Imagine a women’s All-Star professional basketball team (WBNA) having several months to work out before facing UConn’s 2023 men’s championship basketball team in a regulation game using NCAA rules and regs. The women are given this incentive: Keep the final score to within 20 points and each of you will receive a $1 million bonus.
Generally, what would this game look like? Women’s basketball is often commended for its smart strategies and advanced teamwork, so what strategies could the WBNA players adopt to keep the score from being totally lopsided? Is there some way to contain the UConn men defensively?
Moderators: I’m looking for more factually based answers than IMHO-type answers, if that’s possible.
Top women’s basketball and soccer teams practice against amateur men all the time. Every team in the DI women’s NCAA field plays a team of random volunteers from the male student body who played basketball in middle school or high school and 1) weren’t good enough to get recruited to the worst D3 or NAIA school 2) don’t do any physical training besides what they get at these scrimmages.
The women do not win these games, ever.
The WNBA all-stars against the UConn men might be able to meet your challenge if you changed the 20 to 250, but I would be concerned about the irresponsbility of putting them in a situation where top male athletes in a sport that rewards size and strength like basketball are playing at full competitive speed, as it is almost guaranteed to get the women hurt.
The men get the same incentive to win by 21+ points.
The men will run the fast break, hard, the entire game and it will get ugly. The women simply play too far below the rim to compete. Let’s just put a fact out here into the ether, more players on this year’s UConn team can dunk than have ever dunked in the history of the WNBA.
It isn’t just about dunking, it’s about height, the men do everything from higher up, the women won’t be able to defend or rebound well, and they don’t shoot well enough to not need rebounding.
Assuming the men are given a real incentive to deny the women the desired outcome - such as a million dollars, too - I see no way the WNBA women could pull the feat off.
They would simply be out-rebounded, out-jumped, out-shot, out-dribbled, out-everything’d.
The final score might be something like Men 100, Women 30. And like Cheesesteak said, the game would consist almost entirely of nothing but fast breaks from beginning to end.
Even without the height advantage, the men are much stronger and faster. They mens game is much more physical, and it would have to be clear the players and refs about what rules will be followed for officiating.
I will begin by noting I do not watch professional or collegiate basketball, so I’m unsure of how physical the game is, but I’ll take your word for it.
That said, I’ve heard some observers opine that the women excel at teamwork and setting up shots. Couldn’t they just pass the ball from player to player from way out and sink a bunch of 3-pointers? Aren’t some of the women very tall themselves?
Okay, so if you are coach of the women, what steps could be taken to try to even the disparity?
And not even that tall, really. A quick search shows maybe a handful of WNBA players are 6’6" or taller (maybe 10 or so), and those are unlikely to be the best players, just the tallest.
UConn has a player that is 7’2" (Clingon). And multiple guys at 6’8" to 6’10".
It will not be a contest unless you fundamentally change the rules.
Honestly - and I say without any sarcasm at all - the only way a coach could even the disparity is to use social pressure for psychological advantage. Get the women to play in such a way that any a man makes contact, it looks like he’s being rough or bullying her and then makes him look bad, such that he is afraid to draw contact or make contact. This could stymie the men from doing layups or trying to block layups.
Only the weights or old fashioned welding helmets that don’t have auto-darkening lenses would make a difference. 20 lb. ankle weights are huge and would probably cause permanent injury to anyone trying to play basketball in them.
There is no way a female professional sports team, in an athletic sport like basketball, can avoid a massive defeat when playing against such a team of males. None.
The physical advantages of males over females is simply too large and it is the reason why we segregate by sex in the first place.
The sports in which the best women can beat the second tier of men are as follows:
*Archery, shooting, and other target sports- best women are regularly in the top 10 of a mixed-gender ranking
*Racecar driving- the best 1-2 women drivers in the world are good enough to qualify as occasional to regular participants in NASCAR and its competitors
*Golf- Top women golfers enter men’s tournaments from time to time and are able to place within the top 50-100 competing against PGA-tier men. If you set up a contest on a par 3 course where raw driving power isn’t a factor I think it’s possible that a woman pro could win a mixed-gender golf event on a good day.
*Non-physical, intellectual-based competitions: The best women’s chess player is usually in the top 100 of the overall rankings and, because of how huge the gaps are between tiers of chess, can easily mop the floor with any non-professional male (probably several at once blindfolded, as chess GMs tend to do at exhibitions). Judit Polgar topped out at #8 in the world.
As you get into direct physical competition it just becomes impossible. Serena Williams would struggle to win the boys’ high school tennis title in most states. An all-star team of the best women soccer or basketball players in the world would not be able to beat any high school varsity team in North America. Women have played kicking positions in college football, basically as a gimmick, but if you actually put them in a situation where blocking and tackling was involved I would quite earnestly worry about someone being killed.
There’s an in-between zone for bat/ball sports because of how many tiers there are. A woman is playing DI collegiate baseball right now. College baseball is probably around the seventh tier of competitiveness after all the minor leagues and the top foreign leagues. I doubt you will ever see a woman at the AA level or above but in a small college conference it is feasible. Softball and baseball are different enough that top softball pitchers can often strike out MLB-tier players because the talent gap isn’t enough to overcome the lack of familiarity with the very different mechanics of softball vs. baseball pitching.
First, a look at the listed competitive sports:
Target Sports - there was a time when men and women competed against each other in the Olympics; I’m not sure why this stopped. In fact, rifle shooting is the one NCAA championship sport where men compete directly against (and, on a lot of teams, alongside) women. Maybe - maybe - men would be better in trap/skeet, if only because their arm strength allows them to get the rifle in position faster.
Racecar driving - there may have been some strength element in Ye Olden Days, but that is no longer the case; I think it’s more that there just aren’t enough women interested and committed enough to reach the top levels.
Golf - as you put it, pretty much the only reason men do better is, they can drive the ball farther, so they have more control over subsequent shots. The old Wendy’s Three-Tour Challenge tried to even this up by having the women shoot from closer tees.
As for, say, Serena Williams, IIRC, she and her sister Venus played back-to-back sets (as in, Serena played one, then, without giving the opponent a break, Venus played one) against the #200 men’s player in the world at the time, and both of them lost.
And I don’t know about “the best women’s soccer players in the world can’t beat any boys’ high school soccer team”; the USA women’s national team practices against high school boys’ teams on a regular basis, and I doubt that they haven’t won their fair share of the matches.
Also, I wouldn’t call the Ivy League a “small college conference.”
They play boys’ teams of 13 and 14 year olds and win about 1 game in 6. They don’t bother playing teams of high school seniors with the physical development of young adult male athletes. There would be absolutely no point.
While there are some excellent athletes in Ivy schools, there are no athletic scholorships allowed. The level of play in the Ivys (with some limited exceptions) is low compared to many schools with athletic scholorships.
True, but it’s not as if some athletes aren’t recruited. While there are no “athletic scholarships” (i.e. scholarships available only to athletes), I am under the impression that a considerable number of athletes qualify for need-based grants under the same conditions as non-athletes. Still, there is a valid reason the Ivy League leaves itself out of the FCS football tournament.
This is true, and it works for sports like skiing, tennis, lacrosse, swimming, and hockey but not really for the big ticket sports like football or basketball. Harvard, Yale, and Cornell have won the NCAA Hockey Championship, Dartmouth has won the NCAA Skiing championship.