Womhoops Guru

Mel Greenberg covered college and professional women’s basketball for the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked for 40 plus years. Greenberg pioneered national coverage of the game, including the original Top 25 women's college poll. His knowledge has earned him nicknames such as "The Guru" and "The Godfather," as well as induction into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Guru's Musings: Multi-Lingual Geno

By Mel Greenberg

When Sherman went marching through Georgia the cost was much cheaper than it is these days when one wants to catch up with the WNBA finals whose Game 3 of the best-of-five series will be played Friday night at the Phillips Arena in Atlanta between the host Dream, who are now 0-5 in two years of championship round competition, and the Minnesota Lynx, who, as a result of the current renaissance, are 2-0 lifetime and looking to close it out.

So, the Guru remains Friday in Philadelphia to watch from afar, with an option for Sunday if there’s still a series and the streets here are not littered with locals who will be either joyous or suicidal depending on the final Phillies score in the decisive Game 5 of baseball’s National League Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Meanwhile, UConn women’s beat writer John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant has a nice little link to a video of Huskies coach Geno Auriemma, who is also the USA Basketball senior women’s national team coach on the current European Tour, giving an interview to a reporter in Italian.

This one-on-one is somewhat of a rarity because stateside when he uses English during the postgame interviews many times whatever he says comes off as Greek to everyone else in the room.

By the way John tell your bosses to stop leading the Guru technologically astray. A week ago he downloaded a nifty free Courant Apps for the iPad to follow you, even added the iHusky apps, which is designed more for an iPhone, and suddenly you don’t exist because they moved you somewhere else.

But here’s the updated link to John’s blog.

Remembering Ronnie Maurek

The Guru had been busy doing other things for a few days but a glance at Temple’s website a little while ago revealed that Ronnie Maurek, who was the Owls women’s basketball coach of record (1974-78) when the Guru joined the sport in 1975, passed away at age 66 at Pottstown (Pa.) Hospital, about an hour from Philadelphia.

She was also Temple’s first softball coach.

Here’s a link to the school’s tribute at the Owls’ website.

A Test For The Guru’s Local D-1 WBB Sports Information Directors:

Here’s one way to see who reads the Guru’s blog. He is making tremendous progress on his annual schedule grid but is missing just 18 time starts and also has one conflict in the Temple at La Salle game, which the host Explorers say is 1 p.m. and Temple says 2 p.m.

Yes, the Guru knows things have to be held up for public posting and some are at the mercy of teams they play on the road, who have yet to decide their time starts.

Though some of you haven’t filled in time starts on some of your schedules yet, the Guru has hunted a bunch down by virtue of starts listed on the schedules of teams you play.

But if you happen to privately know some of the following needed entries or some of you non-Philly outsiders who are the other team and reading this know the start, feel free to send the Guru a note.

Missing Times As Of 10/7/11

Rutgers (1 not counting Villanova)
12/30 at George Washington
2/18 at Villanova (also on Villanova’s list)

Drexel (7)
11/20 Second Round WNIT ( to be determined after first game)
12/4 at UNCW
12/28 vs. South Carolina
1/8 vs. Towson
1/26 at VCU
2/2 vs. George Mason
2/29 vs. VCU

Villanova (5)
11/26 vs. USP
1/14 vs. Connecticut
2/14 vs. Georgetown
2/18 vs. Rutgers (mentioned on Rutgers list)
2/27 vs. Syracuse

St. Joseph’s (2)
11/26 vs. Sacred Heart
1/7 at Massachusetts

Temple (1 plus 1 time conflict)
1/7 at Richmond
2/25 at La Salle – Explorers say 1; Owls say 2

La Salle (1 time conflict)
2/25 Temple Explorers say 1; Owls say 2

It’s way early yet and the Guru is well ahead of the annual pace for this exercise. But since he also sends the chart to his newspaper alma mater so they have a clue on day-to-day games to provide, ahem, space, sooner is better especially if by this time next week the pro football team is down to a short pulse and the baseball team is not, well, you know.

The Guru will be back at the next sunrise with either a wrapup or continuance of the WNBA finals.

-- Mel

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