Kara Lawson’s Duke team saw their Final Four dreams dashed with a 70-58 loss to UCLA on Sunday. The Blue Devils had pulled an impressive, buzzer-beating upset of No 2 seed LSU in the Sweet 16 days before, but against the No 1 Bruins in the Elite Eight, they didn’t give a repeat performance. They missed a few key moments in transition that could have changed the game and helped them to their first Final Four in 20 years.
In the end, though, it was OK.
“I told the group after the game, just before we came up here, what a great season it’s been for us. And this group has been a joy to coach every day,” Lawson told reporters after the game. Duke lost six of their 13 games played between 3 November and 28 December, and many had written off the team before they even had a chance to get into a groove.
“From where we started to where we finished, I don’t know that there’s a team that grew more than we did in the country, from where we started to where we finished,” Lawson added. “That is all because of our players, their belief, their faith and their trust in each other and our staff. That’s hard to find. That’s rare.”
Suffering a big loss that simultaneously ends a team’s March Madness hopes isn’t easy to swallow, and summoning joy from that experience isn’t for the weak. But over and over again, that’s what players and coaches have done so far during this tournament cycle. While there’s been plenty of emphasis on what went wrong and how it can be fixed before next season, there’s also been an intentional focus on what went right, too.
Notre Dame’s season ended with a 70-52 loss to UConn in the Elite Eight. In six seasons leading the Fighting Irish, head coach Niele Ivey hasn’t been able to guide her team over the hump and into the Final Four. Though the latest loss stung, Ivey found a way to that same word as Lawson: joy.
“The end of last year was very difficult,” she said, referencing when Notre Dame’s roster fell apart and lost in the Sweet 16, “so when I came in and to have this roster and to assemble this group and to be able to work with them, they gave me a lot of joy.
“I love coaching with joy. I think I’m better when I’m coaching with joy, and that’s what this group gave me.”
If there’s a team that knows a thing or two about appreciating the journey despite the end result, it’s the Vanderbilt Commodores. When she was hired five years ago, head coach Shea Ralph inherited a program that had tremendous support from athletic director Candice Storey Lee, but not a recent history to match its potential. Ralph set about deliberately building a team that could make a legitimate run at the championship – and she succeeded, defying the expectations of nearly everyone this season.
The Commodores also suffered an early end to their March Madness hopes when they lost 67-64 to Notre Dame on 27 March. Joy has been an integral part of the team’s entire season, and a word players invoked frequently ahead of the game. Star guard Mikayla Blakes, who has broken and set records all season, revealed Ralph helped her find joy in the game again.
“This past year I did struggle a little bit, just feeling I didn’t have a break,” Blakes said. “She’s the first person to reach out to me. She knows. She goes, I know you’re not going to tell me, but I see you’re struggling. What can I do to help you, things like that. And we’re going to find joy in your life. She found joy in my life. I feel like this year she brought joy back to basketball for me. It was something I was struggling with a lot, but I couldn’t ask for a better head coach, better mentor, better role model.”
Friday will bring what will likely be intense games among the four No 1 seeds: first South Carolina v UConn, then UCLA v Texas. Teams will be called upon to push beyond their usual limits; inevitably, two teams will lose, and two will win.
The South Carolina v UConn game could be a revenge tour for Dawn Staley and Co, who lost last year’s championship game to Geno Auriemma’s Huskies. It could also be the ticket the defending punch to get right back to where they want to be. Similarly, both UCLA and Texas (who also played in last year’s Final Four) are out to prove they can go all the way.
Sports can be unforgiving, and the youth to college to professional sports pipeline narrows with each unlocked level. That’s especially true for women’s basketball: a decade ago, the NCAA reported only 4.5% of high school players make it to the college level; of those, only 1.4% will play Division I. The WNBA has expanded and will be home to 15 teams this season, which opens up more roster spots – but there still aren’t enough for everyone who deserves one. That makes a team’s ability to home in on what makes the game fun in the first place all the more impressive, even when it’s daunting.
Texas coach Vic Schaefer told reporters after his team’s win over Michigan on Monday that it’s been clear to him for some time they’re “on a mission”. Schaefer has taken the Longhorns far in his tenure at the school, but a national title with the program has thus far eluded him. He’ll also soon say goodbye to Rori Harmon, who finishes her fifth year with Texas this week.
“They’re allowing me to really enjoy and have the pure joy of coaching. They really are,” Schaefer said. “I mean, it’s as much fun as I’ve had in coaching maybe ever. I enjoyed those teams that [his daughter and assistant coach] Blair played on, but … all of us are enjoying this group because of how they play the game.”
In the end, that’s how the saying goes – and that’s how it should be.
