Green Street Debating some big topics
Mar. 23—It's been a major topic of conversation this past week about the impact name, image and likeness has had on the NCAA tournament. Whether it's led to less parity — or at the very least — fewer upsets in the men's tournament.
The women's tournament, on the other hand, has rarely featured the kind of upsets seen on the men's side even before NIL was introduced. But it was notable that the first round of the women's NCAA tournament saw all high-major conference teams advance and only three "upsets. " There were a pair of 9 over 8 wins as Southern Cal beat Clemson in overtime and Syracuse took down Iowa State.
There was also No. 10 seed Virginia rallying past No. 7 seed Georgia for an 82-73 overtime win.
was asked about the topic late Saturday night after her Illinois women's basketball team won 66-57 against Colorado with the Illini seeded 7th and the Buffaloes a No. 10 seed. Green has, of course, been on both sides of the high major/mid major debate as a highly successful coach at Dayton out of the Atlantic 10 before taking the Illinois job.
"This one hits home for me because obviously I was at Dayton in a mid-major where it was hard," Green said. "Your season comes down to are you going to win that three-day tournament, then do you get an at-large. So I think there are a lot of things that go into that, but really if you look across the board I think it's — you can't really say NIL or any of that stuff because it hasn't — how many times really in the past have mid-major teams won those, right?