Columnist Ron Kantowski: Below the rim, above reproach

Thursday, March 13, 2003 | 10:09 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

I spent most of Wednesday watching women's basketball.

I didn't witness a single dunk. Or tip-in. Or goaltending call. Or 360-degree, gravity-defying, in-your-face, spin move to the basket.

I also didn't hear of a single recruiting violation. Or of an assistant coach giving a player a passing grade for a class she never attended. Or of anybody being paid to write a term paper for a player.

And based on those truths, I'm going to assume that all the players I watched Wednesday used 10-10-220 to call home after the games, and not some stolen long-distance access code belonging to their school's athletic department.

John Wooden was right: There is a lot to admire about women's college basketball.

Admitting that is risky for a member of the mainstream sports media. It's sort of like owning up to having watched "Melrose Place." Or worse, possessing a Barry Manilow CD.

But as Brigham Young and UNLV battled tooth and acrylic nail in the Mountain West Conference women's basketball tournament, a colleague on press row who usually covers the men poked me in the ribs.

"This is one of the most exciting games I've seen all year," he said.

I had to agree. And by the time BYU's sensational shooting guard Erin Thorn scored her 32nd, 33rd and 34th points of the afternoon, on an it-had-eyes jump shot from beyond the top of the key with 2.8 seconds remaining in overtime that sent the Lady Rebels to a heart-wrenching 66-64 defeat, I also was ready to concede that maybe "Copacabana" wasn't such a bad song after all.

I must be getting softer than Nebraska's non-conference football schedule. Watching the women was more or less a job assignment Wednesday, but my wife caught me in the act Tuesday -- cheering, that is, during Villanova's 52-48 victory against the UConn women that ended the Huskies' remarkable 70-game winning streak.

Take away my beer. Extinguish my cigar, if you must. But if all these outside-the-lines shenanigans, the kind of tawdry stuff that transpired at St. Bonaventure and Georgia and Fresno State and Villanova during the past 10 days, continues, I might be tuning in a lot more women's games. At least when Penn and Princeton are idle.

It is the finesse of the women's game that drew Wooden, the legendary Wizard of Westwood, to it. The players I saw Wednesday actually appeared to listen to their coaches and seemed content to "run the offense." But the women's game certainly has changed since I was in school, when the Ohio State and Michigan football teams usually outscored the girls, and virtually every missed shot resulted in a jump ball, because the girls couldn't jump.

Well, based on Wednesday's games, girls still can't jump. But they can block out, move their feet on defense, run the pick and roll and throw a skip pass against a zone defense.

The women's game is still predicated on finesse, but there's certainly a power element to it. You should have seen how the Lady Rebels' Sherry McCracklin scrummed for position in the low post against Cougars counterpart Danielle Cheesman. They didn't seem too concerned about breaking a nail or mussing their hair. On the contrary, it looked like Wilt beating on Russell.

They were playing just like guys.

The state of the men's game notwithstanding, I hope they still consider that a compliment.