Women's historic finish

I mentioned I'd get to this post in my last entry and after earning every bit of it, I know want to give the UT Arlington women's basketball team their proper accolades. The 2021/22 UTA women's basketball team may very well be the best in the history of the Athletic program.

UTA was picked third in the Sun Belt Conference pre-season poll, behind Troy and Louisiana. It was a hard year to predict the field as the SBC was coming off divisional play where the west didn't play the east. UTA's leading scorer was an unknown to the conference, which further complicated the prognostication.  

The Mavericks started the season with a 6-3 non-conference mark. The most notable win was a 61-56 mark over South Florida, who was ranked 13th in the nation at the time. It was UTA's first ever win over a ranked opponent. Other wins included Sam Houston St., Houston, North Texas, UNLV and Rice. The three losses were to Baylor, Kansas City and Oklahoma St.

Once conference play started, UTA rolled to two wins on the road in Louisiana. The Mavs returned home and lost to Troy, the preseason favorite. In Georgia, the Mavericks beat Georgia St, before getting upset in the last minute of play to Georgia Southern. UTA then swept Texas State (YEAH!) en route to a six-game winning streak. Pre-season runner-up Louisiana snapped that streak in a five-point loss. UTA racked up two more wins before falling to Arkansas St., a team the Mavs previously beat on the road.

That loss really tempered my expectations, as UTA had performed poorly in the Sun Belt Tournament. The Mavericks hadn't made an appearance in the Sun Belt tournament finals and made the semi-finals only twice. UTA's all-time record in the SBC tourney was 2-7. I wondered if they peaked too early in the season and were on a tail slide to start March.

In retrospect, that loss may have been the catalyst for their success. In UTA's last year in the SBC, they made it look easy. 

UTA started against Georgia Southern, as the Eagles won their only match-up in the regular season. UTA cruised to a quarterfinal victory, leading for all but :35 seconds. The final of 85-76 was closer than most of the game felt.

That set a semi-final match-up with Louisiana, who also had also previously beaten UTA, though the Mavs did win in Lafayette as well. The game was tighter in the first half, as the lead changed 11 times. However, UTA took a one-point lead in the final seconds, before cruising in the second, never trailing as they won 75-65.

That set a re-match with Troy. Like the quarterfinal slate, UTA was 0-1 against the Trojans in the regular season. Troy took the first basket, the Mavs sunk a three, then the Trojans scored another bucket. A second three gave UTA a 6-4 lead with 8:27 in the first quarter. UTA never trailed again and used a 25-point first quarter output to dominate Troy, 76-61.

As a Maverick fan, we are used to having expectations dashed and being upset. No win is ever assured and no lead is ever safe. But that never seemed to happen against Troy. I was always cautiously watching, but the Trojans never went on a run of any size. I kept expecting the pre-season favorites and regular season champs to answer and make it a game. But it never happened.

Starr Jacobs earned tournament MVP honors after getting exactly 28 points in every game. It complimented her regular season MVP award. Terryn Milton joined her on the all-tournament team. Jacobs and Milton were the only two players on the All-SBC regular season.

At the conclusion of the championship game, I experienced feelings of happiness, relief and excitement. The athletic department hadn't had much success in the five team sports in the Sun Belt, despite high expectations in most of them at some point. I'll admit that tears of joy started when the broadcast showed Coach Shereka Wright start to cry at their accomplishments. There were some demons exercised that day.

That gave UTA their third NCAA tournament appearance. 

The Sun Belt finishes the tournament early in Championship Week, so we had to wait near a full week to see the Mavericks draw a 14 seed and draw a matchup against Iowa State. Never in the history of the NCAA tournament has a 14 seed won. I felt cautiously optimistic going in, partly in how well the team was playing going into the main tournament. Starr Jacobs was also getting some national attention as a player to watch. 

I've had much of this post written for a few days, but it has been delayed because of the NCAA tournament game. My wife is a sports fan, but this was the first year for her to really experience UTA. We didn't go to a game while dating as I was boycotting the Athletic Department for one-year following the Scott Cross firing. We went to the triple OT game against Texas State, which was fun. But then COVID and other political things entered the mix and we didn't go to a game since. We made the Troy game on the men's side and had a good time. We planned to go to the SMU game on the women's side, but that game was cancelled.

She was a student at Baylor and regularly went to games there. So while the Bears are underdogs to some degree within their conference, they are still part of the P5 hierarchy.

I type all that to provide the context. We got some TV air-time due to the above success and she became a fan as well. She got a first-hand taste of what's like as a perpetual underdog and "mid-major" (I hate that term as we are all DI schools). Rules, like UTA having to travel to Iowa State for a neutral tournament to determine the national championship (let alone how biased the system is for determining top seeds).

I rarely say what you're about to read. In the near 200 posts this blog has seen, I have never mentioned officiating before. Most games see balanced officiating and occasionally blown calls. It's the nature of sports. Human error is always present, but the desire to do a good job is too.

But the Iowa State game was the worst officiated game I have ever seen. It bordered on absolute garbage. A quick glance at the box score shows UTA 10-16 from the free throw line, while the Cyclones were 15-26. Factoring out the six free throws at the end of the game, one might think it was not terribly unbalanced. 

However, 20 personal fouls of UTA versus 14 on Iowa State is a bit drastic. Especially since two of those 20 UTA fouls were on calls were Iowa State clearly elbowed a Maverick in the face.

With :24 seconds remaining in the third quarter, Iowa State drives against senior Claire Chastain. I saw the play in real time and my opinion didn't change afterwards. A replay clearly showed Chastain going up, the Iowa State player's elbow clearly making contact with Chastain's face, Chastain going backwards and Iowa State getting the and-one. The play was reviewed by the officials. The replay showed no contact prior to the elbow in Chastain's face. As the referees were looking at the monitor, even the announcers, who showed an early Cyclone bias but cooled off a bit after the first quarter, mentioned they thought the play would be reversed. Yet, the play stood, Iowa State made the free throw and took a 57-52 lead. It was also Chastain's fourth foul.

Chastain is straight up, no impeded offensive movement nor body contact, save for the elbow in the defender's face. This should have been an easy call.

UTA regained the lead in the first minute of the fourth quarter and lead until about the halfway mark. With just over three minutes left UTA trailed by one. An Iowa State player drove on Jacobs. In a near-exact replica, Jacobs took an elbow to the face, but somehow drew the blocking foul. It was also Jacob's fourth foul.

Unlike Chastain's foul a quarter earlier, it didn't result in an and-one situation. It did lead to a 1-2 free throw trip and a two-point lead. It was the third point of a 6-1 Cyclone run that sealed the deal. Both of those bogus calls were huge momentum swings.

Starr Jacobs is straight up and down. So is the defender, save for the elbow, which happens to be above the shoulder. This, too, should have been an easy call.

Here's the link to the NCAA's rule regarding this specific situation.

While those calls were atrocious, the other issue that was a major rule-violation was the elbow-hooking the Cyclones were using all game. They did this by primarily posting up on a Maverick, then using their elbow to touch the backside of the defender as they pivoted, preventing the UTA player from properly adjusting on defense. I lost count of how often they did this, but it was pretty often, probably accounting for a minimum of 12 points, likely more. 

While it is geared to the NBA, here's a link explaining the hooking violation. Here is a second. All game long, I saw the Iowa State players arms and elbows against the blue of a UTA jersey. It should not have been a hard call.

While this game still has a bad taste in my mouth, the 2021/2022 UT Arlington women's basketball team completed one of the greatest seasons in school history.

The Mavericks had four 20-win season in the AIAW era. After the NCAA began sponsoring women's sports in the early 1980's, the well began to run dry. Connie Kelch ushered in the NCAA era and is last of UTA's nine permanent coaches in winning percentage. The Mavs needed quite a rebuilding job in the 1990's. Coupled with Stephen F. Austin's run of dominance in the Southland Conference and UTA didn't have any great seasons and had only a few good ones. The team closed out the millennium with its only postseason appearance, an at-large NIT invitation in 1999.

UTA's first post-NCAA 20-win season came under Coach Donna Capps in 2004/05, a 21-10 record that culminated in UTA's first NCAA appearance. Coach Capps would rack up two more 20-win marks and a second NCAA tournament game before Samantha Morrow took the reins. Coach Morrow garnered one 20-win season and an NIT appearance before several declining years led to the Krista Gerlich era. Three of her last four seasons resulted in 20 wins.

In addition to the seven 20-win marks, UTA had previously played in two NCAA tournaments, earned automatic WNIT invites twice in addition to two at-large WNIT's. 

As a starved UTA athletic fan, thank you to one of the best teams UTA has produced. It was a pleasure to be a part of and brought a little more optimism back to the fans and supporters.