Women’s Basketball has a Bright Future
By Josh McSwain
As another basketball season has concluded the Missouri Tigers women’s basketball team got to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2006 and are continuing to get better under head coach Robin Pingeton.
When Pingeton took over the program in 2010, things couldn’t get much worse. The team was at the bottom of the Big 12 and coming off a 12-18 season, 2-14 in conference. But in six years she has made this program a competitive one of the tougher Women’s Basketball conferences in the country.
The SEC is a tough women’s basketball conference. The legacy of Pat Summitt still lives on at Tennessee even though they are not as dominant as they were with Summitt under new head coach Holly Warrick. Still, as a seven seed the Lady Vols made the Elite 8 with a win over second seeded Arizona State and third seeded Ohio State before being knocked out by National Runner-Up Syracuse. The new top dog in the SEC is South Carolina under Dawn Staley. They spent all year ranked in the top five, losing only to Uconn before being knocked out of the tournament by Syracuse in the Sweet 16.
After three straight years of making the NIT in their first three seasons in the SEC the Tigers finally broke through and made the NCAA’s this season. They defeated BYU in the first round to win their first NCAA Tournament game since 2001.
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Still, the Tigers would have needed nothing short of a miracle run to reach the Final Four in this year’s tournament. If they had knocked off second seeded Texas in the second round, they would have faced UCLA in the Sweet 16 before facing eventual champion and now four time defending champion UConn. The Huskies were fresh off beating Mississippi State by a score of 98-38, and the Tigers split the season series with the Bulldogs with the Tigers winning by 12 in the first meeting and the Bulldogs winning by 10 in the second meeting. The Longhorns came the closest to Uconn in the tournament, only losing by 21 points.
The Tigers spent most of the season ranked, and had wins over ranked opponents in the aforementioned Bulldogs, ranked #7 at the time and the #22 Florida Gators. Freshman Sophie Cunningham scored 20 points in the NCAA Tournament win over BYU, and she will have three more years with the team and lead the Tigers to new heights in the SEC.