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[OmahaDawg]

Bear necessitiesBy Jeremy Stone, Yahoo! Sports
April 5, 2005

INDIANAPOLIS – Five years ago, Kim Mulkey-Robertson left Louisiana Tech when it wouldn't give her a five-year contract to succeed Leon Barmore as head coach. Baylor welcomed her.

One small problem. The Lady Techsters had made 10 Final Fours; the Lady Bears never had made the NCAA tournament. But Baylor convinced Mulkey-Robertson she would have the opportunity to win.

On Tuesday, Mulkey-Robertson finished her fifth year as a head coach by leading the Lady Bears to the national title with an emphatic 84-62 rout of Michigan State. The Lady Techsters have won four NCAA tourney games in the last four seasons.

Oops.

In half a decade, Baylor created (or at least perfected) the blueprint for sudden success in women's basketball.


"You better be at a school that has an athletic director and an administration that will give you what you want and give you most importantly time to build a program," Mulkey-Robertson said. "And give you the resources."

"Secondly, you better go hire you a staff that will roll up their sleeves and make you look good and understand what you have to do in recruiting to go out and build."

Here's the part she didn't say: You better find another Kim Mulkey-Robertson. And because she's the only woman to win an NCAA title as a player, assistant and now a head coach, good luck.

That's why it's more likely that Baylor will become a perennial force in women's hoops than a host of copycats will duplicate the Lady Bears' stunning transformation.

Mulkey-Robertson said after Sunday's semifinal win over LSU that "the best teams don't always win, do they?" She's right. But the best team won this NCAA tournament. The folks that were griping about top-ranked Stanford missing out on a No. 1 seed also should have directed their ire toward Baylor's snub. The second-seeded Lady Bears entered the tourney with 14 straight wins, and they'll be the first to tell you that they play some pretty good ball in the Big 12.

You wouldn't find anybody at the RCA Dome over the past few days who thinks the Lady Bears were the fourth-best team here and just suddenly got hot. You'd find plenty thinking they will be in Boston at next year's Final Four.

"We have got a nucleus of returning players that aren't going to go away," Mulkey-Robertson said. "And they sure did like the way it felt when that buzzer went off tonight."

Talent wins titles. But so do great coaches. Mulkey-Robertson deserves credit both for her in-game coaching and for landing that talent in the first place.

In Tuesday's final, she subbed in Emily Niemann and LaToya Wyatt after a sloppy first minute and 50 seconds. Niemann drilled the first of five first-half threes on Baylor's next possession, and the Lady Bears never relinquished the lead.

"You've got to get post touches, guys, that's the key to breaking down a zone," Mulkey-Robertson said. "Nobody thought LaToya Wyatt would be a factor in this game and I did, and I thought the penetrating skills with the ball in her hand would break down the zone."

Of course, having a pair of AP All-Americans, second-teamer Sophia Young and third-teamer Steffanie Blackmon, to get those touches is, well, a nice touch. Young, the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player, returns next season. Among key contributors, only Blackmon and point guard Chelsea Whitaker aren't coming back.

"We just won a national championship with not one kid on the roster that was recruited by the powers that be," Mulkey-Robertson said. "And that gives hope to all of us that are trying to build a better program."

So that's the secret. Hunt for the super-talented kids that the Powers That Be miss and/or turn less-than-elite recruits into dominant NCAA players.

Do that and you can go from 7-20 to national champion in five years, from watching the tourney at home to cutting down the nets in just two.

No wonder it hadn't been done.







Veteran women's basketball journalist Jeremy Stone is an editor at Yahoo! Sports.

Updated on Wednesday, Apr 6, 2005 2:23 am EDT

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[TXDAWG81]

Oops. What a bunch of idiots in the tower and the AD office!

[CaseyDawg]

That is Pointed! Ouch!

We need to stop worring about the past, but learn from our past and move ahead. Was Kim the right person for the job at tech, we will never know. We do know that Bunke probably was not. We need to make sure we get the right person this time, give the correct resources and expect results. This goes for all sports at tech.

Now is the time to make changes and learn from our past, but not dwell on it. Fundraising, Scheduling, Promotions, and quality coaches are what we need for the future.

The first step must be made by the administration, this is what out administration must learn. It is not going to come from fans.