FanPost

Women's March Madness returning to Aggieland and other WBB news


After last week's bye week preview post I hadn't expected to post about Women's Bouncy Ball until the Maroon and White game*, but there's some actual news to spread.

Over at aggieathletics.com, the news that the Big Dance is coming back to Reed this spring.

For the third consecutive year, Texas A&M University and Reed Arena will host the First and Second Rounds of the 2014 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship, the NCAA announced Wednesday afternoon.

The College Station portion of the first- and second-rounds will take place with either March 22 and 24 or March 23 and 25. Specific game dates will be announced at a later date. Four teams will participate in the event.

This was somewhat surprising, partly because these are usually announced further in advance. Looking back at past WBB tourneys, certain sites seem to be permanent fixtures: Maryland has hosted every year since 2008. But with 4 sites in the State of Texas and only 1-3 subregionals in the Lone Star State each year, I expected the NCAA to rotate us out in 2014 after hosting two years in a row, especially with College Station, Waco, and Austin being so close to each other. This strikes me as the product of the great job we did hosting the past two years, and yet another benefit of being the only SEC school in Texas.

Four SEC schools will host: A&M, LSU, UT, and UK. The ACC and Big10 each get 3 sites, Two each for the Pac and the Big 12 (base 8), plus UConn (whatever their new conference is), and Toledo.

Other WBB news comes from an interview with Coach Blair on TexAgs radio.

  • Coach is looking for a big year from Courtney Williams
  • Sounds like Achira Ade has the inside track for the 4 spot, and that Jada Terry is being groomed mainly to back up Karla Gilbert and Rachel Mitchell in the post. She'll probably contribute some at both the 4 and the 5 in the long run, but this sounds to me like the primary plan is to have two experienced posts when Karla graduates.
  • Tennis All-America Cristina Sanchez-Quintanar has used up her tennis eligibility but seems to love sports enough to have been playing on the soccer team. She's also made the basketball roster. Not sure what she'll do during the overlap of the two seasons.
*The TexAgs rumor is that the M&W game will be Wednesday, October 23. Nothing official yet as far as I can see.

FanPosts are user-submitted, and are not always representative of GBH editorial/staff or any of our opinions. Please don't post spam or self-promotion, because that's not very good bull. Thanks!