Interview: Howard Megdal, Sports Writer, on WNBA Ownership and March Madness
In this episode, Lindsay Gibbs interviews Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The IX and The Next newsletters, about all things women’s basketball. They discuss his explosive feature in Sports Illustrated on the fractured state of WNBA ownership and what drama women’s college basketball is bringing to March.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Lindsay: Hi, flamethrowers. Lindsay here. I am so, so excited to be joined for our interview this week by Howard Megdal, the founder of The IX and The Next. The IX is a newsletter that each day of the week you get a full digest of a different women's sport, and The Next is a 24/7 basketball newsroom. Howard, hi! [laughs]
Howard: Hi, Lindsay Gibbs. It’s so good to see you, always.
Lindsay: It is so good to have you with us. So, Howard is here this week. We're going to talk all things women's basketball – and by all things, I mean like 30 minutes worth of women's basketball. [laughter]
Howard: That’s short for us!
Lindsay: 30-40 minutes. It's very ambitiously short. We have a hard-out here, but we're going to start off by talking about Howard's explosive report that published last week in Sports Illustrated about the state of ownership in the WNBA, among other things. I think that's kind of the PG version of the way to put it. And then we got some questions, you know, it's March, most of the conference tournaments were last weekend. This Sunday, I believe, is selection Sunday, which I think the women are a part of now. We just want to talk through a few March storylines, get everybody pumped for the madness, because it's already started. Howard, let's just get right into it. So, this piece for Sports Illustrated, the big top-line takeaway that most people had was about this fight over charter flights with the league fining Joseph and Clara Tsai, the owners of the New York Liberty, for chartering a plane for half a year for their team. They got about $500,000 fine. But there's a lot more to the story than that. How did the story come to you? And yeah, let’s start there.
Howard: Well, in terms of how the story came, it was just, you know, it was flagged and immediately there was this clearly broader set of issues that it illuminated. You know, there's the fact of the fine itself, there's the fact that, depending on how you define it, you could call this like the largest scandal in WNBA history. But of course, that's such a weird way of thinking about it, because the scandal was a team trying to do right by its players. And, you know, we'll get into the details obviously of like why it was problematic that the Liberty did this unilaterally, and there were owners who support charter flights who did not support that, for obvious reasons. You know, the fact that it was done not publicly. All of those things played a part in it, but it’s part of a larger issue, which is to say that there are a number of different layers of WNBA ownership who want the league to grow at different rates. And so it's a very difficult challenge for Cathy Engelbert to navigate.
Lindsay: Yeah, so, Cathy Engelbert's the commissioner, of course. She's been around, I think, since 2019 now, a few years. It still feels like she's brand new sometimes because all the last few years blur together in one big blob of time.
Howard: In a lot of ways, she's not really had a chance to make her own stamp on the growth of the league in that sense, you know? The capital raise…The WNBA raised $75 million, as was announced a few weeks ago, was something that for the better part of a few years was something she was trying to do. But you take over in July 2019, you have a CBA you gotta put together. That was signed in January of 2020. Now you're ready to move forward with whatever the next steps are. And less than two months later, the world stops. So, she’s new, and she's also been through more than I would argue any of the leaders of the WNBA prior to now, at the same time.
Lindsay: I certainly don't envy her being at the helm these years in particular, because as we've seen with a lot of sports leagues – and as I'm sure we've all seen in our lives, right? Like, the priorities that seemed to be like what we would have guessed our main priorities were for 2020 changed pretty quickly. [laughs]
Howard: That they did.
Lindsay: Some of those main priorities for 2020 haven't even made it back on my list since then, and I'm sure it's the same for these sports leagues. But let's get into this. So why, why in the world was it problematic that they chartered a jet? Because without any context, that sounds bananas. [laughs]
Howard: Yes. Without any context, it does. But the context is this, right? And this is true of women's leagues and men's leagues. There are – and mercifully about to be in NWSL as well – CBAs when the players collectively bargain, collective bargaining agreements. And in order to have those CBAs have an equal playing field for the different teams within a league, there need to be aspects of it that all the teams need to follow. And in this case, for the duration of the WNBA, the issue is as simple as, well, the charter flights would be so prohibitively expensive for some WNBA owners that the league didn't allow it for anybody. And that would be considered a massive competitive advantage. Now, whether it is, whether it ought to be moving forward, is a whole other question. There is a pathway where were the league were to lift that from the CBA and some teams that wanted to do it would be able to do it, and some teams who couldn't afford it couldn't or wouldn't do it in the same way that there are some teams that are building sparkling new practice facilities at great expense.
There's nothing in the CBA preventing that from happening. There's nothing in the CBA from paying Becky Hammon a million dollars a year the way the Aces are. By the way, there is nothing in the CBA from paying Becky Hammon $10 million a year if they wanted to. And so the question of whether charter flights relative to the other economics of the WNBA are going to be something that is a fight the league is…That it behooves the league to continue to do is an open question in my mind. And there are ways short of changing that in the CBA – and by the way, just changing it on the ownership side, because yes, you'd have to get the players to agree, but that's a phone call, right? [Lindsay laughs] You reach out to Terri Jackson and say, Terri, we'd like all of your players to be on charter flights from now on. Like, it's not going to be like a heavy lift on the PA side.
Lindsay: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And I think obviously there's so many ways we can go there. I want to hone in on the travel thing, because there were a couple of things that kind of have come up this offseason. The first is in that CBA there was language saying the player would always get or they would always try to get maybe business or economy plus in the commercial travel. And I know there's rumblings from some players and I think the players association had a tweet they didn't feel that this was happening in good faith. Also at times coaches being in first class, just, you know, problems with the setup of commercial travel that kind of goes beyond your typical commercial flights schedule. Do you know if the gripes about that part of it came up at all during these negotiations or during this discussion?
Howard: The easiest way to put it…And I think everyone will understand better where this comes from, is that you can have a CBA all you like. The implementation of that CBA is done by 12 teams, and competence may vary.
Lindsay: Yeah. I think that's a very, very fair way to put it. Another really explosive part of your story that got a lot of attention was this part about in a meeting on I believe September 13th, I believe it was a WNBA board of governors phone call–
Howard: Zoom.
Lindsay: Zoom, of course. Tell me what happened during that phone call, [laughs] and what you think the significance of that is?
Howard: The New York Liberty came to that meeting in the midst of a lot of anger over their charter flights and in the midst of the league figuring out what they were going to do about it to say, you know, listen, we could get it fully paid for for the entire league for three years. And essentially it got shouted down by other owners who said this was something…Well, the players might get used to it, and then there's no going back from it. And wouldn't they just prefer a pay hike instead? And so it wasn't something that the Liberty ever formally presented because essentially they were shouted down before they had the opportunity to do it. Now, the league has gone to great pains, despite the fact that, you know, at no point have I reported that there was an official proposal presented and explained what happened in the story, to say, you know, “Well, there was no official proposal at any point from the Liberty” – which is true. It's just not something that anyone has said at any point, right?
Lindsay: It's not something anyone has said. We all know there's a difference between floating things and not feeling that there's excitement or energy to solve the problem. I have to say, that's the part that frustrated me the most, thinking about that “what if they get used to it?” mindset. To me, that's fear of not growing. Where do you think that stems from among some factions of WNBA ownership?
Howard: There’s two parts to that, and I don't think that's an irrational actor by the way, either, right? In other words, there are WNBA ownership groups that if, over the next 10 years the investment was over the long term and you didn't see profit returns, could handle that and weather it easily. And there are WNBA ownership groups that wouldn't want to, and there are WNBA ownerships ship groups that can't. And those are very distinct things. And again, it goes back to just purely a hypothetical, right? But if you have six ownership groups who are able to handle whatever accelerating takes place, are you as a league prepared to lose six ownership groups? And do you have six other billionaires ready to step in? You know, these are the types of questions that need to be asked, that are fundamental to how quickly or how slowly Cathy Engelbert elects to take the league in a direction of growth.
So, those are significant. But then the other part...And there are folks I've talked to in the league who even absolutely support a move from dollar in dollar out to investment for the long range, in the same way we see every day in men sports, right? Who still have that fear. There are teams that just disappeared in this league. There are teams that just moved overnight because owners decided they were done. By the way, the New York Liberty are one of those teams. Jim Dolan decided one day out of the blue, hey, I'm sick of losing money. We can talk about why and how that happened in New York and in what ways, you know, [Lindsay laughs] input led to outcome. But that's a whole other thing. Whatever it is, Jim Dolan decided to do that, and the league had to spend the better part of two years trying to find the right owner.
If it hadn't been Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai, I don't know who it would have been, because you know, just as simple as like, where is New York going to play? And if it hadn't been Barclays, it wasn't going to be MSG because of Dolan leaving them by the side of the road. Where are you going to play, in St. John's? You know, are you gonna try Newark again? Which would have been okay by me, and I think it would have been interesting to see, but it didn't go well when the Liberty were there temporarily during MSG renovations some years back. It was a really difficult thing to the point of you had like Adam Silver and Lisa Borders coming to Westchester County Center, which was not a professional facility. [Lindsay laughs] It was not a collegiate facility. It was a facility that high school teams were concerned about, and in fact pushed back on some high school championships taking place in Westchester County Center.
I have a lot of affection for Westchester County Center. It's where my wife and my parents got vaccinated. [Lindsay laughs] But it was not a professional venue. And you had Adam Silver and Lisa Borders coming in saying, oh, this is just like Cameron Indoor – leave aside that it was like a quarter of the capacity of Cameron Indoor, leave aside that the New York Liberty weren’t even at that point bothering to try and sell tickets. I mean, I literally at one point just called to try and get tickets and I had somebody to try and upsell me – upsell me! – Westchester Knicks instead, the G League team. They had entirely checked out. That franchise had been left on the side of the road. And so for people in the WNBA to be worried that going too fast could lead to something like that doesn't feel irrational to me at all.
Lindsay: Well, and I mean, I've been working, as you know, on this Houston Comets podcast. So, diving into a lot of WNBA history from ’96-97 through 2008. And I mean, there were some errors made. The league went from 8 teams in ’97 to 16 teams by the 2000 season. [laughs] Like, doubling in three years!
Howard: But by the way, the attendance was great. You can understand why they did what they did. There were forces the came along that…Look, I'm a big believer in where this is going.
Lindsay: Yeah, because then after that, right? Which…There were some indicators that those were the good moves, right? After that, from 2000 to 2009, you had 10 franchises fold completely, and three move. And that doesn't even count how, in the middle of CBA negotiations, both in 2014, when the Sparks were randomly put up for sale and they had to try and negotiate a new CBA without any ownership from the Sparks. And then of course, with Dolan, with the Liberty, and that all happened in the 2020 negotiations. So there's been some trauma in this league. A lot of that trauma has come from billionaire owners or very, very rich people deciding they no longer give a shit about women's sports after a few years.
Howard: Correct.
Lindsay: So, you're right. The apprehension is justified.
Howard: And I do want to point that out, right? Like, you know, to have worry that unless, you know, geez, these teams will all go bankrupt and have worry that, you know, will billionaire X decide, hey, I'm tired of this out of nowhere and leave you with a league that struggles dollar in dollar out, and suddenly the definition reverts. You know, you can understand why that happens. Now, that said, I think there are some critically important financial parameters that are set to change. The fact that within a couple of years the absurdly low ESPN rights deal with the WNBA is going to come up for renewal and even if the low end of what the WNBA has reason to expect it to be comes to pass, no teams are gonna have to worry about the financials of charter flights after that.
Lindsay: It's very, very exciting to hear. What is that deal right now? Do you have those details in front of you?
Howard: $25 million a year, and runs through 2024.
Lindsay: I mean, if ESPN is only airing a 25 games per season. [laughs] A million per game, you know?
Howard: I don't even know how to respond to that without an obscenity.
Lindsay: [laughs] I’m sorry. The WNBA schedule just came out, and I got lots of press releases from people at ESPN and ABC about how they are airing 25 WNBA games this season. And I… [sighs]
Howard: It's better than it was, right? You know, there's always the stuff. And we experience this every day in the women's sports world, of like, do we celebrate the win even though it's belated and it's limited and it seems begrudging? Or do we talk about how much more there is to go? And this is always the balance to strike.
Lindsay: And the answer is yes. The answer is always we do both. [laughs]
Howard: That’s right. That’s right. But if you ever want to make somebody in WNBA circles curse, what you can do is say something along the lines of the line that ESPN has put out there for the last few years, which is every single NBA summer league game is going to be televised on the ESPN family of networks. Every single NBA summer league game. Summer league!
Lindsay: What was that thing you were saying about obscenities, Howard? Yeah. [laughs] It’s just insulting.
Howard: Listen, I am a passionate lover of the game of basketball. I have no objection to every single NBA summer league game being televised on the ESPN family of networks. That that is happening for primarily players who are not going to play even in the NBA at any point before that is true of every single WNBA game boggles the mind.
Lindsay: It's pretty infuriating. All right. Before we move on, there's one other piece…Well, there are a lot of other pieces to your story we can get into, but I want to talk about this capital raise and the fractures that came around there. So, first step, let's review for people: one of the reasons why tensions are so heightened right now is because of the four owners who are newish to the league – all since 2019, three since the CBA was come in 2020 – and I believe these owners have deeper pockets than some other WNBA owners, and are just kind of fresh eyes. What was the quote in your story, that they were shocked at how little they were allowed to invest in the league?
Howard: Yes. Although it's more complicated than that too. There are owners who have come around who have been in the league for longer, who are ready to invest more, and in fact in many cases are investing more. And so it's not just there are factions. There are factions within factions. There are different owners who have different support for different initiatives. It is complicated. But yes, there are some newer owners who definitely are looking to make things go a little faster. And you know, Mark Davis has been very public about this with the Las Vegas Aces.
Lindsay: Yeah. Mark Davis with the Aces, Joseph Tsai as we've mentioned with the Liberty, the Atlanta Dream owner I know it was another one, and then of course in Minnesota you've got a confusing situation where I think Glen Taylor is still technically the majority owner for now.
Howard: But Mark is very committed and is clearly a part of that.
Lindsay: And could be the majority owner as soon as next year.
Howard: The expectation is that that is a succession that is well underway.
Lindsay: All of this is happening as is capital raise. So can you explain to people how the WNBA ownership model is structured, and what this capital raise did to that?
Howard: So, it's really interesting. For the first 25 years of the league, the league was 50% owned by a collection of the 12 WNBA teams. So, each team with an equal share of that 50% so there was a 4.18 or, you know, whatever 50 divided by 12 is. And then the other 50% is owned by the NBA. And so as such, every ownership agreement, every ownership decision essentially has to be approved by not just the WNBA board of governors, but also by the NBA board of governors. And, you know, there's obviously huge advantages to that. That means the NBA's invested a ton of money through the years in the WNBA. There's also the disadvantage that especially NBA owners who don't have also a WNBA team, there's limited appetite for doing much of anything, because they're not going to necessarily gain or lose very much by any sort of change. And so that really slow walked a whole lot of things that perhaps the WNBA would have liked to do, or certainly should have done along the way.
Now you add it in the fact that, over the last couple of years, operating income was down in the same way it was down in other leagues as well. And what was already a desire to have a capital raise in order to invest in a lot of necessary infrastructure changes from, you know, the league’s digital properties, things like League Pass to merchandise – which of course, you know, it could be its own show, us talking about that. [Lindsay laughs] It also becomes making sure that there's a financial floor for some WNBA owners who were hit particularly hard by the lack of in-seat arena revenue over the last year and a half.
Lindsay: Yeah, a lot going on, but now things are even…I think if women's sports grow as much as we think they can grow – and honestly, we know they can grow if maybe pandemics would stay away a little bit, you know? [laughs] Like, if the world doesn't end.
Howard: I mean, as the great Ari Chambers would put it, it's about invest in women, not bet on women. If you invest, it's a sure thing.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think it was interesting to read in your article about how some owners were happy about this, some owners thought it wasn't enough, and some owners thought that their share was being diluted way too much and that this wasn't good.
Howard: And so let's just lay that out. They raised $75 million. Some were already WNBA owners, a lot of people were not. And the new ownership stake, you know, the $75 million was distributed to the WNBA over time, will be distributed over time. But the new ownership stakes are about 16% of the ownership of the league. So, WNBA owners, that ownership stake that was 50% is now 42%. And the NBA ownership stake was also diluted to 42%. So you have three essentially blocks of ownership stakes in the WNBA now, rather than the two that we've had for 25 years.
Lindsay: It just seems like a little bit of a mess to me. I'm going to keep going, because one other piece… [laughs] I feel like just following up on that could be another full interview, and banging my head against the wall saying, “Why, why, why?” But the last piece, and you and I both agree, this hasn't necessarily gotten enough attention. What did you find out about the valuation of the league during your reporting for this piece?
Howard: The valuation of the league was for most of the conversation, most of the effort to raise capital, $200 million.
Lindsay: Which just sounds staggeringly low. That sounds so low to me! [laughs]
Howard: Staggeringly! A pre-investment valuation of 200. The league was looking at a $50 million raise. So it would have been a post raise of 250, and the new block of ownership would have been about 20%, you know, 50 divided from 250. Ultimately, the valuation when it was finally voted on by the WNBA board of governors was 400 pre-raise, 75 million coming in, so a post raise of $475 million. There have been comments from Cathy Engelbert that the league's valuation is $1 billion. That was stated to me prior to publication. I asked for any indication of in what way that could be possible and why and how a league is somehow getting 60% of its…It wasn't stated, is that $1 billion before or after the raise? There was no elaboration. But it was just remarkably unclear.
Let's even just say it's after, that it's 475, the league and teams together are a billion. You're trying to make the argument that more than half of the league's value is somehow independent of the sum total of the value of all of its teams – forget that no other league in human history has valued itself that way. It doesn't even make any sense, you know? You say, well, what league assets are there? The TV deal gets paid out to all the teams. So, that's why the teams are inherently valuable. You know, the revenue that comes in, none of it is just like cream off the top that goes to the league before you turn around and are giving it to the teams. It doesn't make any sense. The only way…You know, and I've talked to a lot of people since then, I'm really trying to understand it. And every iteration of the league, you know, let me know, you know, we'll update you.
If there are 35 Van Goghs in Cathy's office, because at that point, you know, that's very valuable artwork, presumably that belongs to the WNBA, and therefore the $1 billion valuation is something I can get my mind around. But that's the closest I've come to being able to figure out where that number comes from. And so then of course, the other question is why. And I don't really have a good answer for you. Presumably you would want the valuation to be as high as possible so that when expansion teams buy in, they're buying at a higher rate. But one would assume that an expansion team isn't going to take it on faith, it’s going to need to know what in fact the valuation was at the time of investment.
Lindsay: Yeah. I think all that sounds about right. And it's hard to really grasp where that difference is and why it can't be explained clearly, because the number 1 billion was very clearly being floated by important people, whether on the record or off. Like, all of a sudden, every journalist on my timeline somehow had a source tell them the valuation of 1 billion right after that capital raise. And whenever that happens, you know, someone is speaking to people off the record. And I wasn't one of them, which is why I feel comfortable saying this. [laughs] We know as reporters whenever, you know, five reporters all of a sudden get info, you know someone's whispering around. Because they want that $1 billion valuation number out there.
Howard: Yeah.
Lindsay: [laughs] Let’s go to college. Howard, March did not take long to get Madness’d, now that we can officially use that for the ladies, you know?
Howard: We would’ve gotten fined if we tried to do that last year. So that's a big, big step for us.
Lindsay: Big step! [laughs] I wasn't struck by lightning, so, good. I'm still standing pretty, so. [laughs] I just want to go over…Obviously there are a lot more conference tournaments than just the most prominent ones, but that's where we're going to focus for right now. South Carolina has been the top team all year long, lost in the championship game to Kentucky. Howard, if anyone missed it, how did this go down? And were you sitting during the last five minutes of the game at any point? [laughs]
Howard: Yeah, I kept sitting down and jumping up again, you know? But you know, Edwards coming down and hitting that three was a very big deal, and it kind of capped it. But Kentucky played remarkably connected defense that helped them get back in this game. They were down by 15 points, I believe, midway through the third quarter. And you know, there was a play prior to that in the final two minutes, a drive to the basket right around Aliyah Boston. There may not be a more difficult thing to do in women's college basketball today than get around Aliyah Boston and get to the basket. She's the best defensive player in the country. And we just saw Kentucky make play after play after play.
And it has been a real up and down year for Kentucky. This is a super talented Kentucky team, a team I thought had a real chance to host. They're not going to host, even after winning the SEC. They're going to be seventh, eighth seed would be my guess. And they're just coming together at the right time around Rhyne Howard, who has a chance to go number one, will certainly be a lottery pick – and rightly so, one of the best players in the country. But to do that against South Carolina, who…I saw a couple of spots where they dropped to third after the loss.
They’re still the best team in the country, you know? That shot doesn't go down, and then South Carolina wins the SEC tournament. We're not even having this conversation. So like, one basket drops them from one to three? I think that was behind like NC State and Stanford, and South Carolina beat them both. So, I'm not buying that. South Carolina is still the best team in the country. I still think if you were to say, you know, pick a team that you think is likeliest to win the national title, I think it's pretty clearly South Carolina. But that just reiterate how amazing it was that Kentucky came through with that win.
Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was a goosebumps moment. It was one of those goosebumps March moments for sure. And I missed it, but that's okay.
Howard: Oh no!
Lindsay: I was driving. I was driving back from Maryland and I was gonna pull over and see if I should watch it. But South Carolina was up by double digits, so I was like, oh, I'm good! [laughs]
Howard: I stream ESPN, but I tell myself I will not look. So I treated it as effectively a radio. That’s my pro tip for all my fellow Burn It All Down listeners.
Lindsay: I love it. I want to talk a little bit about the ACC is well over here. I’m in Greensboro. I was at a couple of days of the ACC tournament. NC State wins it all over the very surprised finalist of Miami. [laughs] Just nobody saw that coming. I'm sorry. I love Miami, but I did not see that coming. One question: what happened to Louisville?
Howard: I don't know. That was shocking to me. Louisville is a team that has absolutely got Final Four potential, national championship potential. They're super smart. They're extremely well coached. I guess any team can have a bad few minutes – and remember, they were up 59-44 on Miami, and then the Hurricanes come through and score the last 17 to win that game. But am I eager to see how Louisville responds in the first two rounds of the tournament? Very much so. But that was a bigger shocker to me even than Kentucky winning, was seeing Louisville fall to Miami and the way they fell to Miami.
Lindsay: No, I agree. Louisville seemed like they were really in the mix for the number one seed, possible to get to ACC teams in the number one seed. And then, you know, they've now lost…Well, I guess, I mean, they lost to UNC a couple of weeks ago in another very dramatic last second game. So you think, well, maybe getting a close win under their belt was good, but it didn't seem like… [laughs] You know, they had just had that loss.
Howard: I mean, I know you have like a strong anti UNC bias, but that was not a bad loss to my mind, you know? UNC is I want to say third in the country in defensive efficiency. Like, Courtney Banghart has built really good program. I would not be surprised if we saw UNC in the second week.
Lindsay: Well, I certainly hope so, you know that. But what should people know about NC State? Because I feel like they do not get a lot of national attention, and probably because they haven't had their huge, huge, huge breakthrough in the March Madness tournament.
Howard: They need to make it to the Final Four for people to understand just how great Wes Moore is. You know, my favorite player to watch on that team…You know, Elissa Cunane is going to be the one people talk about in terms of the first round of the WNBA draft, but Diamond Johnson is just spectacular fun, and she was at Rutgers and she is at NC State and she is the X factor for them as far as I'm concerned. But they're a very good team. They're they're a Wes Moore team at the high end of what a Wes Moore team can be, and what that means is they’re a team that we stand a real good chance of seeing in Minneapolis as well. This is a year though that there are more teams where I'm looking and I'm just like, “Yeah, I could see them in the Final Four” than I ever remember. There are that many teams I think are been capable of winning four games, which is extraordinarily hard.
Lindsay: It's fun though, isn’t it? [laughs] It’s so fun!
Howard: Oh, that's my favorite thing. But my brackets look awful.
Lindsay: Oh yeah. Well, what's happened in the Big Ten? We're pretty used to Maryland winning the Big Ten fairly easily. They had a shot, but I mean, it didn't seem unfeasible for them to win it going in, although they weren't the favorites by any chance. But they lose their first game to Indiana. And then we get Iowa-Indiana in the final, and Iowa takes it all. The big story, Caitlin Clark. But is there anything else about this Iowa team beyond Caitlin Clark that people should know?
Howard: There is. So, I had the privilege of seeing them live a couple of weeks ago on the team in New Jersey and they played against Rutgers. You know, there's a few things I want to highlight with Iowa, and I'm so glad you raised them, right? One of them is Monica Czinano who scored 73 points I believe over the three games in the Big Ten tournament, is just as efficient as they come at the offensive end. They have three players north of 39% three-point shooting. And, you know, even their backups are capable of coming in and performing at an elevated level. They're as efficient offensively as anybody in the country. I want to say they're second to BYU in offensive points per possession. First among the power five conferences. And that was true last year, too.
And so I had this conversation with Lisa Bluder where I said, you know, given how good your offense is, how good does your defense have to be? And she basically said, well, we run an A on offense and an F on defense last year. All we need to do is get to a C+ on defense and we're going to be in position to be really dangerous. And that's effectively what they've done. They went from 338 out of 349 Division I teams in defensive efficiency last year, if memory serves, to somewhere in the neighborhood of 200. I'll bet that's even a little better after that performance against Indiana, which was their best defensive effort of the season against an Indiana team that is chocked full of offensive talent, including Grace Berger, who is absolutely one of my favorite players to watch in this entire country.
It is absolutely an Iowa team that we could see Minneapolis, but the Big Ten is so good! The Big Ten is so good. Ohio State is fantastic. Maryland is really terrific this year, even though they lost. And Indiana…And I said this, there’s a tweet you can find, old tweets exposed, where I said I don't think there are four teams better in the country than Indiana. And I continue to feel that way, that if Indiana gets the right draw, Indiana is coming to Minneapolis.
Lindsay: Woo! All right. I have to tell everyone, Howard was not looking at his notes, he just knows all of those stats by heart, which is why we heart him! Because what!? [laughs] What!? I do know he was just writing something about Iowa–
Howard: I was writing something just now about Iowa.
Lindsay: Okay, quickly, Big 12 hasn't happened yet, but I know you love the job, as do I, that Nicki Collen has done at Baylor this year, keeping Baylor right there in the mix. I'm not going to let you talk on this one, because we just have to go onto the next one. The Big 12 tournament hasn't happened yet. [laughs] But you want to say something? Say something.
Howard: How is Nicki Collen not on the shortlist for coach of the year? How is Nicki Collen…She took a team that was playing a Kim Mulkey style, which is totally different. She recreated her style on the fly in real time with players who had been doing it the Kim Mulkey way, and she has turned them into the class of the Big 12. That is such a great coaching job. That blows my mind.
Lindsay: And you do not see the pro to college transition go that well always. Like, that is not a given transition. [laughs]
Howard: And you're in the midst of, like, there’s a very specific Kim Mulkey culture there. This was a big, big change that she had to operate within. She would be my vote for coach of the year.
Lindsay: It's really cool. All right. Want to go to the west coast though, because I never get to the west coast. Stanford wins the Pac-12. They're the defending champions. Do they have a shot to repeat? What do you like about Stanford?
Howard: I like everything about Stanford. They've got this young up and coming coach in Tara VanDerveer [Lindsay laughs] who I think is headed for big things. I mean, what's not to like? Haley Jones does everything. They are tremendously talented on the defensive end. Cameron Brink, all she needs to do is slightly reduce how much she's fouling and Cameron Brink is the impact player on a level the likes of which we have not seen from a big in recent years in the Pac-12, which has had no shortage of elite bigs who have gone on to the WNBA. If Stanford wins at all, who would be surprised by that? Not me, not even a little. And you told us too, let’s not miss Lynne Roberts’ Utah team. That is a really good offensive team in particular. I think very highly of Utah.
Lindsay: I love that. And I agree. I mean, Stanford won it all, and they lost one player, but most of their team won the national championship last year. [laughs]
Howard: Very true. In the same way that South Carolina brought everyone back and added a couple of recruits this year as well. You know, there was a lot of continuity. And Indiana, you know, Ali Patberg, I looked this up…You want to talk about stats? Ali Patberg has been at Indiana for 31 years. She's been their point guard since the 1991 season. How crazy is that?
Lindsay: That’s amazing. [laughs]
Howard: It’s only seven years, but still, it's a lot, like, that's amazing.
Lindsay: That’s so many years! All right. There's one team that we haven't mentioned yet. Of course they're not in one of the big conferences, but UConn.
Howard: Oh, they're in a very big conference. The Big East? How dare you, Lindsay. [Lindsay laughs] The Big East is a very important conference is conference very close to my heart–
Lindsay: I didn’t say unimportant!
Howard: Literally the “big” is in the name.
Lindsay: I literally cannot argue with that. It's been a rough season by UConn standards. By UConn standards! We have to put everything in context. What happened kind of mid-season, but how do they look now? Because it looks to me like they're peaking at the right time.
Howard: Yeah. People are going to be pretty upset about the fact that if they've left UConn for dead, that it turns out that that was pretty stupid. But fine, let me give you the bigger picture, right? They had Paige Bueckers, who was national freshman of the year last year, one of the best players in the country. She went down with an injury a couple of months ago. They've had to play without their best player, one of the best players in the country and their point guard. And that's asking a lot. They had several other vital players get hurt. They were playing with five or six people at one point. But when you look at the following, right? These were all injuries that looked likely to heal, and they all have, except for Aubrey Griffin, which was a big loss.
But you know, Paige Bueckers is back now. Azzi Fudd, another consensus number one overall player when she came in. Christyn Williams was a consensus number one, you know, there's a lot of talent there. So, all these people were saying, jeez, how will UConn figure it out? Well, you know, they also have this young up and coming like Tara in Geno Auriemma. I don't know if people have heard of him?
Lindsay: Auriemma? Okay, yeah, all right. I’ll look him up.
Howard: Yeah. You know, he's won a game or two, or 11 national championships, and Chris Dailey, one of the great basketball minds of this or any era as his top assistant. And so just the idea of like, jeez, they're going to get Paige back and they’re gonna get all these players back, and you've got these brilliant basketball minds, I wonder if UConn is going to be able to figure it out? Like, of course they're going to be able to figure it out, and that's what they've done. And now a whole bunch of players have gotten exponentially better because they've been asked to do more. Now, Paige is working her way back into the mix. UConn, for all that, you'd say, oh my god, you know, they're struggling or they didn't make the tournament. They were 24 and 5! They were 24 and 5 this year. The last time UConn was not in the Final Four was 2007. 2007, okay? When UConn is not in the Final Four, that's when I’ll believe UConn is not in the Final Four, and not a moment before that.
Lindsay: You just said Final Four so many times that I gotta admit, I lost track of that sentence, but we're going to keep going! [laughs]
Howard: You just don't bet against greatness. You just don't. It doesn't make sense. I mean, you know, is there a pathway to them not making it? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's been a pathway to them not making it a lot of different years. I was up in Albany a few years ago and they were the 2 seed and Louisville was the 1 seed and Asia Durr, absolutely dominant college player, had the opportunity to lead Louisville. Katie Lou Samuelson had a terrible back issue. Katie Lou Samuelson managed to score 31. They figured out a way, they got back to the Final Four. This is what they do.
Lindsay: All right. Is there a bubble team you're rooting for to get in?
Howard: Well, I saw last week a bracketology that had Villanova on the bubble and DePaul on the bubble. And you know, as somebody who failed to take the “big” in Big East seriously the way you just did a couple of moments ago…
Lindsay: Well, I'm looking at Charlie Creme’s latest bracketology, and Villanova's first four out and DePaul's next four out.
Howard: I don't have words. I don't have words. Maddie Siegrist is, if you made a list of the top 10 players of the year, she's comfortably on that list. Aneesah Morrow not only is freshmen of the year and should be by acclamation, but absolutely should be in the discussion for player of the year. With DePaul, I hope DePaul makes it very much. It's always a better tournament when Doug Bruno's in it. But oh my god, but what does…Villanova beat UConn! Villanova's been fantastic down the stretch. Villanova has a fantastic resume. They're about to play in the Big East championship game. If Villanova is not worthy of the NCAA tournament, it boggles my mind. It boggles my mind.
I have a lot of respect for Charlie, but maybe Charlie's wrong on this. Maybe the NCAA already has him in. But Denise Dillon has done such an exceptional job there. Oh my god. If Villanova's not in there, you'll be able to hear me screaming from New Jersey. [Lindsay laughs] And I'm not a Villanova fan. I'm not sitting here like, oh, this is my college team. I just, as a journalist, as a fair-minded human, Villanova needs to be in the tournament.
Lindsay: Well, like you said, we're recording this on Monday, Villanova and UConn play in the Big East championship tonight. Villanova could make this all a moot point– [laughs]
Howard: True! Very true.
Lindsay: –by getting the upset, both by getting the automatic bid. And I think even that win, if it did not get an automatic bid, would move you off of… [laughs]
Howard: But they already beat UConn, you know, while UConn was going through stuff, but come on, Villanova's the tournament team.
Lindsay: All right. So, if you guys did not know that Howard grew up in the northeast, Howard grew up in the northeast [laughs] and lives in northeast now.
Howard: Northeast for the win!
Lindsay: Might have a little affinity for the Big East. [laughs]
Howard: That was my eighth grade research project. You could do any topic…I’m quite bitter about it.
Lindsay: It’s subtle. [laughs] But Howard, how can people follow you and support you?
Howard: Go to The Next Hoops. We've had 39 reported stories at The Next – and that was as of the morning of March 7th – in March. That's what we do. That's what we do, year round, 24/7 round the clock. I work with the most incredible group of people there at The Next Hoops, at The IX newsletter. I work with an amazing group of people, people like Anne Tokarski, Annie Peterson, Addie Parker, Joey Dillon, Jessica Taylor Price on gymnastics. Every single day I learn a ton about a different women's sport, and I'm the one editing. You know, I mean, I'm telling you, you get everything there and you're able to follow, and it eliminates the silos between women's sports.
You elevate the platform of every link around the country, because people who are doing this important work aren't just at The IX, they're doing it at newspapers and magazines all over, but you don't necessarily know how to find it. And I have a links section for the different sports every day to make sure that the women's sports audience is there giving these stories numbers so that writers can make that argument to their editors to go do it again and again.
Lindsay: There's nobody in this industry more responsible for growing the pipeline then Howard Megdal. And that is the last… I won't say anything else nice about him, because honestly I've been really nice lately and it makes me so uncomfortable. [laughs]
Howard: Man, Lindsay Gibbs, I'm going to say nice things about you, if you’ll let me, but you won’t let me.
Lindsay: No, no, no, no, no. We're going to cut this off now, but throw some money his way, support this work, and it's going to be a really fun March. And Howard, we’ll talk soon.
Howard: My whole heart, Lindsay Gibbs.