Published: March 20, 2008 11:39 pm         

Cowgirls, Sooners take center stage

Women’s basketball was born in the winter of 1892 at Smith College, a women’s school in Northampton, Mass.

The first college women’s basketball game was played March 21, 1893. The Smith freshman class played the sophomores. The doors to the gym were locked and no men were allowed in to watch, as the game was not considered socially acceptable.

Today women’s college basketball is not only socially acceptable, it is becoming a social phenomenon.

The 2008 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship begins Saturday at various sites around the country.

The women’s tournament doesn’t garner quite the rapt attention as the men’s event, but the distaff version of March Madness is growing in popularity.

For basketball fans in Oklahoma, this year’s women’s NCAA tournament features two stories of renewal and redemption.

In 1990, March Madness had another meaning in Norman when the University of Oklahoma announced the school was disbanding its women’s basketball program. Eight days later, after a storm of protest, the school rescinded its decision.

Enter Sherri Coale. In 1996, the former high school coach took over the Sooner program. Six years later the Sooners were in the national championship game. That season marked OU’s emergence as a national power, a distinction that continues today. Sunday the Sooners will face Illinois State in the first round of this year’s tournament.

The Oklahoma State Cowgirls were never threatened with extinction, just irrelevance. In the three-year reign of coach Julie Goodenough and the first season under Kurt Budke, the Cowgirls were a combined 29-83, including a 6-22 disaster in Budke’s first season.

Last season, however, Budke turned things around, leading OSU to 20 wins and its first NCAA berth since 1996.

This year OSU went 25-7, reached the Big 12 Tournament finals and drew a No. 3 seed in the NCAA’s New Orleans Regional. Why the Cowgirls weren’t sent to the Oklahoma City Regional is a question for the ages, but perhaps it will serve as a little added motivation as OSU faces East Tennessee State Saturday, seeking its first NCAA win since 1996.

Oklahoma has two nationally ranked women’s basketball teams, both of whom have a chance to go deep into the NCAA tournament.

Not bad for a football state.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.