Women's basketball has undergone a sonic boom. Two professional women's leagues have popped up in the last year. Last year's national championship game between Tennessee and Georgia drew a sellout crowd of 23,291 to Charlotte Coliseum - and so did both semifinal games. By contrast, the 1986 national championship game between Conradt's Texas team and Southern California drew only 5,662 to the 23,000-seat Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky. Ticket sales to the women's NCAA Tournament have increased more than tenfold since the NCAA held its first tournament in 1982, taking over from an organization called the Intercollegiate Association of Athletics for Women.
Coaches say the quality of play has improved dramatically and the competition has gotten tougher.
As a result, women's games have become more entertaining and fun to watch. Leon Barmore, the veteran coach at Louisiana Tech, remembers the days when only four or five women's teams had a realistic shot to win the national championship. Now, he said, when a team beats a team from the Southeastern Conference, the most powerful women's conference in the country, no one regards it as much of an aberration. The women's game is different now. It is faster-paced, more aggressive.