Thanks to stars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers, Kamilla Cardoso and many others, the women’s tournament is starting to get the national attention that these amazing women deserve. The Iowa / LSU Elite 8 match drew a record 12.3 million viewers. I have read that tickets to see tickets to see the Women’s Final Four are actually costing more at this moment than the Men’s Final Four. These are all great things for the game.

And yet, this NCAA Tournament had its own set of problems that you hate to see happen. And while some of the things are out of the NCAA’s control and some of the things might be simple mistakes, it feels like we still need to do better.

Lets start with things that happened which are procedural which the NCAA can impact.

In the games being hosted at Gonzaga, the teams had to stay over 30 miles away in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho because there were not enough hotels in Spokane to host them, the men’s first and second round games, and a large youth volleyball tournament. Of course, while the Utah women were walking to and from a local restaurant to their hotel, someone started shouting racist slurs at the team – to the point that the NCAA and Gonzaga had to help them and UC-Irvine find a new hotel for safety reasons. Now, the NCAA certainly can’t control the fact that we still have people who would yell racial slurs at the players – in fact, it is horribly sad that we live in a world where this even happens (and it could have even happened if they were staying in the host city). And some credit goes to both Gonzaga and the NCAA for helping the teams quickly find new hotels (and the local police for continuing to investigate what happened). But if the tournament played at neutral sites in the first rounds, they could have controlled this to ensure all the teams could stay locally and potentially protected the players and coaches better.

In the NC State / Chattanooga game, one of the referees had to be removed from the game at halftime because it was identified on the referee’s social media that she got a master’s degree at Chattanooga. Apparently, the referee did not mention it so the NCAA didn’t realize a possible conflict of interest existed. This is amateur hour at the NCAA, and they should be ashamed. I am sure that all these referees have done at least one college basketball game over the season (and if they haven’t, the NCAA should be ashamed). You can not tell me that someone in the NCAA over the several months of the season can not be bothered to do a background check to make sure an alum of a school doesn’t referee a game for that school.

Then, we head to the Notre Dame / Oregon State game. This is when Irish freshman Hannah Hidalgo missed almost 4 minutes of the game because of her nose ring. In a postgame interview with ESPN, she said she was told she could wear her ring as usual (as she had all year) as long as it was covered. Well, apparently one of the referees changed her mind and forced Hidalgo to remove the ring before returning to the court. The rules are the rules. It clearly says jewelry is not allowed. But if what Hidalgo said in the interview is true, it is not acceptable to tell a player that what she is wearing is acceptable and then tell her once the game has started it is not. This took an important player off the court for 4 minutes. Hidalgo certainly shares some blame since she knows the rules. But if she was given that permission, it should not be taken away. Some credit that the officials made sure in the next game to ensure all players were not wearing jewelry before the game. But it certainly would not have been hard to do that before the Notre Dame / Oregon State game and prevented this from happening.

The one that is probably getting the most press is the court in Portland. In a ridiculous situation, the company that paints the lines on the court, made the three point line in some places 9 inches shorter than where it is supposed to be. The NCAA was quick to mention that the company also does the men’s courts, so while this happened in the women’s tournament, it was an unfortunate mistake that could have happened for either the women or men. But it baffles me that with only 2 sites for the Sweet 16, the NCAA couldn’t hire someone to do an audit on the court to ensure the lines are in the proper spots before the games. That is ridiculous that we have a critical championship tournament game being played on a court that does not have the correct lines. The fact that it was an unfortunate mistake is something that could have happened to any of the tournament games. But this was something easy to prevent.

There is also scheduling that I have a gripe with the NCAA. While some of this was certainly dictated by CBS and ABC/ESPN, it is still the NCAA’s tournament. So why is it that when we are in the Elite 8, that we have the two women’s games being played at basically the same time as the men. Why are we forcing college basketball fans to choose? Why couldn’t we start the games at 12, 2:30, 5 and 7:30. This isn’t like the first round where there are 32 games being played between the men and women. There was only 4 games being played – it feels like we could have spaced these out just a little bit more.

The NCAA has done a ton of work in making the women’s tournament better, and they are making great progress. They still have some room for improvement as this post mentions, but in a way, the fact that we are noticing some of these things is also progress. Several years ago, some of these errors would have gone completely unnoticed. The fact that we are commenting on it because so many of us are watching is great progress.

And to be fair, the biggest disappointing mistake that happened so far doesn’t belong to the NCAA. It belongs to the LA Times. This is where a journalist in trying to be cute in talking about how the UCLA vs LSU game is good vs. evil, they decided to call the LSU players “dirty debutantes”. Of course, the first thing as one might expect that you find in a google search of that term is a porn site. So, I hate trash talking – I think it is bad sportsmanship. And I imagine that if you printed some of the things that are said on the court, the person who said it would be embarrassed that came out of their mouth. But there is a difference between trash talking on the court and what a professional journalist publishes in a major newspaper. To call the LSU players evil because they do something all the teams do is irresponsible journalism. Then going and using a term that basically calls young ladies in college the equivalent of porn stars goes so far past irresponsible journalism that it is awful.

I certainly have many moments where I don’t agree with the statements from LSU coach Kim Mulkey. But this time, her comments were 100% correct. She said in a passionate press conference, “”You can criticize coaches all you want. That’s our business. You can come at us and say, ‘You’re the worst coach in America. I hate you. I hate everything about you.’ We expect that. It comes with the territory. But the one thing I’m not going to let you do, I’m not going to let you attack young people, and there were some things in this commentary that you should be offended by as women. It was so sexist. It was good versus evil in that game today. Evil? Called us dirty debutantes? Are you kidding me?”

The journalist did issue an apology, so they admitted their mistake. And as I blog about the games and the world, I constantly think to myself, in my attempt to be funny, have I crossed a line. So, I can be the first person to admit that it is difficult to not accidentally say something offensive. But the press is just as important in growing the game as the NCAA – publicity and coverage matters, so as much as the press will try to hold the NCAA accountable for making mistakes, the press has to be better at not making mistakes as well.

But in an awkward way, all of this is progress as well. Can you imagine a preview of a Sweet 16 game ten years ago generating the attention this article did? That fact that so many people are interested in the games that they are getting more coverage is progress. The fact that there are so many people in the LSU press conferences that we got to see a viral video of Kim Mulkey hold the press accountable is progress. The fact that we are talking about this is progress. Ideally, now that the conversation is happening, we need to learn and do better so that the women’s tournament continues to have a better opportunity to showcase these amazing athletes.

The future is bright. There are so many good players out there. There are so many talented coaches out there. More people are watching – and that is progress.