Kim knows the college game better than any coach in America outside of Geno.

Nikki knows the pro game and tries to run pro concepts with college players.

Kim whines and cries more - which works in college more than it does in the pros.

Both are great coaches. One is at Baylor. The other chose to leave Baylor.

I will pull for whoever is coaching Baylor.

Coaches used to recruit. $$ now is the biggest recruiting factor. LSU contributes a lot of money to women's basketball. Baylor, not so much

I'm glad you brought up this question because, strangely, it has never been discussed on this board over the past four years.

MrGolfguy said:

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Post of the year :-)

Mulkey is a legend in WBB.

Yogi said:

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Mulkey is a legend in WBB.

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Nobody doubts it. But if you are going to compare current coaches (based on records) who have not even been coaching as long or in the time periods when those legends evolved it is apples to oranges. The KM comparison should be between her and the only other 2 elite coaches still active (Geno and Dawn). No other coach in the country can compare on records because none of them have 3 or more championships (actually no one has 2).........and in my opinion no one outside of these three ever will because it is so much harder today because of the parity that has developed in the sport.

The thread was started for one reason....to cut down CNC. It serves no other purpose. Our program got blown up when KM decided to leave and her team got thrown under the bus in the process. If you want to make comparisons, compare CNC to the coaches that immediately took over TN, TX, TT, NC, GA, and now Stanford in how the program fared after their long-time legend or near-legend coach left. We have fared certainly no worse and arguably better than any of those programs in the immediate aftermath of those departures. And they all got advance notice the coach was leaving. We got dumped.

IowaBear said:

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Honest question, if winning titles in todays game is so much harder than before why do the same teams still win them?
I don't disagree that there's more parity. But imo the amount of parity is overblown. Each and every year there's 5-6 teams tops who are actual threats to win the title. That really hasn't changed yet at least

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I think it is the holdover of where things were just a very few years ago for a few of those. The three recognized elite coaches are going to get the creme of the crop, at least enough to field a fairly deep team., especially where they are at, but outside of Staley, the other two are on the clock because of age and health scares. I don't think had KM stayed at Baylor, we were going to win another one with her here. The trajectory just didn't seem to be there for me. For the 2021-2022 season we were going to be relying more on transfers than we had been, and frankly, the transfers were not all that impressive as they had been. Don't read me wrong. I think we would have had a great team, but looking toward SC and its ilk, I don't think we could have gotten over the hump. I also think we would still be at a disadvantage if a top-end recruit's ultimate decision was based on NIL.

I think where the parity is starting to show up is by looking at the teams getting to the FF, and especially E8 I don't disagree with you on the 5-6 team statement, but once you get past LSU, UConn and SC (elite coaches) the names change more than in the past. And they change a lot because a team has a multi-year star. So a team may rise dramatically and be in the mix for a few years, but then they drop considerably when that star is gone, allowing somebody else to move up. The Iowa and Caitlin Clark story is a perfect example. Before her, Iowa was OK, but nothing special. I think we beat them one year in the SS, but with Clark, they were a threat. Now Clark is gone and Creme has Iowa as a last-4 in. UCLA and USC were not consistently in the conversations until the last couple of years.

I just think the parity is proven out by the difficulty of teams to get just to the E8. Even the "big-3" I mentioned above don't get gimmes any more. You just have to play teams earlier in the tournament that while they may not be as good as you, but on a given game can beat you. I don't think that was ever so much the case in the past. You used to not have to play those teams until the E8. I think our 2005 team is a perfect example. No one will ever convince me that if that exact team played today they would even get to the FF. We (and everyone else) see levels of competition now that can knock you off earlier in the tournament because we are not as good and others are not as average.

I've said this before. I think the next elite coach if you only base it on having multiple national championships won is just not there. I would be highly surprised to see any coach that has not already won a national championship to win another and certainly not 3. It might happen, but I think that would be an exception. There are just too many potential speed bumps in the road to get that opportunity, that in the past were basically just warn-up games in the tournament. Now conferences are seeing parity that wasn't there before. Look at our conference. Look at the SEC with Vanderbilt, for example.

It will be interesting to see how NIL plays into this and how the house resolution affects that. I do believe if you think you can buy a championship, the opportunity is there with NIL if you have enough money, but even then I think there is a gamble that even with a roster no one can match on paper, you are not guaranteed a NC because there are enough really good teams you now have to beat to just get to the final that one bad day when you can't hit the ocean or your star is sitting on the bench with foul trouble or some other situation is more likely to occur than ever before and your opponent is good enough to take advantage of that situation.

I apologize for my answer being so long.