Cal Bears Women's Basketball Wins WNIT!

It's a rare year to be able to see two teams cut down the net. For those of you not familiar with basketball, the "cutting down the net" ritual is part of winning a championship. Usually this happens after winning a league championship or after winning a tournament.

Earlier this year, the Cal men's basketball team clinched the Pac-10 conference championship by winning their last home game of the season. I wrote about this earlier on this blog. This was their first conference championship in 50 years so it was only fitting that they clinched the crown at home and had a presentation after the game that included the team cutting down the net.

We decided to attend a Cal women's basketball game for the first time yesterday. It just so happened that they were playing at home for what was the Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT) championship. The women's games are general admission meaning that the seating is first come first serve so we got seats four rows behind press row across the Bears' bench.

Harmon seats about 12,000 and usually fills up once or twice each year for men's games. The men's games draw about 9000 or 10,000 people on average. The women's games usually draw fewer than 1000, but on this day the announced crowd was about 2500 although there were times that the place got loud enough to feel like more than the announced crowd. I think that this speaks for the passionate, loyal fan base that the women's team has. Kind of reminds me of the old days with the men's program when Harmon only seated 6600 and had a waiting list for season tickets.

If the men's games had the same kind of boisterous fans on the alumni side of the court as at the women's game, we'd probably have to wear ear plugs for the game. At men's games, often times it takes something really special for the alumni side to give a standing ovation. Not so at women's games. The difference probably is the general admission seating. Perhaps at men's games they should consider making all seats available to anyone in attendance after half time. It's a shame to see empty seats closer to the court.

The women's program seems to have a bright future. They started four freshmen for this game and the first player off the bench was also a freshman. They have another top recruiting class coming in too. With the ticket prices being in the $6/$12 range, I can see more people attending their games in the upcoming years.