By Susan Harman

ALBANY, N.Y. – Coaches at the Albany 2 regional had differing takes on the current set-up for Sweet 16 and Elite 8 competition. Currently two regionals are combined at the two sites, Albany and Portland. Neither city is a major transportation hub, and next year’s combo of Spokane, Wash., and Birmingham, Ala., are not either.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey said finding equitable housing for the eight teams is an issue. All hotels are not alike. Mulkey said that higher seeds got better hotel accommodations, and clearly the higher seeds got roomier locker rooms.

“The kids look at stuff like that,” she said.

Iowa coach Lisa Bluder and her team arrived in Albany on Thursday and Bluder said their accommodations are great.

“Obviously, the hotels aren’t as plentiful (in Albany) and maybe as nice, and obviously we’re talking about every time (we’ve been) on extreme coasts,” Bluder said of her team’s consecutive Sweet 16 trips to Seattle and Albany. “We play some pretty good basketball in the Midwest, too, and we’d love to have the opportunity to showcase women’s basketball at its finest in the Midwest as well.”

Bluder added that positioning the two regionals on the coasts is a disadvantage to midwestern teams. And then Pac-12 teams like UCLA, Oregon State and Colorado had to fly across the country.

UCLA coach Cori Close said that maybe the NCAA ought to take a wait-and-see attitude toward having just the two regional sites.

“I think this is only the second year, so I think it’s too early to make those kinds of decisions,” Close said. “I think we have to see it play out a little bit and see what happens. There’s definitely difficult pieces. We happen to be in the same hotel as Oregon State, and when you have so many teams going across the country, how it affects fan bases and different things over a little bit of time, we’ll have to track that.”

Bluder said women’s basketball has grown so much so quickly that the surrounding structure hasn’t kept up.

“It has exploded, and we do these bids so far out that I don’t think people knew what to expect three or four years ago when they bid on these sites,” Bluder said.

Mulkey agreed that the growth in the game may have exceeded the NCAA’s expectations.

“Are we getting enough people bidding on the women’s games?” she asked.

Clearly the increased television ratings, the advent of NIL and other sources of income for stars like Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, and the celebrity attached to those stars have changed the equation.

“I don’t know that I have ever seen anything like now, and I keep asking myself why,” Mulkey said. What is making it this way now? I don’t know that I have the answer. I have lots of thoughts, but it’s wonderful. It’s off the charts. We have people watching our game that never gave a flip about women’s basketball before, and I love that.”

LSU meets UCLA at noon (CDT), and Iowa’s game against Colorado follows at approximately 2:30. Both will be televised by ABC.

“It’s not even the four teams as much as it has been the entire tournament,” Close said. “This is my 31^st year of Division I coaching, and I’ve never seen a bracket that had more competitive first- and second-round games just across the board.”

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Mulkey on the dais.  For the record, Kim Mulkey had nothing to say on the record about the upcoming Washington Post story that caused her, sight unseen, to threaten a defamation lawsuit.

“I did make a statement, and that’s all I’ll comment on at this time because all I am focused on is to try and win another basketball game,” Mulkey told a national reporter.

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Colorado revisited.  Iowa’s junior reserve post, Addi O’Grady, is the only Hawkeye from the state of Colorado. Yes, she agreed, it’s a little strange to have to face her home state school in back-to-back years in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

“I’ve been wanting to go back to Colorado to play, but if we can’t go to Colorado and play at least we get to play them Saturday. Every year they’ve been on our side of the bracket. I think it’s cool. I really liked Colorado; I really like the coaches and a lot of the players on the team.”

In terms of the re-match between the teams, the coaches and players generally thought they had good handle on each other.

“We’ve watched some film from last year, just a few clips, just reminding us of how they attacked us, how we can attack them,” CU shooting guard Frida Formann said. “But we also see it as a new game because it is.”

“Of course we looked and reflected on last year’s game just to get a feel for it again, but we’re a much better team than we were last year, and I think they, arguably, probably are too, so it is a new game and we’re just basing it off this year as much as we are last (year),” Colorado center Aaronette Vonleh said.

Bluder said her team watched last year’s game in addition to film of CU from this season.

“Neither team has changed,” she said. “I know they’re  a little bit different, but neither team has changed a lot with their style. They lost one starter; we lost two starters. They replaced their starter with (Michigan transfer) Maddie Nolan, a really good player. (CU) is a very experienced group; you’re looking at three grad students and a senior in the starting lineup.”

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Technicals on parade.  With much talk about Clark’s on-court demeanor and emotional reactions at times, Bluder confessed that she has assessed technical fouls on Clark in practice.

“That hasn’t happened in a while,” Clark protested.

Players said that their managers are usually the referees during scrimmage situations.

“They’re horrible at reffing,” Clark said.

“I think it’s just a good coaching tactic,” Kate Martin said. “Like she would do that to me. I’ve gotten a technical as well, so she’s not alone.

“But it just puts us in check, and she’s just holding us accountable because you can’t do that in games, and you will get a technical and put your team in a bad position.”

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