sports
