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Whatever Happened to the Mid-Majors?
By Christopher Thompson
Correspondent
Photo Caption: Louisiana Tech’s Vickie Johnson, one of the four remaining players from the WNBA’s inaugural 1997 season, played the last game of her professional career in a San Antonio Silver Stars uniform against the Phoenix Mercury (who ultimately went on to take the title) in the Western Conference semifinals on September 21, 2009. Johnson was one of just eight players in WNBA history to reach the 4,000-career-point mark, and the first to notch 4,000 points, 1,000 boards and 1,000 assists. She played more minutes and started more games than any other player in league history. But she was just one of a handful of players from the once talent-rich mid-major conferences to play in the WNBA this season, and, for the first time ever, none made it to the WNBA Finals this season. With Johnson’s retirement (along with that of Florida Atlantic’s Yolanda Griffith and the aging of most other mid-major reps in the league) are mid-majors on WNBA rosters becoming an endangered species??
Photo Credit: Full Court/Lee Michaelson
When the WNBA Finals kicked off late last month, it marked the first time when every player who had played college ball did so at a school in one of the six major conferences. Of the 22 players on the top two teams in the country, there was not a mid-major representative among them. No one hailed from Louisiana Tech where Teresa Weatherspoon, Vickie Johnson and Cheryl Ford (among others) once played—though Johnson and Ford did manage to make it as far as their respective conference playoffs. There was no one from Old Dominion (Ticha Penicheiro), Florida Atlantic (Yolanda Griffith), Southwest Louisiana—now Louisiana-Lafayette (Kim Perrot), Colorado State (Becky Hammon), Memphis (Tamika Whitmore) or even Harvard (Allison Feaster), as there had been in years past.
Instead, of those 22 players, two (Penny Taylor and Tully Bevilaqua) are from Australia and did not play college ball. The remaining 20 players came from just five conferences. Not surprisingly, the SEC and Big East led the list with five players each. Four different teams from the SEC were represented, including Auburn with two players (Le’coe Willingham and DeWanna Bonner), Tennessee (Tamika Catchings), LSU (Tameka Johnson), and Vanderbilt (Christina Wirth). The Big East’s representation consisted of just two schools but included a team’s worth of players in its own right— Connecticut brought us regular season and Finals MVP Diana Taurasi, as well as Jessica Moore and Ketia Swanier, while Rutgers contributed Cappie Pondexter and Tammy Sutton-Brown.
The Big 10 and Pac 10 chipped in with four players apiece. The Big 10 was represented by Tangela Smith (Iowa), Katie Douglas (Purdue), Jessica Davenport (Ohio State) and Kelly Mazzante (Penn State). The Pac 10 was ably represented by Indiana’s Ebony Hoffman, as well as Eshaya Murphy, both from USC, along with Arizona State’s Briann January and Stanford’s Brooke Smith. The two final players hailed from the Big 12—Nicole Ohlde of Kansas State and Tamecka Dixon of Kansas.
There was not a mid-major representative among them. This is all part of a trend.
Of the 164 players in the WNBA this season, 124 (76%) came from the major conferences. The SEC topped all conferences with 39 players, led by 13 from Tennessee, eight from Georgia and six from LSU. Kentucky is the only SEC school that did not have an alumna in the WNBA this season.
The Big East and ACC had 24 players each. Connecticut (11) and Rutgers (six) led the way among Big East programs, while Duke (seven) and North Carolina (five) had the most from the ACC. The Pac 10 was next, having contributed 13 WNBA players, followed by the Big 10 and Big 12 with 12 each. Among the individual programs, USC was the only school from those three conferences to have as many as four players on WNBA rosters.
There were 14 foreign players who did not play college basketball in the United States, half of them from Australia (Lauren Jackson, Suzy Batkovic-Brown, Penny Taylor, Tully Bevilaqua, Kristi Harrower, Belinda Snell, and Erin Phillips). Brazil (Iziane Castro-Marques and Erika de Souza) and France (Sandrine Gruda and Edwige Lawson-Wade) had two each, while Latvia (Anete Jakobsone-Zogota), Belgium (Ann Wauters) and China (Chen Nan) sent us one player apiece. The Russians, born of a perennial women’s basketball powerhouse, were missing in action in the WNBA this season.
That leaves only 26 players (16%) that came from all other schools in this country. And it appears that even this small number of mid-major (and smaller) representatives is likely to continue to decline, as the best of these players are in their thirties. Indeed, only three players from mid-major schools under the age of thirty started as many as 10 games this season—Candace Dupree (Temple), Sancho Lyttle (Houston) and Cheryl Ford. Former MVP and one-time WNBA Newcomer of the Year Yolanda Griffith and Vickie Johnson, a two-time All-Star and the league’s leader in games played (and started), have already announced their retirements. Taj McWilliams (Georgia State and St. Edwards) is another veteran who may not be back.
Louisiana Tech (Vickie Johnson, Betty Lennox and Cheryl Ford) and Old Dominion (Ticha Penicheiro and Hamchetou Maiga-Ba, for example, are two of only five non-major colleges who had more than one alum in the WNBA this season; among them only Ford is under 30. The other three mid-majors with multi-player representation in the league are UC Santa Barbara (Kristen Mann and Erin Perperoglou), Tulane and Liberty (Megan Frazee and Katie Mattera); of those players, Farris served only brief stints this season as a contract replacement for injured players, and only Burse started regularly for her team, the Seattle Storm.
Even looking at conferences as a whole, rather than individual campuses, the picture for mid-majors in the WNBA was bleak. Among the mid-major conferences, only the Colonial had as many as five players in the WNBA this season with James Madison (Tamara Young), Virginia Commonwealth (Quanitra Hollingsworth) and Georgia State (Taj McWilliams) products joining Old Dominion grads on league rosters. Conference USA was next with four, including the Tulane players (Barbara Farris and Janell Burse), Tameka Whitmore of Memphis and one of the league’s most improved players this season, Sancho Lyttle of Houston. Three more mid-major conferences had three players each. The Sun Belt had Florida Atlantic’s Griffith, as well as Crystal Kelly (Western Kentucky) and Amber Holt (Middle Tennessee State). Kelly and Holt are two of the younger players who may still improve and have long careers in the WNBA. The WAC had three players in the league, but that is only because Louisiana Tech is now in the WAC.
The Mountain West is generally considered the best of the mid-majors. But other than Becky Hammon, the only two players from the Mountain West to play in the WNBA this year were Erin Thorn (BYU) and Leilani Mitchell (Utah), neither of whom exactly burned up the league this season. The Atlantic 10 is generally considered the Number Eight conference, but other than Candace Dupree of Temple, only one WNBA pro played her college ball there. That player is Anna Montanana, a 29 year-old rookie from Spain who played at George Washington from 2001 to 2005.
That leaves just two other players from mid-major schools who appeared in the WNBA this season: Jennifer Lacy of the West Coast Conference Pepperdine, who warmed the bench in Atlanta, and Kristi Cirone of the Missouri Valley Conference’s Illinois State, who was cut from Connecticut after its European stars arrived on the scene.
Why the decline in mid-major representation in the “W” when those conferences once brought us some of the stars of the league? Part of it is because of the changing face of college basketball. Vickie Johnson’s Louisiana Tech and Penicheiro’s Old Dominion, to cite just two examples, were certainly considered to be major programs throughout the nineties, but their lack of a major conference affiliation has relegated them to second-class status in more recent years.
The chasm between the major conferences and all others is growing. The major conference teams generally have more money which translates to better facilities. Those conferences have regional television packages, so the players get more exposure. This helps the major conferences eat up the lion’s share of the top prospects. Women’s teams get 15 scholarships (versus only 13 in the men’s game) meaning that there are more than 1000 scholarships available for the major conferences, or 200-250 per year.
Of course, there are a few major conference teams that, despite these advantages, seem to remain perennially non-competitive (Providence, Washington State, Oregon State, and Clemson, spring readily to mind.) But most schools are now making a sincere effort to compete.
Given that the talent pool of women prospects is already smaller in the women’s game than in the men’s game, all this adds up to some major recruiting hurdles facing mid-major and smaller programs. Certainly there a few players that will choose smaller college environments for personal reasons or who may be won over by a particularly charismatic coach, but for the most part the top conferences will get the best players.
Nonetheless, there will always be the exceptions. This year, Xavier has two prospects who appear to have WNBA-caliber talent: Amber Harris and Ta’Shia Phillips. Both players are juniors this season, although Harris was injured last year and could forgo her senior year. Elena Delle Donne was the best high school basketball player two years ago, with the road paved for her at UConn, but after electing to sit out last year, she will be playing this season for the Delaware Hens. Jene Morris was one of the five recruits four years ago that turned around the California Golden Bears’ program, but after one year in which she was that program’s fourth-leading scorer and considered their defensive specialist in the back court on a team that made the NCAA tournament, Morris transferred to San Diego State. Last year, in a smaller pond, Morris was the third leading scorer in the Mount West Conference and was named to both the All-Conference first team and the All-Defensive team.
Next week, I will look at the top 25 players from the mid-major conferences. While most of these players may not even get a serious look by the WNBA, the mid-major schools can play some very good basketball. Just ask Pat Summitt.
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