2007 NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Tournament - Comments

Comments

• Judy Southard, an athletics administrator at Louisiana State University, is the head of the Division I Women's Basketball Committee, which selected and seeded the teams for this event. Southard carried on her duties despite an ongoing scandal in which the head women's basketball coach, Pokey Chatman, resigned after it was alleged that she had an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of her former players. When asked about the scandal on the ESPN program announcing the tournament field and matchups, Southard declined to comment, saying that she wanted the focus to be on the players and teams in the tourney.
• This was the first tournament since the NCAA began sanctioning women's basketball in which Louisiana Tech is not a participant. This leaves Tennessee as the only program to appear in all 26 events.
• Texas was not in the tournament in consecutive seasons for the first time in its history. (At about the same moment that the selections were announced, Jody Conradt, who won 900 games and a championship during her tenure, resigned as the team's head coach.)
• Marist College was the first current MAAC participant to win in the NCAA tournament. The MAAC was previously 0–21 in the tournament under its current membership. Marist also matched the record for the lowest seed to advance to the Sweet Sixteen as a 13 seed. Texas A&M did so in 1994 and Liberty also accomplished this in 2005.
• The Final Four logo features a guitar that resembles the Fender Stratocaster, marking the fact that Cleveland serves as the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Also, the opening teases on the ESPN telecasts featured an actress playing a disc jockey and mock-up vinyl album covers with players and coaches pictured, to further advance the theme. At the Final Four, a picture of a guitar was applied onto the playing surface with a wood finish, and ESPN used classic rock and roll and R&B songs to lead out into some of the commercial breaks.
• Rutgers' cinderella performance in the NCAA tournament was the indirect catalyst of a chain of events that led to CBS Radio firing nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus and to a car accident that nearly killed New Jersey governor Jon Corzine. After their underdog performance, Don Imus mentioned the Rutgers women's basketball team in his radio program, where he referred to the team as "nappy-headed hos." This led to CBS radio firing Don Imus. In an attempt to apologize to the Rutgers' basketball team, Don Imus apologized to the Rutgers team in person at the New Jersey governor's mansion in Princeton, New Jersey. The meeting was also to be attended by New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, but on his way to the meeting, he was involved in an auto accident that left him in critical condition.