WNIT Final: Indiana 65-Va Tech 57 in front of 13,000 (!!) in Bloomington.

Penn State defeated Utah for NIT championship.

Indiana continues it's roll through the WNIT, defeating TCU by 13, 71-58, in front of 7,800 fans in Bloomington. They will host Virginia Tech in Saturday's final.

Just as in the men's NIT, the Ags lost to a finalist, and played them as well as any other team has in the tournament(s).

Utah State hired Craig Smith from the University of South Dakota as their new head coach.
http://www.utahstateaggies.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/032618aad.html

They will be playing Penn State.

Well if you go by the Big Ten rule it might be Flagstaff.

Maybe the Big West could be like the 14 teams in the Big Ten and have their tournament in Madison Square Garden, smack dab in the geographic center of the conference? Or like the "faith-based" schools of the West Coast Conference and have the tournament in Las Vegas.

To twist an old journalism adage, "it's woman bites dog" news.

I grew up in Iowa City, IA. I think Iowa City and Bloomington could pass for twin cities. Basketball is not quite the event in Iowa that it is in Indiana; substitute football and wrestling. I swore I was watching Iowa City when I saw "Breaking Away." College sports are a whole different thing in that area. Think Big Game...that's the atmosphere when a Big Ten school plays their season opener against some patsy directional school from a smaller conference. By the time you get to the conference schedule the whole state shuts down for the game. It's a different world. I am here to stay, but have great memories of growing up in Big Ten country.

Not sure if it was the same event, but I remember some event where a whole lot of historic old trains were brought together in Sacramento,....kind of a tall ships on rails event. Lot of train buffs came to town, many of them gathering in the mountains or other scenic vistas to take photos of the old trains. One of the coolest things was to hear the steam whistles as the trains came to town. Much better than whatever kind of horns they use now, though for the sake of a full nights sleep, I suppose the old whistles had to go.

Big crowd, tradition, name....Bloomington newspaper covers local college sports.

https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/sports/college/iu/

The Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/sports/college/article206792114.html

And NOW they run a story.

http://www.sacbee.com/sports/college/article206792114.html

First round home win: nothing.

Second round road win: nothing.

Third round nail-biting win at "power conference" school: nothing.

Fourth round loss at Indiana: they write something.

I get the idea that Bee subcription rates are like airline tickets. You may be paying something significantly different than the person in the seat next to you for the same ride.

Had a friend cancel the print subscription recently, and - shh!!! - they still get the online subscription for free. Have another friend who says he cancelled the print subscription and has not paid for the online subscrition for years.

I also had problems with the Bee's online registration. I arranged for a subscription for a very senior relative, all to be billed through me. I used my e-mail address. That person died. I tried to set up an online account for my own subscription and it took more work than necessary to tie that account to my e-mail. Now it won't let me read more than a few issues on an iPad, even though I have a subscription.

Trying to contact them about subscription or delivery issues is difficult.

I understand print papers are having a rough time in the age of the internet, but the Bee is not adapting to the cyber-age very well.

Indiana is on a roll. This is the closest anyone has come to them in the WNIT.

Another frustrating thing is that it's difficult to figure out just who the editors are. You can write to individual reporters, but identifying people higher up in the management chain is difficult.

There is nothing in either the print edition or the online edition about the women's team. I think the last thing they had at all was following the men's loss.

May be a good thing. Ailene Voisin wrote two pieces on the men's team and they lost a first round NIT game. She wrote one on Nevada and they lost their next game in the NCAA's. Maybe we don't want an article.

Seriously, the state of print journalism is deteriorating rapidly, and the Bee might even be ahead of pace. The cost goes up as the paper gets smaller, and most of the articles are provided by wire services. When they do cover local colleges the article is usually buried in a "Regional" column, and somewhere in the article are the words, "according to a UCD/CSUS website."

Women make the final eight of the WNIT and all they get is a score in the fine print summary.

Trivial pursuit....Other than BlueGoldAg's support, what is the connection between UCD women's basketball and Indiana women's basketball?

Jorja Hoehn, UCD head coach from 1988 to 1996, was the head coach at IU from 1985 to 1988.

I knew you would want to know.

Go Ags!

I looked at the WNIT bracket early this morning (Friday). They already had Indiana hosting the UCD/KSU winner.

The WNIT website already has the next round "at Indiana."

Let's just make sure we get there!