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NCAA WOMEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 7, 2008

TAMPA, FLORIDA

THE MODERATOR: Joined up here by Judy Southard, the chair of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee, as well as Sue Donohoe who is with the NCAA staff and her title is vice president for Division I Women's Basketball.
Judy, when you're ready, I'll let you give your opening thoughts while people are coming in.
JUDY SOUTHARD: Thank you very much. If I was worried about being awake during this, I'm not anymore because of these lights. And, first of all, I'll apologize for Sue and I being a few seconds late, but we were upstairs on the upper level with an executive women's luncheon, very, very fine group of women that have been very involved and very instrumental in the process of hosting this event this year.
In my real life I'm senior associate athletic director at LSU, and this time of year I work for Sue, our vice president.
I would say to you, to open up, that we are extremely excited about the state of our game at this particular juncture and its history. We are watching a tremendous growth in the skill level of our young women, the number of participants who are taking part in our game and the excitement that is being generated on our campuses for the women's game.
We had several things this past year that were extremely exciting to all of us. First of all, of course, our "Think Pink" initiative was a resounding success this year.
Our "Pack the House" challenges, which were directly related to trying to improve attendance on our college campuses, was a tremendous success.
And then we also, of course, announced our first-ever "Grow the Game" marketing grant program that the recipients of those grants have been announced for next year. And those monies will be used by the recipients to help find a way to market and promote the women's game at even a greater level.
As always I would be remiss if I didn't speak to the importance of our student-athletes. Our women in college basketball are tremendous role models for the young people in our society, not only with the way they behave and conduct themselves on the court, but in the classroom, and certainly what they contribute to our communities in their community services.
Academically the news is very good in women's basketball. We are graduating 81 percent of our women student-athletes in the sport of women's basketball, which compares most favorably with a rate of 77 percent for the general student body, the women in the general student body.
Finally, I would say to you, this year's championship has just been a tremendous event. We have watched our attendance grow at every level as we've moved through the first, second rounds and into the regional semifinals and finals. And we'll be very excited to see what has happened with our attendance figures when we get all the final totals in at the end of this event. And hand in hand with that, our TV ratings have gone up tremendously over the TV ratings of 2007.
And so we are extremely excited about where we are right now. We know that we still have a long ways to go in some regard. But certainly our game is very healthy, and it is improving daily and annually. And we're very, very excited about our championship game tomorrow evening.
At this point in time, I will open it up if there are any questions.
THE MODERATOR: We'll give you the opportunity to ask both Judy questions as well as Sue.

Q. I know some people were surprised to see Tina Napier officiating yesterday. Can you go over how the officials are chosen for the Final Four, what the criteria are.
JUDY SOUTHARD: I think the most important thing I would say to you up front is there's a great need to understand that the regular season competition is governed by conferences. Our conferences train and put together their own core of officials. They all have their own conference coordinators of officials who do the assignments for their conference events. And, in most cases, and I would say it may be unanimous in cases, they also control the assignment for officials for nonconference games for their membership.
As far as the championship is concerned, we have a national coordinator of officials who reaches down at the conference level to conference coordinators and she requests recommendations for those individuals who should be advanced forward to post-season competition.
There are 31 conferences, so we receive a recommended slate of candidates for officiating in the national championship from each of those conference coordinators. We have a number of officials, a great deal of our officials call for multiple conferences. They're not affiliated with one conference or only two conferences and in many cases they'll officiate three, four, five different conferences across the board.
Our national coordinator received a slate from each conference coordinator. That list was pared down. It was brought forward to our officiating subcommittee for the committee, and then a slate was advanced for the officiating. I would tell you that we considered Tina Napier, along with all the individuals who came into our championship, to be outstanding officials.
They are advanced based on their merit as they move through the tournament. And, again, I would tell you that both the Big East and the SEC had an opportunity to move forward a slate of candidates.
The other thing I would say to you, and I'm sure the reference as it relates to the question, would go back to the issues that happened in the Tennessee-Rutgers game. I don't think there's any secret we can read between the lines there. The one thing I would tell you is the officials that were involved in that basketball game continued to call both Big East and SEC games throughout the regular season and throughout their conference championship season before many of them and, in the case of the ones that have been moved forward, were moved forward by various conference commissions for consideration for championship play.

Q. I know you just love it, but I want to follow up on that, and if both of you want to comment on this. The SEC did not give a satisfactory explanation for what happened with that clock. Everybody was watching. Something happened. Sue, did you feel like the NCAA -- were you powerless to step in and say here's what happened? Because Rutgers and Rutgers fans and other fans still just want to know what happened there.
SUE DONOHOE: Yeah, thanks for the question. When the situation occurred as it did, certainly within 24 hours our office and myself had an opportunity to visit with both Commissioner Slive and Commissioner Trangese. As Judy mentioned a few minutes ago, regular season officiating is -- the oversight of that lies within our Conference Commissioners Association. So we felt like from an NCAA perspective that our responsibility was to communicate with those two commissioners to ensure that we were there to assist and support in any way that we could.
Also, we felt like our responsibility was to respond to any and all inquiries that we received. And I have to tell you I had a great time doing that. I spent a couple of days just responding to emails and explaining the position of the NCAA in this regard.
I think the thing that I would tell you that our most important role in this, and what should be our primary role, is to take a situation that we certainly know was unfortunate and turn it into a teaching tool.
And from our national officiating program perspective, that's exactly what we're doing. We did it immediately, within just a few hours of the game we had a clip posted.
We talked about how it was managed. We gave recommendations about ways that it may be could be managed in a better way. So our primary responsibility from an NCAA perspective was, one, being in communication with the conferences, being in communication with the commissioners who have oversight for regular season officiating, but our primary role was to take this and turn it into an educational tool.
In regard to how the committee looked at it during the selection process, I know that's been a question that we've received a lot of, and I think Judy can speak to it from a committee perspective. But within our principles and procedures, we talk about unusual game circumstances. We talk about injured or unavailable players and certainly during the process the committee took note of that game and the results and it was a part of their dialogue as they were deliberating on the selection seeding and bracketing process.
And, Judy, you may want to touch on that.
JUDY SOUTHARD: And I think probably, Michelle, you were at the mock selections with us in February, so you were probably aware of this, but just to follow up or just to kind of put a punctuation mark to what Sue said, there are 10 members of our committee, and we each one have different ways of analyzing the information. We had lengthy dialogue about the situation that occurred.
As we would and as we did with some situations with teams that had injured or unavailable players and what would the roles of those players be when they came back and were available for post season play, how it might affect seeding, how it might affect placements of teams in the bracket.
So we analyze all of that information and at the end of the day it's 10 people casting 10 votes, so each individual on our committee had to take and balance what that situation personally meant to them and the process of trying to determine how they were going to vote as it related to the seeding of Rutgers.
I think the selection of Rutgers was a no-brainer. So we were basically dealing with where to seed them and then at that point our principles and procedures kick in as it relates to placing them in the bracket.

Q. One thing I want to follow up, I don't mean to belabor the point, but I guess to get to the heart of the matter: Was this human error, technological error, a combination of both, and why wasn't there an announcement explaining here's what happened last night. Because I still think people want to know why did the clock stop and then start again and what happened?
SUE DONOHOE: I think that's a fair question. And, again, I'd go back to the conference level. It's not about passing the buck. That's their oversight responsibility. I think all of us know something happened. I think that if you went and asked the officiating crew what happened, I think that there was information that they had and didn't have at the time and they were living in the moment.
And they were in an arena with 20,000 people there on top of them. I think that they managed the situation to the best of their knowledge at the time.
Now, in hindsight, probably would they go back and take a little bit more time to review and to assess, I think they would say, yeah, we would do that. And I think that's the message that from a national officiating perspective that we've tried to deliver is in a situation like that, take the time that you need to make it right.
And I think the officials, if they were sitting here with us today, would say: If they did anything, if they could do anything differently, it would be making sure and taking the time to do it. Did they miss a play or rule? Absolutely not. Did they go through protocol? They absolutely did. Could they have taken more time? I think they would say yes.
And you're talking about three individuals that quite candidly are some of the best of the best in the officiating world. You've got individuals that have given and contributed to this game in a very positive manner. We all have moments in time where we wish that we could do things a little bit differently. But you had three individuals there that have served this game well. They've served the student-athletes well. And it was an unfortunate situation.

Q. Could you talk about Oklahoma City, they lost what was the regional draw, and still had, I believe, 10,000 and 9,000, what your thoughts were. I think that was the best drawing region. And I guess a little beyond that, you gave Greensboro two regionals in a row. Do you see that trend continuing especially for someplace like Oklahoma City that performed so well?
JUDY SOUTHARD: Yes, and I had an opportunity to be in Oklahoma City. I was in a lot of places, as a matter of fact, but I was very delighted to have an opportunity to be in Oklahoma City. The first thing I would do I would really credit their local organizing community with what they did to really get out and push that event.
The bracket was set such that had Oklahoma advanced, they would have been in that particular regional championship. As it worked out, they were -- if you want to call it an upset, they were a 4 seed beat by a 5 seed in the second round.
But the thing that was very, very -- and I have to take my hat off to Sherri Coale and the other coaches in the Big 12. They really got out and promoted that event from a Big 12 perspective and then tied themselves to the Oklahoma City community and really got out and pushed for the people to come out and support that event.
I was sitting in the arena for the first -- for the semifinal games that evening, and it was absolutely unbelievable to me to look around and see the number of head coaches from the Big 12 that came to Oklahoma City to support their conference affiliation, which was of course Texas A&M.
The people from Oklahoma State, the people from Oklahoma, who put on their orange and put on their crimson and came out and filled the stands with their university colors on but supported the Big 12, their Big 12 colleague in that tournament.
I think it's a real testament to the Oklahoma City community. I believe I'm correct, Sue, Oklahoma City is hosting again next year.
To answer the second part of your question, we have as a committee tried to identify strong basketball supporting communities and give them opportunities to host two years in a row. I know myself as a former athletic director on the Division II level hosting a major event, I always wanted the opportunity for the second year around because I knew once I built the base of support that it would be a very successful event. And I think you're going to see Oklahoma City will do that with the event next year also.
So my hat's off to them. And this is just another quick example of how it goes. I was interviewed in New Orleans, because I was also at the New Orleans regional. I was interviewed there from a gentleman from the local newspaper. He asked me if I was disappointed that the LSU people didn't come out to support the event in New Orleans. My answer was to them was, well, the LSU people came out, those were the 5,000 people that were in the arena.
The problem was that we -- in some communities we do a tremendous job with the local organizing committee, and that I would use as the example to go back to what happened at Oklahoma City. Their local organizing committee just did an absolutely magnificent job supporting that event.

Q. Sue, there was a little bit of a clock issue last night with one of the clocks. They had to stop the Connecticut game. And can you explain what happened there and how it's been resolved?
SUE DONOHOE: Absolutely, I think that's a great question. We had a couple of issues last night. And let me just give credit to the St. Pete Times Forum. Here's what I know. You're going to have issues along the way. What's important is do you solve the issues before they become problems. And certainly the St. Pete Times Forum and their staff did that last night.
On the clock issue, when we went to tip in the first game, we had some sort of short in the clock. And it impacted the way it was running down. And so we were in communication with the officials on the floor, with our standby officials, and those officials were in communication with the two head coaches ensuring that they know which was the real clock to work on, to view and play off of.
When we got between the two games last night, we had an opportunity where we could have brought that clock down, powered it down and put two temporary clocks up on the sideline. And we went to our officiating crew for the second game and talked to them about that.
That crew went to the two head coaches in the second game and told them what the situation was and they told them if we do that, we're going to bring down the clock. You're going to lose the 30-second clock that's up above the back board, but we'll have two game clocks down on the floor.
And the coaches said we'd rather maintain and have the opportunity to have the 30-second clock up there, understanding that the timing may be off. And they always knew throughout the game that they should refer to the one clock that we knew was in good functional order.
Every time we went to a media timeout last night, in both games, at the 16, 12, 8 and 4 mark, our officials went back to the huddle, said, coaches, let us remind you, here's the clock that we're looking at. Student-athletes, here's the clock that we're looking at.
Coaches felt more comfortable managing it that way than they did with taking down that clock and losing the 30-second shot clock.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you both for being with us.

End of FastScripts

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